Writing, Style and Technology: A Portfolio

I am nearing completion of “Writing, Style and Technology,” an English course at Eastern Michigan University. English 328 focused on the composing process, structuring language, and assessing strategies. To further the process of learning, several types of assignments were assigned. The course required us to keep a blog, create a website and write several essays. My essays were titled “The Advancement of Writing Technology”, “Conclusions are a Summary”, “Analysis of a Comic”, and “Redesigning My Site.” Each essay offered unique experiences to improve my understanding of style, and explore methods of writing.

One of my first tasks was to define style in a blog entry. I found this challenging as I rarely thought about writing style, but rather used the word in discussions of web design and to a lesser degree fashion. In the blog entry “What is Style?” I defined style:

Style is the organization of thoughts onto a medium. The medium could be physical such as a piece of paper, canvas, or piece of clay. It could also be abstract like a website or a piece of music. Often the organization could use colors, sounds, or shape to express meaning. The placement of words, white space, and other elements could also be used. (Holt)

As the course progressed, this definition was invalidated. I did not discuss the choice of wording, writing cohesive paragraphs and sentences, or proper punctuation.

The entry did help me explore style choices when publishing academic work online. Blogs tend to be informal, but they also require care; targeted writing is an important aspect in building an audience. Composing a well formed argument builds credibility with readers. Academic blogging is similar to writing good prose in an essay. In “The Advancement of Writing Technology” I wrote about writing as a technology “Ong’s comparison of computers to alien technology has a relationship to interpretation of words and even the length and quality of the written speech. Computers allow large documents to be created and formatted for different situations” (Holt 2). Writing an essay or creating a blog entry share the common technology of modern computers. Many blogging packages offer spell check and saving draft features. This allows a writer to revise prose and store large documents. Technology allows a writer to share drafts with others for peer review. Posting an essay on a website or creating a blog post allowed other students to engage actively in the editing process. I learned that student’s expectations for blog entries were a bit different than what one might consider typical for an essay. The blogging process helped me experiment with my writing without the same concern for rules that I apply to essays and other conventional projects.

Blogging also offered a chance to experiment with visual elements. In preparation for “The Advancement of Writing Technology,” we wrote a blog entry about our newly developed writing technology. Each student had to invent writing tools using elements from nature. I used raspberries grouped in a row to spell out words. The ground was used as a writing surface. Instead of explaining the process in words, I was able to provide a picture taken from my digital camera on the blog. This allowed other students to see my method and the message I wrote.

Another assignment allowed me to experiment with imagery. The visual rhetoric assignment offered me the opportunity to design a comic for online publication and inclusion in an essay. The result was an essay entitled “Analysis of a Comic.” In the essay, I included a comic using the same picture three times with different words. The picture was taken in my youth at Cedar Point in the picnic area. In the essay I describe the comic “Part of the humor of the comic is that it does not include any of the entertaining activities one would expect at an amusement park. My father loves to ride roller coasters, and sitting down was a waste of time and money” (Holt 4). This assignment was the most entertaining in the semester. It was fun to review the other student’s comics. Each student took advantage of the intended audience of our class, but many of the comics would appeal to a larger audience. As we published all of our essays online, the comic had to be in a form appropriate for online publication. I created the essay in Microsoft Word, but used a program called Comic Life on my wife’s Mac Pro. The picture was selected from our iPhoto library and dropped into the program. I created the comic bubbles and then exported the comic as a PNG image. The PNG format is viewable in all modern browsers and could be imported into Word.

The “Analysis of a Comic” essay helped me focus on targeting audiences. I realized that using a picture from Cedar Point might not be wise for the online community. Not everyone is familiar with an amusement park in Ohio. I wrote about this problem in my essay:

I have the advantage of explaining portions of my comic in this essay. Many comics do not include a background or character biographical information. Web comics tend to provide some of this information. If I were to publish the comic on the web, I might include some background information to help the viewer understand the comic. (Holt 4)

Students in the course did make connections with the subject of my comic. I also asked my wife to view the comic and essay for ideas to expand the appeal for wider audiences. I included her opinion of the comic in the essay.

The style rules essay proved to be one of the most challenging essays of the semester. Not only did the essay need to appeal to a wide audience, but the topic encouraged readers to critique the style of the essay as well as its subject matter. My essay, “Conclusions are a Summary,” dealt with an issue not covered directly in Strunk and White’s Elements of Style and Joseph William’s Style, conclusion paragraphs. Elements of Style and Style are respected style guides. In the spirit of Strunk and White’s book, we were asked to create our own style rule. My rule was “Never introduce new information in a conclusion paragraph.” Strunk and White’s book was written to be a reference. Each rule was numbered with several paragraphs describing the purpose of the rule and examples of good and bad uses. Williams, on the other hand, chose to write his book in a conventional form. It was much easier to read from cover to cover, but difficult to scan. As my rule was to be included in an essay, I chose a style similar to Williams.

The rules were discussed in class, and online with other students. We performed peer review of the essays in small groups using a website interface. I also used a blog entry to explore ideas for the style rule. I related this in my essay “Writing strong conclusion paragraphs can be best learned through example. I recently wrote a blog entry discussing the thoughts of other writers for an assignment.” (Holt 2) I went on to use examples from my own blog and another student’s blog to demonstrate examples of good and bad conclusions. It was interesting to compare blog entries to traditional essays. Blogs can be written in a concise, yet intelligent style sharing useful information. I’ve always considered them informal ramblings like those found in a diary. Connecting blogging to our style essay helped us think about the changing landscape of writing and the evolution of this powerful technology. This also connected our writing as a technology essay.

Another project this semester was to create a website and later revise it. The website started as a simple homepage with information about us. We later revised the page using images, colors, and adding structure. Sections were broken into multiple pages. We started with a simple text editor, hand coding the first version. Later, we experimented with what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editing programs to improve the visual appeal of our site. I chose to use Adobe Dreamweaver, Illustrator and Photoshop to enhance my website. A portfolio of our work was created online with HTML editions of our Word documents, our comics, and links to our blogs. I wrote an essay about the site revision process called “Redesigning My Site.”

The exciting part of this assignment was that we were given an opportunity to be creative in another form. The visual appearance of a website is just as important as the content. Merging the creative process of writing with the visual experience of WYSIWYG editing allowed us to explore the importance of visual style and the influence it can have on readers. It was also interesting to see the improvements in other student’s websites during the semester. Creating websites is a useful skill; the importance of online publishing will continue to grow.

I had prior experience creating websites. Helping other students learn Hypertext Markup Language helped me improve my writing skills. I had to consider the audience. Other students did not have the same computer literacy. I also learned that I can write effectively when I understand the subject. My “Redesigning My Site” essay was much easier to read. As a computer science major, I felt comfortable writing about computer terminology. Williams suggested that authors write better about what they know. It is very true in my case. I felt that I improved my skills in writing about the unknown in the course.

Writing, Style and Technology allowed us to explore composing, assessing and language structure. Integrating websites, blogging, comics and traditional writing improved our sense of style and allowed us to experiment with various writing techniques. Students learned about creating websites with HTML, the evolution of comics, maintaining online journals, and writing effective prose.

Works Cited

Holt, Lucas. “The Advancement of Writing Technology”

2007.

--- “Analysis of a Comic”

2007.

--- “Conclusions are a Summary”

2007.

--- “Lucas’s English 328 Blog”

<http://lholt328.blogspot.com/> 22 June 2007

--- “Lucas Holt’s English 328 Homepage”

<http://people.emich.edu/lholt3/eng328/index.html> 22 June 2007

--- “Redesigning My Site”

2007.