Designing and Performing Writing

Creating web-based texts

Page contents:

Websites and web pages
Blogs
Microblogs
Wikis
Audio and video projects

Among the common types of digital assignments in college writing courses are web pages, blogs and microblogs, wikis, and audio and video projects.

Websites and web pages

A website can consist of multiple individual pages. The hypertext that makes up a website allows the writer to organize elements as a cluster of associations. Each page may cover a single topic within a larger pool of content; a menu on the page typically lets readers find related information on the site. A website is relatively easy to change to accommodate new information.

Keep your purpose in mind as you create, embed, or link to content for your site, and workshop your layout and navigation plan with friends or classmates. Is the layout clear and easy to navigate? Do users find what they are looking for, or are you missing content that readers need? If your instructor does not require you to follow a particular plan for a website or web page, consider following a template design or use a site or page that you admire as a model for your own work.

Considering Disabilities: Accessible web texts

Blogs

Some blogs resemble journals or diaries, giving personal perspectives on issues of importance in the life of the blogger. Other blogs may report on a particular topic, such as technology, travel, or politics. Some bloggers write short posts or comment on links to other sites; others write essay-length analyses of issues that interest them. There are as many varieties of blogs as there are reasons for writing them. Therefore, you won’t find any hard-and-fast rules about how informal your tone should be when you write (or comment on) a blog post. Many bloggers adopt a conversational tone, but blogs aimed at a general audience tend to follow the conventions of standard edited English unless the writer wants to achieve a special effect.

Readers expect blog content to be refreshed frequently, so blog posts are often time-stamped, and the newest content appears first. Blogs also usually invite readers to comment publicly on each post. If you are creating a blog, consider whether you want to be able to moderate comments before they appear.

When you create or contribute to a blog, consider how you want to represent yourself to readers. Will they expect humor, careful reasoning, personal anecdotes, expertise? What level of formality will produce the results you want from your audience?
To comment on a blog, follow the same conventions you would for a discussion-list posting. Become familiar with the conversation before you add a comment of your own, and in general, avoid commenting on entries that are several days old.

Microblogs

Social media sites that encourage you to write very short updates, such as Twitter and Tumblr, have some additional conventions.

In microblog posts—particularly Twitter, which limits your posts to 140 characters—brevity is more important than conventionally correct grammar and spelling. As always, however, remember your audience. Posts on such sites do follow conventions, even though they don’t resemble those for academic writing. So learn the current standards of the community you are trying to reach, especially the conventions for sharing other users’ posts.
Use punctuation appropriately to organize posts and help others find information they want. For instance, to communicate with a particular group, you can add the symbol # (hashtag) and an identifying label to your tweets to make it easier for group members to find your posts; your Hindi study group might use a tag such as #hin101.

Wikis

Wikis, such as Wikipedia, are collaborative online texts that empower all users of the site to contribute content, although this content may be moderated before being posted. Wikis create communities where all content is peer reviewed and evaluated by other members; they are powerful tools for sharing a lot of information because they draw on the collective knowledge of many contributors.

Wiki organization is largely left up to contributors, so you can decide when to link to existing content, create new pages, and so on. If the wiki you are working on allows you to annotate your work, you may want to explain your reasons for changing or correcting content others have posted. Many wikis allow users to add citations and create bibliographies; if you add content, you will help others by including links or identifying sources for your information.

Audio and video projects

Today’s technology makes it easy for users to record, edit, and upload audio and video files to the web. Audio and video content can vary as widely as the content found in written-word media—audiobooks, video diaries, pop-culture mash-ups and remixes, radio shows, short documentaries, fiction films, and so on. Writers who create podcasts (which can be downloaded for playback) and streaming media (which can be played without downloading) may produce episodic content united by a common host or theme.

Creating audio and video may be a somewhat greater technical challenge than adding words and images to a blog post or website, but your school may have media experts who can help, or you may be able to turn to friends or classmates for technical advice—so don’t assume that video or audio projects are necessarily too difficult. If you have the opportunity to create audio or video essays in response to an assignment, consider the following as you make choices about your project:

Audio and video files can stand alone as online texts on sites like YouTube, but they can also be embedded on a web page or blog or included in a presentation to add dimension to still images and written words. If only part of your text needs audio or video, consider embedding a short clip instead of making the entire project a media file.
Do you need to record your own audio or video? If so, make a plan for getting the content you need, which might include creating a script or interview questions, finding locations, and so on. Will you appear in the project? Will others also need to participate?
Will you need sound or images from other sources? If so, where can you acquire what you need? If you use the work of others in a project that will be posted for the public, you may need to seek permission from the rightsholders. However, critiquing or analyzing someone else’s work in your own project is often considered a “fair use” that does not require permission. You may also want to look for images and sounds distributed under a Creative Commons license, which allows others to use them freely.

Student Writing: Fundraising web page (Justin Dart)

Tutorial: Audio editing with Audacity

Tutorial: Photo editing with GIMP