Hyper, can then be seen, in terms of electronic media, to mean 'connected in a multitude of dimensions'.
Hypertext
"Non-sequential writing with free user movement."
Ted Nelson
And Ted's meaning is that of the whole literary environment.
Hypertext
"A computer-based text retrieval system that enables a user to access particular locations in webpages or other electronic documents by clicking on links within specific webpages or documents."
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language.
Hyperlinks
Doug Engelbart talks of interactive text which you can do all kinds of things with. He also talks of hyperdocuments. He feels that 'hyper' refers to the augmentation that computers can provide.
Hyperwords
Hyperwords are interactive words; words you can issue commands on.
This interaction can be bestowed on the words in many ways; through copying and pasting, changing the color of the words and looking up definitions of the words and so on. Yes, you could still call it interactive text.
Hyperwords are different from hyperlink in that they are not necessarily pre-written links.
Hyperwords are different from hypertext in that the term only covers the opportunity to command text, not the stringing together text in a full environment, though to be sure, we aim to make hyperwords ever more interactive in themselves and we aim to provide ever more useful environments for them to be interactive within.
