diff --git a/docs/src/examples.md b/docs/src/examples.md
index 97fbcd0..b2291ce 100644
--- a/docs/src/examples.md
+++ b/docs/src/examples.md
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ A styled string can be constructed manually, but the [`styled"..."`](@ref
 ```@repl examples
 using StyledStrings
 str = styled"{yellow:hello} {blue:there}"
-(String(str), Base.annotations(str))
+(String(str), annotations(str))
 ```
 
 ```@setup example
@@ -178,10 +178,10 @@ styled"It's nice to include $color, and it composes too: {bold,inverse:$color}"
 ```
 
 Sometimes it's useful to compose a string incrementally, or interoperate with
-other `IO`-based code. For these use-cases, the [`AnnotatedIOBuffer`](@ref Base.AnnotatedIOBuffer) is very handy, as you can [`read`](@ref Base.read) an [`AnnotatedString`](@ref Base.AnnotatedString) from it.
+other `IO`-based code. For these use-cases, the [`AnnotatedIOBuffer`](@ref StyledStrings.AnnotatedIOBuffer) is very handy, as you can [`read`](@ref Base.read) an [`AnnotatedString`](@ref StyledStrings.AnnotatedString) from it.
 
 ```@repl examples
-aio = Base.AnnotatedIOBuffer()
+aio = AnnotatedIOBuffer()
 typ = Int
 print(aio, typ)
 while typ != Any # We'll pretend that `supertypes` doesn't exist.
@@ -194,7 +194,7 @@ read(seekstart(aio), Base.AnnotatedString)
 StyledStrings adds a specialised [`printstyled`](@ref) method `printstyled(::AnnotatedIOBuffer, ...)` that means that you can pass an `AnnotatedIOBuffer` as IO to "legacy" code written to use `printstyled`, and extract all the styling as though it had used [`styled"..."`](@ref @styled_str) macros.
 
 ```@repl
-aio = Base.AnnotatedIOBuffer()
+aio = AnnotatedIOBuffer()
 printstyled(aio, 'c', color=:red)
 printstyled(aio, 'o', color=:yellow)
 printstyled(aio, 'l', color=:green)
diff --git a/docs/src/index.md b/docs/src/index.md
index 7f91616..d77e7ab 100644
--- a/docs/src/index.md
+++ b/docs/src/index.md
@@ -1,5 +1,12 @@
 # [StyledStrings](@id stdlib-styledstrings)
 
+```@meta
+CurrentModule = StyledStrings
+DocTestSetup = quote
+    using StyledStrings
+end
+```
+
 ## [Styling](@id stdlib-styledstrings-styling)
 
 When working with strings, formatting and styling often appear as a secondary
@@ -19,7 +26,7 @@ output formats.
 
 Instead of leaving this headache to be widely experienced downstream, it is
 tackled head-on by the introduction of a special string type
-([`AnnotatedString`](@ref Base.AnnotatedString)). This string type wraps any other
+([`AnnotatedString`](@ref StyledStrings.AnnotatedString)). This string type wraps any other
 [`AbstractString`](@ref) type and allows for formatting information to be applied to regions (e.g.
 characters 1 through to 7 are bold and red).
 
@@ -29,7 +36,7 @@ convenience, faces in the global faces dictionary (e.g. `shadow`) can just be
 named instead of giving the [`Face`](@ref StyledStrings.Face) directly.
 
 Along with these capabilities, we also provide a convenient way for constructing
-[`AnnotatedString`](@ref Base.AnnotatedString)s, detailed in [Styled String
+[`AnnotatedString`](@ref StyledStrings.AnnotatedString)s, detailed in [Styled String
 Literals](@ref stdlib-styledstring-literals).
 
 ```@repl demo
@@ -37,7 +44,53 @@ using StyledStrings
 styled"{yellow:hello} {blue:there}"
 ```
 
-## Styling via [`AnnotatedString`](@ref Base.AnnotatedString)s
+## [Annotated Strings](@id man-annotated-strings)
+
+It is sometimes useful to be able to hold metadata relating to regions of a
+string. A [`AnnotatedString`](@ref StyledStrings.AnnotatedString) wraps another string and
+allows for regions of it to be annotated with labelled values (`:label => value`).
+All generic string operations are applied to the underlying string. However,
+when possible, styling information is preserved. This means you can manipulate a
+[`AnnotatedString`](@ref StyledStrings.AnnotatedString) —taking substrings, padding them,
+concatenating them with other strings— and the metadata annotations will "come
+along for the ride".
+
+This string type is fundamental to the [StyledStrings stdlib](@ref
+stdlib-styledstrings), which uses `:face`-labelled annotations to hold styling
+information.
+
+When concatenating a [`AnnotatedString`](@ref StyledStrings.AnnotatedString), take care to use
+[`annotatedstring`](@ref StyledStrings.annotatedstring) instead of [`string`](@ref) if you want
+to keep the string annotations.
+
+```jldoctest
+julia> str = AnnotatedString("hello there", [(1:5, :word => :greeting), (7:11, :label => 1)])
+"hello there"
+
+julia> length(str)
+11
+
+julia> lpad(str, 14)
+"   hello there"
+
+julia> typeof(lpad(str, 7))
+AnnotatedString{String}
+
+julia> str2 = AnnotatedString(" julia", [(2:6, :face => :magenta)])
+" julia"
+
+julia> annotatedstring(str, str2)
+"hello there julia"
+
+julia> str * str2 == annotatedstring(str, str2) # *-concatenation works
+true
+```
+
+The annotations of a [`AnnotatedString`](@ref StyledStrings.AnnotatedString) can be accessed
+and modified via the [`annotations`](@ref StyledStrings.annotations) and
+[`annotate!`](@ref StyledStrings.annotate!) functions.
+
+## Styling via [`AnnotatedString`](@ref StyledStrings.AnnotatedString)s
 
 ## [Faces](@id stdlib-styledstrings-faces)
 
@@ -135,7 +188,7 @@ On initialization, the `config/faces.toml` file under the first Julia depot (usu
 ### Applying faces to a `AnnotatedString`
 
 By convention, the `:face` attributes of a [`AnnotatedString`](@ref
-Base.AnnotatedString) hold information on the [`Face`](@ref StyledStrings.Face)s
+StyledStrings.AnnotatedString) hold information on the [`Face`](@ref StyledStrings.Face)s
 that currently apply. This can be given in multiple forms, as a single `Symbol`
 naming a [`Face`](@ref StyledStrings.Face)s in the global face dictionary, a
 [`Face`](@ref StyledStrings.Face) itself, or a vector of either.
@@ -149,7 +202,7 @@ them to the properties list afterwards, or use the convenient [Styled String
 literals](@ref stdlib-styledstring-literals).
 
 ```@repl demo
-str1 = Base.AnnotatedString("blue text", [(1:9, :face => :blue)])
+str1 = AnnotatedString("blue text", [(1:9, :face => :blue)])
 str2 = styled"{blue:blue text}"
 str1 == str2
 sprint(print, str1, context = :color => true)
@@ -158,7 +211,7 @@ sprint(show, MIME("text/html"), str1, context = :color => true)
 
 ## [Styled String Literals](@id stdlib-styledstring-literals)
 
-To ease construction of [`AnnotatedString`](@ref Base.AnnotatedString)s with [`Face`](@ref StyledStrings.Face)s applied,
+To ease construction of [`AnnotatedString`](@ref StyledStrings.AnnotatedString)s with [`Face`](@ref StyledStrings.Face)s applied,
 the [`styled"..."`](@ref @styled_str) styled string literal allows for the content and
 attributes to be easily expressed together via a custom grammar.
 
@@ -271,6 +324,18 @@ arbitrarily nest and overlap, \colorbox[HTML]{3a3a3a}{\color[HTML]{33d079}like
 
 ## [API reference](@id stdlib-styledstrings-api)
 
+### Annotated Strings
+
+```@docs
+StyledStrings.AnnotatedString
+StyledStrings.AnnotatedChar
+StyledStrings.annotatedstring
+StyledStrings.annotations
+StyledStrings.annotate!
+```
+
+### Styling and Faces
+
 ```@docs
 StyledStrings.@styled_str
 StyledStrings.styled
@@ -278,7 +343,7 @@ StyledStrings.Face
 StyledStrings.addface!
 StyledStrings.withfaces
 StyledStrings.SimpleColor
-Base.parse(::Type{StyledStrings.SimpleColor}, ::String)
-Base.tryparse(::Type{StyledStrings.SimpleColor}, ::String)
-Base.merge(::StyledStrings.Face, ::StyledStrings.Face)
+StyledStrings.parse(::Type{StyledStrings.SimpleColor}, ::String)
+StyledStrings.tryparse(::Type{StyledStrings.SimpleColor}, ::String)
+StyledStrings.merge(::StyledStrings.Face, ::StyledStrings.Face)
 ```
diff --git a/src/StyledStrings.jl b/src/StyledStrings.jl
index 6d332a3..822d653 100644
--- a/src/StyledStrings.jl
+++ b/src/StyledStrings.jl
@@ -2,9 +2,12 @@
 
 module StyledStrings
 
-using Base: AnnotatedString, AnnotatedChar, annotations, annotate!, annotatedstring
+using Base: AnnotatedString, AnnotatedChar, AnnotatedIOBuffer, annotations, annotate!, annotatedstring
 using Base.ScopedValues: ScopedValue, with, @with
 
+# While these are imported from Base, we claim them as part of the `StyledStrings` API.
+export AnnotatedString, AnnotatedChar, AnnotatedIOBuffer, annotations, annotate!, annotatedstring
+
 export @styled_str
 public Face, addface!, withfaces, styled, SimpleColor
 
diff --git a/src/io.jl b/src/io.jl
index d74f56b..71b5967 100644
--- a/src/io.jl
+++ b/src/io.jl
@@ -260,7 +260,7 @@ Base.print(io::IO, s::Union{<:AnnotatedString, SubString{<:AnnotatedString}}) =
 
 # We need to make sure that printing to an `AnnotatedIOBuffer` calls `write` not `print`
 # so we get the specialised handling that `_ansi_writer` doesn't provide.
-Base.print(io::Base.AnnotatedIOBuffer, s::Union{<:AnnotatedString, SubString{<:AnnotatedString}}) =
+Base.print(io::AnnotatedIOBuffer, s::Union{<:AnnotatedString, SubString{<:AnnotatedString}}) =
     (write(io, s); nothing)
 
 Base.escape_string(io::IO, s::Union{<:AnnotatedString, SubString{<:AnnotatedString}},
@@ -290,7 +290,7 @@ function Base.show(io::IO, c::AnnotatedChar)
     end
 end
 
-function Base.write(io::IO, aio::Base.AnnotatedIOBuffer)
+function Base.write(io::IO, aio::AnnotatedIOBuffer)
     if get(io, :color, false) == true
         # This does introduce an overhead that technically
         # could be avoided, but I'm not sure that it's currently
diff --git a/src/legacy.jl b/src/legacy.jl
index 6b2e320..e4c92e6 100644
--- a/src/legacy.jl
+++ b/src/legacy.jl
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 
 module Legacy
 
-using ..StyledStrings: SimpleColor, Face, loadface!, face!
+using ..StyledStrings: SimpleColor, Face, loadface!, face!, AnnotatedIOBuffer, annotatedstring
 
 """
     legacy_color(color::Union{String, Symbol, Int})
@@ -123,11 +123,11 @@ function load_env_colors!()
     end
 end
 
-function Base.printstyled(io::Base.AnnotatedIOBuffer, msg...;
+function Base.printstyled(io::AnnotatedIOBuffer, msg...;
                           bold::Bool=false, italic::Bool=false, underline::Bool=false,
                           blink::Bool=false, reverse::Bool=false, hidden::Bool=false,
                           color::Union{Symbol, Int}=:normal)
-    str = Base.annotatedstring(msg...)
+    str = annotatedstring(msg...)
     bold && face!(str, :bold)
     italic && face!(str, :italic)
     underline && face!(str, :underline)
diff --git a/test/runtests.jl b/test/runtests.jl
index c7a0c27..019b6ed 100644
--- a/test/runtests.jl
+++ b/test/runtests.jl
@@ -3,9 +3,9 @@
 using Test
 
 using StyledStrings: StyledStrings, Legacy, SimpleColor, FACES, Face,
-    @styled_str, styled, StyledMarkup, eachregion, getface, addface!, loadface!, resetfaces!
+    @styled_str, styled, StyledMarkup, eachregion, getface, addface!, loadface!, resetfaces!,
+    AnnotatedString, AnnotatedChar, AnnotatedIOBuffer, annotations
 using .StyledMarkup: MalformedStylingMacro
-using Base: AnnotatedString, AnnotatedChar, AnnotatedIOBuffer, annotations
 
 const NON_STDLIB_TESTS = Main == @__MODULE__
 if NON_STDLIB_TESTS