What is the dark side of the Web, and how does it play into your paper about style and technology?

Baron describes several drawbacks to the Web, including misrepresentation of information, misrepresentation of self, and censorship. The issue he addresses that is most closely associated with my topic though has to do with information overload.

Critics object . . . that there's too much to read in cyberspace, because so many people are filling our screens with too much text. Even if the web can't or shouldn't be censored, they argue, someone needs to sort and catalog it so that users can more easily visit the places they want to and avoid the ones they don't. (Baron 217)

When students look at a 500-600 page text dealing with grammar, usage, style, and documentation rules, it's no wonder they don't read it. They don't have a need for all of the information (at least not all at one time), and even if they did, they could never learn everything contained in the text in a semester.

In the past 10 years or so, the cultural embrace of the Web, its technology, and its visual components have caused grammar handbooks to gradually change, to mimic the Web's display or design style as best print can, assisting the reader with "sorting" important or relevant information. Baron continues, "The trick to dealing with too much information is filtering out what to ignore. To do that, we invent ways to organize reading matter, index it, and search it" (218).

The organization in these print texts follows similar designs students seem more familiar with on the Web. The introduction of tabs (similar to Windows tabs), graphics, and weblinks (like hyperlinks) allows students to quickly find the information they need without wading through pages of (what students deem) unnecessary material. "Chunking" text and creating something other than a linear layout also follows from the Web environment. These design tools assist students in the creation of a more direct and efficient path to the information they require.

Thesis Attempt

This is proving to be a very challenging task for me!

For the purposes of this paper, I plan to review a selection of grammar handbooks from the 1960s to current editions (at this point, in print format only) to assess the design and layout changes afforded through computer technology and how these changes affect the reader's approach the text. I will select two or three chapters that contain similar content across time to assess the changes that occur in text structure, layout or page design, as well as the incorporation of the visual elements.My audience would be primarily composition instructors or authors considering writing a grammar handbook.

My thesis is still rough, but here's another stab:

Technology has allowed (or even encouraged) a shift in the design of grammar handbooks so that they are no longer a strictly linear, text-based medium. This evolution in design has encouraged both transformation (changes within one mode of expression, i.e. text) and transduction (transference of meaning from one mode of expression to another, i.e. text to visual) in the presentation of content within these texts providing the author with a variety of tools to create varied paths to intended meaning and readers with the power to choose their own strategies to attain the necessary information.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!!

Think about what you have read in Baron, Lanham, and Williams--as well as the presentations and discussions you've seen. Define style (again).

Looking back, I believe my first attempt at defining style was vague and inadequate: "Style is the form we choose or create in order to clearly present our ideas to others." Form is clearly an important aspect to style, but I think I attributed too many characteristics to what "form" entails.

Part of the reason for hedging a definition of style comes from the inherent difficulty in defining a concept that incorporates both tangible and intangible qualities. Applicable rules can be assessed: does the author's artifact conform to the audience's accepted grammatical standards or not? Other characteristics such as word choice (and the connotations conveyed), sentence structure, and voice are not so black and white. To compound matters, the application of these characteristics shifts, even with the same content, as the author's purpose and audience changes. With that said, here's my second attempt at a definition:

Style encompasses the selection of appropriate word choice and arrangement of ideas in order to relate an author's intended meaning in an accepted format to a specific audience in the clearest manner without sacrificing individuality.

Assuming an author has already selected the content to be communicated, the most important aspect pertaining to style is audience. For whom is the message intended? Jessica identified the importance of audience when she noted that style was "dictated by the field in which an author is trained or in which that author wishes to publish." While reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves, I found one of Truss's definitions of the apostrophe quite entertaining:

. . . . the apostrophe is the frantically multi-taking female, dotting hither and yon, and succumbing to burn-out from all the thankless effort. (51, illus. ed.)

Contrast this with Encarta Dictionary's definition:

the punctuation mark (') used to show where letters are omitted from a word, to mark the possessive, and sometimes to form the plural of numbers, letters, and symbols. (Web)

Clearly these definitions are intended for different audiences.

Once audience is determined, the technology authors choose to frame their work will also affect style choices. Baron emphasizes how a writer's tools force choices in how ideas are presented. With computers, authors can produce and revise indefinitely; however, when papyrus and clay were the "advanced" technologies, content and format had to be more concise and carefully planned before ideas could be written. Technologies, then, can also affect what content (or how much content) authors select and the visual layout in which to frame the content.

With these "pre-writing" decisions made, the author must then determine the importance of following convention, most closely illustrated through the clarity-brevity-sincerity approach. Although this theory can seem limiting, I think it is important to understand the basic principles put forth by Williams and others aligned with this philosophy. In Style, Williams briefly presents some rules, which are hard-fast, but focuses more on malleable characteristics or principles which lead to clarity, brevity, and sincerity in writing.

Lanham contrasts this C-B-S approach with his guiding principles of motive, play and competition, and purpose, but I do not see these approaches as exclusionary. Lanham states that "the difference between the C-B-S theory of style and the larger mixed-motive one . . . . is really the difference between being well-informed and being wise" (8). I think Williams would agree with this interpretation as he claims that "the more clearly we write, the more clearly we see and feel and think. Rules help no one do that, but some principles can" (10). Rules are important to know so authors can make informed choices about the presentation of their writing. If they opt to deviate from convention, the divergence should be both intentional and meaningful.

Despite the decisions authors must make to create their work, the effort required must not be apparent to the reader. In her first blog on style, Rhonda states that "style is a combination of the many choices we make as we write that are usually invisible to the reader." The choices authors make in structuring sentence shape, cohesion, coherence, and balance should cause the reader to "look through" (Lanham) the "artful" prose to the content.

In the end, the quality of style is judged based on the level of a thoughtful audience's engagement in the author's ideas.

What does Baron mean by the concept of "a better pencil" and how might that impact style?

Baron's discussion of "a better pencil" is simply his exploration of how different technologies have affected writing. Before reading Baron, I had not thought of the pencil as an instrument of technology, but placing it in perspective historically, it's interesting to note the different reactions brought about by technological advances in writing tools.

Although referring specifically to the pencil, Dixon Ticonderoga's mission statement lays a foundation for how people are able to express themselves through the use of the pencil and almost any other current technological tool. People are empowered "to take conscious and subliminal thoughts--facts, ideas, dreams--and preserve them using tools that are extension of themselves" (42). It's hard to imagine the freedom and the ease people experienced when they were able to make their writing "portable," no longer tethered to a desk.

As far as how these technologies affect style, I'm not so sure. Do they making writing easier? Certainly. Computers, laptops, writing tablets, even trendy phones, all provide tools to make the generation and dissemination of ideas convenient. But ease and convenience don't always equate to better. We certainly have the means to be more prolific, but as Thoreau points out of Maine and Texas, we "may have nothing important to communicate" (33). So although technology does democratize the creation and publication of thought, it also means there is probably a considerable amount of information generated that provides limited value.

Regardless of our assessment of the content's quality, the tools we choose with which to express our thoughts definitely affect the style of our communication. Pencil and paper, even typewritten, printed text bring with it a set of conventional expectations, I think. William's principles of style seem to fit more comfortably in this setting. Moving to computers, Kindles, and iPhones with variable screen sizes and almost infinite design options, I think more goes into style than just well constructed sentences. Clarity and coherence will always be important, but they may be expressed in different ways depending on audience needs and the technology accessible to the community. Visual elements, bullets, highlighting, and hyperlinks, can aid in organization, balance, emphasis, and clarity. So, I think whatever technology we use to create and share our thoughts can't help but shape our style.

What is elegant to a technical communicator? Is that something different than what your current profession subscribes to?

I have never worked as a technical communicator, so my assessment of elegance in technical writing comes more from a consumer standpoint than that of the creator.

The difference I see between elegance in technical communication and more traditional literary or composition fields stems from the purpose of the work. Technical communicators are tasked to provide information or instruction concisely and clearly in a useful and understandable format for a user or consumer. Their task is utilitarian, for the most part. So elegance for the technical communicator is achieved through their ability to make information easily accessible to the user.

To attain this goal, tcers have a variety of tools available in addition to simple text. Where traditional academic texts use a linear format with standards fonts, point, and formatting, tcers can more easily adjust these design elements to suit the purpose of the text. In addition to creating text that conforms to William's principles, emphasis and balance can be aided through the use of color, different fonts, bullets, and other visual elements. In many documents, tcers are not confined to linear text, so graphics, charts, and tables can be incorporated to emphasize content.

Constrastingly, traditional academic writing in the composition and literature fields have a different emphasis. Although writers still have a purpose to communicate to the reader, I think nuanced writing and metaphor have more of a place here. Where a sentence like William's quotes from Mailer's stream of consciousness on page 176 may be stylistically artistic in prose, I suspect it would be unacceptable in technical writing.

In general, I think that elegance can be found in all types of writing, but the writing's purpose and the audience's needs define what is elegant for that genre.