Off-forward parton distributions

Recently, there have been some interesting developments involving off-forward parton distributions of the nucleon, deeply virtual Compton scattering, and hard diffractive vector-meson production. These developments are triggered by the realization that the off-forward distributions contain information about the internal spin structure of the nucleon and that diffractive electroproduction of vector mesons depends on these unconventional distributions. This paper gives a brief overview of the recent developments. (author)