The editions produced in the first three decades of the Cinquecento by Bembo, and by editors linked with him or the Aldine press, struck a balance between a tendency to steer all texts towards a uniformity based on Trecento Tuscan and on the other hand a respect for what the author originally wrote, even if this meant allowing a few archaisms or regionalisms to survive. A hierarchy of susceptibility to editorial change was established among the different linguistic categories: interventions are found most often in orthography and phonology, then in the area of morphology, and become gradually rarer in syntax, lexis and, where relevant, questions of metre. However, as one goes further from Bembo's influence, one finds less balance in Venetian editing between the normative approach and the conservative one, so that all aspects of ‘la scrittura’ become subject to the editor's pen. Sometimes this was because the texts concerned were much more strongly regional in character than, for instance, the Arcadia of 1504, as well as being of lesser literary stature. The kind of editing which took place in these cases was of particular linguistic significance because it helped to extend a norm to a wide range of writing. But, as we shall see, even texts such as those of Boccaccio could be radically rewritten. The problem was that, once such works were given the status of models, they then had to conform with the orthographical, grammatical and metrical rules and the lexical and stylistic ideals which they were thought, rightly or wrongly, to provide.