| Absence – words were either inserted or deleted by at least one witness |
| - Homeoarcton – the first letters of the absent words are the same as the beginning of the following words
- Homeoteleuton – the last letters of the absent words are the same as the end of the preceding words
- Dittography – words that had previously been written were repeated again
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| Substitution – words were substituted for other words |
| - Synthesis – a word was derived resembling components from two individual words
- Phonetic – a word was substituted for a phonetically different word with the same etymology and semantic meaning (includes sandhi)
- Syntactic – the same word has a different syntactical interpretation because of the surrounding variant words
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| Combination – words in a reading were recombined in different ways |
| - Transposition – the order of the words was changed, possibly indicating a different emphasis
- Displacement – transposition where the words in one verse were moved to another verse
- Conflation – words from two mutually exclusive readings were combined together
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