# Text Reuse At its most basic level, text reuse is a form of written text repetition or borrowing. Text reuse can take the form of an allusion, a paraphrase or even a verbatim quotation, and occurs when one author borrows or reuses text from an earlier or contemporary author. The borrower, or *quoting* author, may wish to reproduce the text of the *quoted* author word-for-word or reformulate it completely. The chart below illustrates the various *styles* of text reuse we may encounter. Given two or more texts we wish to compare, there are two main branches of text reuse: 1. ***Syntactic text reuse***, which includes verbatim and near-verbatim quotations, as well as idioms. This style of text reuse is "easier" for a machine to read and identify. 2. ***Semantic text reuse***, which includes looser forms of reuse such as allusion, analogy and paraphrase. These are harder to detect with a machine as they operate at a more semantic level. ![Reuse styles.](https://1711629118-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-LAMSxaPS1y_QM9B-H1t%2F-LAO3QI0Yx8gIaVvKMgH%2F-LAO3ThcoJf-aR7auEWn%2Fstyles.png?generation=1524060269490621\&alt=media) Text reuse detection on historical data is particularly challenging due to the fragmentary nature of the texts under investigation and the evolution of language over time. ## Growing bibliography A growing bibliography of historical text reuse is available here (Zotero): ## Discussion group A historical text reuse forum is available here (Google Group):