Writing to the World-Wide Web

---

Course Objectives

"Nonlinear literacies" (Nancy Kaplan, whom you will read, calls them "e-literacies") is a new phrase that can mean many things; essentially, it addresses the task of writing in hypertextual environments in such a way that both content and format combine to make an accessible and navigable resource for an intended audience in an electronic (computer-mediated) setting.

Writing in hypertextual environments does not  abandon the need for skills we all learned in our papertext writing classes: grammar, spelling, organization, clarity, transitions, central theme and more. As Nicholas Negroponte has written in his book Being Digital,  there is a lot of "crap" on the 'net and the WWW in particular; part of the reason for that is lack of attention to the basic writing skills any college graduate should be able to take into the workplace.

However, the hypertextual writing environment -- in this class, the WWW -- adds new layers of concern for a writer. What happens when the audience just might end up being anybody, as with a website (accessible to anyone with a modem)? When and why should we make links? Do we still need "transitions" between nodes of a web? What happens to the meaning of "introduction" and "conclusion" in a nonlinear web of documents?

These are only some of the questions we will address in this class.

You may rest assured that unlike many of the writing classes you may have taken to this point in your academic careers, you will not be writing simply for the instructor and occasionally for your classmates; I hope that in some way this means you will not simply be writing for a grade, either. It is no accident that the main text (LeMay) for this class is called Web Publishing ...   we will, quite literally, be producing and publishing a journal or magazine, content and audience to be determined by the class; and each of you will work as writers, editors and designers on that publication.

We will spend the first five weeks of class learning a shared terminology, mastering some of the basic skills of writing in hypertextual environments, listening to presentations by professionals in the field of Web publishing, discussing and writing about the theoretical balance and background required to write to the Web, and deciding, as a team, what approach we want to take in producing a quality resource for Web publication.

The "newsroom" atmosphere this class will take on during the final ten weeks of the semester presents a workplace model that engages all the kinds of writing tasks that English teachers have been preaching to their students for at least the past 20 years: invention, drafting, revising, peer review and peer critique, peer editing, collaboration, and, finally, publication for a "real audience." You will be expected to participate fully in all levels of the publication process by collaborating with your classmates toward our final deadline(s).

Early Web observers -- we are just now beginning to see and read theoretical analyses of what the Web is "doing" -- are claiming that Web writing offers a new kind of collaboration, and that hypertext itself is a collaborative effort between the writer and readers in a way traditional papertext never could have been.

Is that true? If this class goes well, by the end of the semester you should have an answer for yourself. It may be -- in fact, at many levels, it will have to be  -- different than the answer anyone else in the class comes to. Let's find out.