How Many Links?
The ideal behind hypertext is that users will be able to choose their own paths through content, that any connection will be possible. Indeed, Ted Nelson's original plan for the Xanadu project includes the specification that links would be user-determined:
Any user may read, or otherwise employ, any published document on the system, or any private document to which he or she has legitimate access. The user can make any kind of links to any document from his or her own documents, private or not. (2/42)
In the absence of these user-determined links on the web, users can only choose their path if the writer creates the right links, allowing them to access the content that is most useful to them. Yet in creating these links, writers automatically confer their own ideas of order on their content. And, of course, even with the best intentions, writers may order their content in ways that do not reflect the primary interests of their readers. As George Landow points out,
First, no one arrangement of information proves convenient for all who need that information. Second, although both linear and hierarchical arrangements provide information in some sort of order, that order does not always match the needs of individual users of that information. (21)
Hierarchy, grouping topics by subject matter, presents a convenient and familiar form of organizing topics. Yet students should be aware that hierarchy has problems beyond the lack of mapping between writer and reader. Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville suggest one concern: breadth vs. depth within a site.
Breadth refers to the number of options at each level of the hierarchy. Depth refers to the number of levels in the hierarchy. If a hierarchy is too narrow and deep, users have to click through an inordinate number of levels to find what they are looking for. If a hierarchy is too broad and shallow, users are faced with too many options on the main menu and are unpleasantly surprised by the lack of content once they select an option. (38)
If students create too few links, or rely on linear linking alone, they lose the "decentered" nature of hypertext, retaining too much rigid control over the user's experience. If they create too many, they risk interrupting the flow of reading, creating the "little blue scars" (107) that Jeffrey Veen decries in Hot-Wired Style.
Like most discussions of linking, discussing the number of links to provide can become a discussion of control. How much control can writers cede to users? How much control must be retained in order to keep the text itself from collapsing? And these discussions, in turn, can highlight the unique nature of hypertext as a medium, its multiplicity, its lack of central authority, even its visual dimension. HTML does not automatically lead to these topics, but they remain a part of any investigation of HTML processes.
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.