[fiddlerwoaroof]

I think paleographers think of the text as an abstract object and manuscripts as approximations of it. E.g. you might have a couple hundred manuscripts (and other things like printings, etc) of Aristotle’s Physics, but the text is what you get after you identify and try to correct scribal errors.

[thaumasiotes]

That is not the same word "text" as used in the headline. (Note that you weren't able to say "a text".)

Wiktionary's definition page is something of a train wreck, but if you already know what to look for, the information is there:

> text (countable and uncountable, plural texts)

( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/text#English )

Of course one word cannot be "countable and uncountable". But your "text" is uncountable, and bisby's "text" is not.

[bryanrasmussen]

whereas I think in common usage text is anything written and manuscript is a subset of document.

Although manuscript in pre-computer days generally meant something handwritten, nowadays I guess you can turn in a manuscript that was written on the computer so not exactly the same.

[fiddlerwoaroof]

I think this is right, although I think the connotations of “text” are a bit more abstract in common usage than “manuscript”.