Abstract: An electronic document authoring system and method that feature maintaining a library of textual components, displaying a document including some of them in a word processor window, responding to user input to an interface of the word processor to edit the document while it is displayed in the window, and maintaining a database of marks identifying each of the components within the document displayed in the window. The system and method also feature responding to user input to edit another document including components, updating some of the components that belong to both documents, and generating a second version of the documents that include updated components.