Readings on Online Environments

Although, again, most of these articles were quite dated, I did enjoy the one by Stephen Bernhardt titled "The Shape of Text to Come: The Texture of Print on Screens." It was a good refresher on strategies for writing for the web, which, as Bernhardt stresses, is vastly different than writing for print.

One excellent point he made is that "there can be no assumption that the reader has built up a model of the logical relations of the text from processing pages in a linear order," and therefore each chunk of the text needs to be able to stand alone.

Another point I related to was "Writers of paper texts are always constrained by length...writing is a process of selection, cutting paring away at what is non-essential or redundant." Due to the current backlash in the workplace against the enormous amount of electronic text people have to read, the paper newsletter is making a comeback. In fact, I write one and collaborate on another in my job. I have definitely gotten out of the habit of having to fit everything that needs to be included into a four-panel newsletter, and it's tough -- especially when I've got an issue laid out and then somebody decides that there needs to be one more story or photo or announcement or whatever added.

The Paradis article, "Text and Action: The Operator's Manual in Context and in Court," was interesting enough for a technical discussion, but the amount of errors in the layout made it frustrating to read. There were lines missing, entire pages repeated, and lines that ended mid-sentence at the bottom of a page. Also, I didn't see a date on this one, or the publication in which it was printed.

The Mirel article, "Writing and Database Technology: Extending the Definition of Writing in the Workplace," was an incredibly detailed analysis of what, to me, is a simple task: including tables of data within a text. I wouldn't have thought this seemingly humble topic could have warranted so much attention, even though I agree that college writing programs could do a better job of teaching people to set up data in graphical formats.

With regard to Racine et al's "Getting to Know Audiences in Cyberspace: A Usability Approach to Designing Skill Centers for Online Writing Centers," I didn't feel that I got a lot of useful information out of this article. The concept of allowing users to help design websites was a good one, but the package it's wrapped in (college writing centers) was directed toward a very specific audience, and therefore, I didn't feel like I was able to glean a lot of information that can be broadly applied.