Reading notes in books and other printed matter are of increasing interest in Philology and Cultural History. However, we still lack an understanding of their epistemic foundations. With reference to Thomas Mann’s private library, I suggest viewing the act of annotating with pens itself as an epistemic practice. For this, I introduce the term ‘pen traces’ for all phenomena left behind by pens, and distinguish between four different forms of knowledge that influence their emergence: the knowledge of readers, the knowledge of authors, textual knowledge and contextual knowledge. By shedding light on pen traces as traces of an epistemic practice, finally, I point out the need for a practice theory of annotation. Combining theoretical and methodological questions, this chapter describes one approach to the multimodal annotation and analysis of audio-visual artefacts using the ELAN annotation tool. In particular, we focus on the multimodal construction and representation of gender differences in contemporary American TV series by qualitatively and quantitatively analysing the beginnings of TV shows. In doing so, we consider various modes and aspects in order to show how meaning, especially in the construction of the main characters, is created within and across the semiotic modes employed. Robert Musil’s literary estate provides a huge amount of material for research into a ‘phenomenology of writing’. This article introduces an annotation system for the digital representation of the estate from the perspective of writing. The dynamic changes of the text become visible in three different scenarios, corresponding with three levels of the genetic representation of the text. A) The ‘Minor (or Small-Scale) Writing Scene’ on the microgenetic level, whose traces in the draft manuscript allow us to distinguish five stages of revision. B) The ‘Middle (or Medium-Scale) Writing Scene’ on the mesogenetic level, taking into account additional manuscripts which play a role for sketching or rewriting a particular chapter draft. The distinction between draft and note, further differentiated into six types of manuscripts, is fundamental to the modelling of Musil’s writing process. C) The ‘Major (or Large-Scale) Writing Scene’ on the macrogenetic level, i.e. the text versions in their chronological dimension, with 45 dated periods (1898-1942), and their content-based location in the complex structure of the Man without Properties novel project, including preparatory projects, novel parts, chapter complexes and chapter projects. Digitally transcribed as early as the 1980s, the corpus of the digital estate was published in proprietary formats in 1992 and 2009, using a corpus-specific annotation system. Since 2016, MUSIL ONLINE, an open-access edition based on XML/TEI, has been in preparation at the Robert Musil Institute of the University of Klagenfurt. The second part of the article presents its full annotation scheme for the three scenarios mentioned. Annotation in the Humanities and Social Sciences covers a broad spectrum of different concepts and practices. Hermeneutic approaches differ regarding the theoretical novelty of their hypotheses: a) verifying hypotheses in deductive approaches, b) extracting new hypotheses within the framework of existing theoretical assumptions in inductive approaches and c) generating theories related to the subject matter in abductive approaches. When it comes to annotations, we suggest a classification based on two criteria. The first criterion distinguishes processoriented annotations from more product-oriented ones. This often correlates with the hermeneutic approach and at what point in the process of developing new knowledge annotation is actually applied. The second criterion relates to the mode of annotation: whether the main focus is on performing annotation manually or on applying automatic annotation. We exemplify our classification by means of cases involving the annotation of categories from (Computational) Linguistics and Cultural Anthropology in the interdisciplinary project hermA. This chapter focuses on early uses of footnotes (as one category of annotations) in Central Europe during the second half of the seventeenth century. Attention is also accorded to what can be regarded as an institutional context for these early footnotes: the precursors of the Humanities (mainly: Ancient Languages and Literatures) as well as the roles of academic disciplines and interdisciplinarity at Central European academic institutions during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That institutional context is used to call attention to issues pertaining to (inter-)disciplinarity in our time and the relevance of these issues to collaboration between colleagues in the Humanities and the Digital Humanities. Mentioned is the possibility that innovative uses of footnotes (often along with other forms of annotations) during the late seventeenth century by little known authors might serve as a catalyst for innovation in the Digital Humanities. As a kind of epistemological hinge, annotations have a remarkable impact on processes of knowledge production in the Humanities and especially in Literary Studies, whose particularities are often modelled under the term ‘hermeneutic circle’. Based on a concrete experience of annotation practice in the (re)construction of topoi, the article explores the special status of annotations and submits a pluralizing proposal: the differentiation of four circles aims at more precise descriptions of (a) the respective conditions and consequences of annotating in research processes, (b) the disciplinary specifics as well as the transdisciplinary dimensions of annotations and (c) the methodological transformations due to ‘digitization’ or ‘(semi-)automation’ of annotation. How can traditional literary scholars be introduced to digital...