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The Call to Write's focus on public texts, which exist in the social world, points to our need to develop a rhetoric for understanding visual and multimedia material. Trimbur notes that "visual communication is playing an increasingly important role in everyday life," and the heightened presence of the visual both demands better articulated "readings" of the visual and more astute assessments of how to "write" the visual. The study and practice of document design is one obvious indication of how attention to the visual aspects of texts has become an important aspect of writing itself. The Internet, and the texts that exist there, also presses us to new awareness of the profound interrelation of sight and reading. In this context, words themselves are images, susceptible to practically endless reconfigurations that create meaning. Thus understanding the visual, and being able to compose the visual, has become another crucial literacy. This website focuses on visual and multimedia rhetoric as it pertains to online electronic texts. Writing teachers will find many practical explorations to pursue along with their students, which will open questions concerning how readers receive and evaluate visual messages, what choices writers in online environments have about the use of space, how visual elements embody writers’ purposes, and how visual elements communicate in online texts. Sample assignments and discussion topicsFor some sample assignments and practical ways to enhance discussion, click on the topics below: |