Authoring Programs and Print Metaphors
As Jessica Helfand points out, authoring programs are "essentially rooted in the finite world of printed matter: most are based on editing and publishing models and, not surprisingly, have a page-oriented display system" (36). The goal of most authoring programs is to simplify the process of web page creation, and using print metaphors is one obvious way to accomplish this. Yet the advantage of this approach, its familiarity, is simultaneously its disadvantage: it implies that nothing has changed, that web pages have the same requirements, the same "dimensions" as print pages. In reality, a great deal has changed, from the physical requirements of the page to the stylistic requirements of the web audience.Writers are suddenly confronted with visual considerations, such as line length and color contrast, that were previously the concern of designers and printers alone.Their readers can approach from a variety of paths, acting on a variety of interests, unified only by a general impatience. The possibilities for writers can be simultaneously exhilarating and daunting.
Using authoring programs only serves to delay our students' comprehension of the scope of the change that confronts them. Using the "save as HTML" option in word processing programs such as MS Word carries this error even further. Students are encouraged to take documents created for a print medium (albeit using a computer screen) and to convert them to web pages with the click of a button. In addition to the truly nightmarish code this option involves (Dreamweaver actually includes a utility tool whose sole purpose is to strip out Microsoft code), it also extends the "print fallacy" even further—it conceals the change in medium and prevents students from learning the adaptations that must be made to move effectively from one writing space to another.
In attempting to make the web writing process familiar, authoring programs strip away just what students need most: a sense of the demands the new medium will place upon them.
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.