Rhetorical An@lysis

Rhetorical An@lysis of Web-Based Writing

The Internet is fast-paced, and websites must grab the reader's attention in order to compete with a million other, similar sites. Long expositions and complicated arguments are ineffective in this particular medium. It's all about bytes: sound-bytes, information bytes, and photo thumbnails.

Everything has to be processed in small enough chunks that the reader gets the point before he or she gets bored and moves on to something else. In order to avoid over-simplifying an argument, the writer has to package it in small pieces that are, at the same time, complete in content.

The structure of a web text is deliberately non-linear. Readers have the ability to navigate from page to page within a site at their own discretion. They can visit only one page, or they can visit multiple pages in any order they choose. Writers for web-based media need to cater to this fact.

Web layouts use all parts of the screen for their message. In this modern, technological world, readers have to be able to process and interpret messages from every angle and in every medium. Websites incorporate sound, image, video, graphic, text, and shape to create their message. See for example the main website for CNN or the website for the popular television show American Idol. The addition of advertising further complicates the visual stimuli. All of this information can be dizzying unless the reader is accustomed to processing on multiple levels at the same time.

Linking is another key feature of web-based writing structure. Each page of a website, of the Internet as a whole, is connected to multiple other sites and pages. The trails a reader could follow are unlimited. Linking means that

Very basically, structure can influence the way a text is read. Graphic novels are a good example. When a page has multiple elements, the reader has to decide what is most important and in what order the contents should be read. Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon created an adaptation of the Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States from September 11, 2001, using graphics to relay the information in the report. The 9/11 Report conveys the same basic information, but its structure is radically different.

On a page like the one to the right, the reader must rank the story elements and, on a simple basis, must visually process a wide range of information. Even if the material stays on planar surfaces and is divided into sections (typical of a comic book layout), the reader has to choose the order and importance of the elements. Books based on comic strips do the same thing, but when the material is serious, as in Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers, the context changes.

A few books incorporate graphic elements without being completely graphic novels. Early examples include using the placement of text on a page to create an image or effect. This technique traces back to the shape or concrete poem form used by George Herbert in "The Altar." Madeleine L'Engle used this technique in her science fiction trilogy beginning with A Wrinkle in Time. Later books, like Jonathan Safron Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, have used this technique to represent the world as seen by a child.

Some books use the structure of some other type of book to tell a story. The Red Shoes and Other Tattered Tales by Karen Elizabeth Gordon uses the form of a dictionary or encyclopedia to relate her intertwined stories. If readers follow the chain of references in the book, they get a very different picture than if they read the book in linear fashion.

Some books subvert other structures in order to create an impression, an impact, or a plot twist. For example, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World takes the form of a philosophy course within a novel structure. Then, utilizing the philosophical perspectives it discusses, a plot twist translates the form into a book within a book. By the end of the novel, the characters in both worlds have been resolved into a single, interactive world. The same device is used to great effect in films, from The Truman Show to Stranger Than Fiction. Besides questioning the audience's perception of reality, this technique incorporates structure into plot.

The essential difference between traditional print texts and web texts is circularity versus linearity. Because they are printed and bound in a particular order, print texts are generally linear. Web texts are free to progress in any desired order because they exist as a series of links with multiple possible orders.

This format has consequences for the way writers construct an argument. They cannot rely on the reader to formulate the same order of events that they have chosen. Imagine that each one of these words was one step of a rhetorical argument.

socks

the

green

run

under

knee

your

These words could be formulated into more than one sentence. Depending on the reader's perspective, the sentence could tell someone to "run the green socks under your knee," "knee your green socks under the run," or that "your green knee socks run under the knee." The writer would need to do one of several things to make sure his or her desired argument was received. The writer could insert other signifiers to demonstrate the relationship between the words (steps), or he or she could use words (steps) that were internally complete, rather than giving the reader small, incomplete pieces of one thought.

The same concept applies to web-based writing. The structure of web writing must be designed around the fact that the reader has a large amount of control over the structure of the argument. Everything must be internally complete, or the author must create an argument that can be reached in multiple ways. As a whole, the writing must be broken into small enough pieces that it can be processed quickly and easily.

Some print texts have been able to incorporate this web-based structure, like Gordon's The Red Shoes and Jacobson and Colon's The 9/11 Report. In comparison with traditional print texts, however, these novels can seem chaotic and awkward. The smooth continuity of traditional print texts is very difficult to recreate in a web-based medium.