Activity 19: Your understanding of emphasis on Web sites

In activity 10, you looked at the home pages of a few Web sites to identify the primary audience of each. Take a look again at the following sites, with emphasis in mind:

• the main Web site of your school
• the Web site of a professor at your school
• the Web site of a fast-food restaurant in your area
• the Web site of a small, locally owned restaurant in your area
• the Web site of the company that made the car you drive or that makes the car you’d like to drive
• the Web site for a branch or an agency of the US government (for example, the White House, the IRS, the FBI)
• the Web site for an individual who serves in the US government (such as a member of Congress)

As you look at each multimodal text, identify what information the composer seems to be emphasizing. How do you know it’s important? What are some of the techniques used to highlight the most important information? Write brief notes for each piece, and be prepared to discuss them in class.