The Description Value
The description value provides a short summary of the page that can be added to search engine indexes, replacing the summary that the search engine itself would otherwise generate (frequently based on the first sentence of the page). The description should include the keywords listed in the keywords value.
<meta name="description" content="HTML tags can be used as integral parts of a writing class; meta tags provide several opportunities for classroom discussion and exercises.">
Why Should You Teach It?
As a writing exercise, the description value provides what writing abstracts and summaries of papers provided in the past: it allows students to reflect upon what they have said on a web page and whether what they have said matches what they wanted to say. It also provides a means to check the page focus: pages that cannot be summarized may have problems in organization or thesis.
Students can write the description before writing the page itself as an idea-generating technique, and then revise the description after the page is completed. Or they can write the description after the page is completed, reflecting on and revising the content as the description is composed. Students can work together to have others review their descriptions, judging whether a particular description is accurate and adequately describes the page's content. Most of all, the description provides a final check for the site as a whole: students can consider the basic question, "Is this really the way you'd like your readers to see your site described in Google?"
Citation Format:
Batschelet, Margaret. "Learning To Love the Code: HTML As a Tool in the Writing Classroom." The Writing Instructor. 2004. http://www.writinginstructor.org/files/batschelet/
(Date Accessed).
Review Process: Margaret Batschelet's
hypertext was accepted for publication following blind, peer review.