Writing and Digital Media

Computers, and the electronic writing they have enabled, significantly alter traditional conceptions of writing. The effects of electronic writing on traditional text call for a reexamination of the prevailing print metaphor for online writing.

The New Writing Environment, 1996

Academics and teachers of writing are engaged in a passionate debate about the benefits of using software for writing. Does the computer inhibit creativity? Should writers use an outliner to plan their texts? Does the sight of neat laser-printed text discourage revision? Writers at work did not wait to discover the answers. They just started using computers. In her survey of 1279 professional authors, Jane Dorner (1992) found that 74% of authors already used a computer and that a further 11 % were considering buying one. The authors, in general, believe that word processing makes writing more of a pleasure, saves time, and increases their output. Recently, the computer screen has begun to absorb into a single medium the entire writing process, including gathering ideas, collecting source material, planning an outline, drafting, merging texts from different authors, reviewing drafts, revising, formatting, and disseminating the finished work. Word processors have grown into document processors. Features such as outliners, multiple windows and annotation notes are intended to support the process of planning, drafting and reviewing the text. Spelling and grammar checkers, formatting and graphic facilities, are designed to assist editing in its final form. As document processors become integrated with other electronic resources such as electronic mail (e-mail), on-line bibliographies, picture libraries, and the entire global Internet, so they are turning into complete writing environments. One can imagine a manager developing a report in cooperation with a colleague in another part of a multinational company. The manager types an outline or draft on a word processor and then sends it by fax or e-mail for the colleague to annotate or revise. The colleague incorporates data from a spreadsheet and adds an illustration from an on-line picture library. They then send a draft on disk or by email to be formatted by a secretary and incorporated into a larger document. This is far removed from the traditional office environment of copy typists and post rooms. Writing groups within multinational companies may consist of people who rarely meet face-to-face and who come from widely differing cultures, yet they are expected to collaborate closely, and to tight schedules. The nucleus of this new, high-speed workplace writing is the computer. It is easy to be complacent about the computer as a tool for writers, to believe that software is already pretty good, and to hope that innovation and market forces will combine to refine it still further. This book argues the converse: that existing software for writing offers limited support and is often ill-conceived. New developments could lead to writing environments that are even less usable than at present.

British Journal of Educational Technology, 2001

This paper contributes to the discussion about the effects of new technology on writing by assessing whether or not people's writing styles and ways of thinking change when new technologies are introduced. The writing styles of the three authors, prolific writers in their own fields, were assessed by comparing materials written by each author over a thirty-year period. During this time there were, for each author, great changes in the ways that they used new technology to help them to write. Nonetheless, the results indicated that, although the writing styles of each author differed from each other, their individual styles were remarkably consistent over time. These results thus suggest that although the new technologies may change the ways that individual writers work, they do not alter the styles of their resulting products.

College Composition and Communication, 1990

This book examines the ways that writing is taught in this age of technology. The book begins with writing about "tools" (technical writing), considers writing itself as a tool, and concludes with tools that aid writing. The aim is to study the interpenetration of writing and technology in order to determine how technology has affected writing. The book is allied with a tradition of opposition to technology and to the main thrust of composition research over the last 10 years. Writing, it is concluded, is not reducible to technology because it is an activity rooted in meaning and human relations. Chapter topics cover: (1) the technology of writing; (2) common sense in communications; (3) technical writing; (4) information transfer; (5) objectivity of technical writing; (6) audience awareness; (7) use and purpose of outlines; (8) paragraph structure; and (9) computers and the techniques of writing. A summary chart of the discussion, notes, and reference list are appended.

Writing is as a channel through which intimate thoughts come to life. As writer Ernest Hemingway once cited “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed,” the writing process is one scrupulous situation aiming at inspiring imminent readers to actively collaborate on, contribute to and judiciously evaluate a written text, be it written traditionally with pen and paper or digitally on a word processor. The purpose of this assignment is to demarcate the process of instigating writing theory to a class of Secondary Education while focusing on ‘process writing’ and ‘word processing’.

Theory Into Practice, 2021

Drawing from data generated in a third-grade classroom in the months following the 2016 US presidential election, this article zooms in on self-produced videos a child made of her writing process. Organized around 3 "takes" of the child's writing, the author provides readers a glimpse into (1) the child's composing in the videos, (2) a narrative retelling of the author's viewing of the video series, and (3) a list of insights for educational researchers and practitioners to "take" away from the child's writing. In closing, the author extends an invitation for readers to consider, how if at all, the child's texts might be considered (digital) writing.

Handbook of Writing and Text Production, 2014

In this chapter, we systematize and discuss research on writing and text production as a highly interrelated mode of language use. We start from two examples of professional writing that complement each other: one is about writing in financial communication, the other about not writing in public discourse (Part 1). These examples help us illustrate the transition from a detached to an integrative view of writing in text production research (2). We then develop a framework for the integrative analysis of writing as a key mode of language use (3). Within this framework, challenges for and controversial issues of contemporary writing research are identified (4). This allows us to outline what such research can contribute to and benefit from applied linguistics (5) and to sketch a related research roadmap (6). In the reference section, we focus on work explaining the interplay of writing and other modes of language use as mental and societal processes (7).

This chapter illustrates the trends toward global writing research across languages, integration of social with cognitive writing research, and increasing emphasis on adult writing research related to the workplace and professional development. In the fi rst part of the chapter Roger Graves gives an overview of the cognitive approaches to writing studies in English Canada since the 1980s. Although writing studies in English Canada began with a focus on cognitive studies of writing processes, more recent work has focused on the social more than the cognitive part of social cognition. Most of the research done centers on professional writing by researchers in technical and professional writing. This work has become increasingly linked with genre study approaches that link social cognition, genre, and rhetorical studies in a multimodal research approach. In the second part of the chapter Céline Beaudet outlines 20 years of effort in French-speaking Quebec universities to move from a normative and prescriptive approach of writing to a comprehensive view of both writing products and the writing process. Research in Quebec draws from the French and English traditions of linguistic discourse analysis, cognitive research on written composition, and rhetoric studies. Thus writing studies incorporate a special twist different from that in Englishspeaking Canada. In the third part of the chapter Bertrand Labasse refl ects on the results of 30 years of international research on the psychology of writing and its impact on professional writers and describes a four-axis pedagogical intervention based on his experience teaching advanced journalism and scientifi c popularization. Together, these three sections give a deep and broad picture of cognitive studies of writing in Canada.

Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 1999