Lacuna (manuscripts)
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For other uses, see lacuna.
A lacuna is a gap in a manuscript, inscription, text, painting, or a musical work.
The state of old manuscripts or inscriptions which have weathered or been damaged sometimes gives rise to lacunae - passages consisting of a word or words that are missing or illegible. In order to reconstruct the original text, the context is to be considered. In archaeology and literary criticism this may sometimes lead to competing reconstructions and consequent interpretations. Published texts containing lacunae often mark the section where the missing text is with a […]. For example, "This sentence contains 20 words, and […] nouns." Another example is "one kilogram equals one […] grams" where the word 'thousand' is lost in a lacuna in the manuscript.
