Is there a text that will explain the difference between a paper, an article, a manuscript, a monograph and all the other words often used to describe different kinds of written scientific material?
But seriously, if you want to know the differences look up the etymologies and then keep your eyes open for how each term is used in practice. That's all there is to it.
Doesn't it though? If you look at the etymology, manus (hand) + script (write) directly gives you "hand-written", and then a hand-written document is more likely to be the work of a single author, more likely to refer to an original than a copy, and more likely to be old (before printing, typewriters, or computers). Everything else is just associations that a word picks up over time or in a specific community.
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