sentences:  Various transcripts had been made of the Cotton manuscript and a facsimile of the first page of the manuscript had been made and published, giving more direct evidence for the hand of the scribe.In addition to these transcripts, the extracts mentioned above made by other early writers have been used to help assemble and assess the text.Because of the lack of the manuscript itself and because Parker's annotations had been copied by some transcribers as if they were part of the text, scholarly editions have had a difficult burden.