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Choose Composing Tools

Your decision about the composing tool you’ll use to create your multimodal essay will affect not only what you can do in terms of composing, designing, and distributing your essay but also how you think about the essay itself. The capabilities of a particular software program allow you to envision particular types of documents. For example, if you decide to use a multimedia presentation program such as Keynote or PowerPoint, you’ll most likely think of your essay as a series of pages that readers will move through in a linear manner, rather than jumping around as they might on a Web site. The same will be true if you choose a word-processing program, such as Word or Google Docs. In contrast, if you choose a graphics program such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw or a multimedia presentation program such as Prezi, the idea of distinct pages might not be a major consideration. In this sense, as rhetorician Kenneth Burke has written, a way of seeing is a way of not seeing. The features and capabilities of a particular composing tool will direct your attention to some possibilities even as they obscure others.

Keep Burke’s observation in mind as you consider the wide range of software programs that can be used to create a multimodal essay:

word-processing programs, such as Apple Pages, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or OpenOffice Writer
multimedia presentation programs, such as Apple Keynote, Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, or OpenOffice Impress
Web development tools, such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Google Sites
publishing tools, such as Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Publisher
graphics programs, such as Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, Corel Draw or PhotoPaint, or OpenOffice Draw

As you choose your composing and design tools, consider how their distinctive features will help you accomplish your goals as a writer. A word-processing program might be a better choice than a multimedia presentation program if, for example, you plan to rely more heavily on text than on images and video. In contrast, a multimedia presentation program offers more options for including multimedia elements than do most word-processing or Web development programs. Keep in mind as well the expectations that your readers might have about how to use particular programs. Chances are good that they’ll read your essay quite differently if they view it as a Web page or a Prezi document than they will if it is distributed as a word-processing document.