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[[Hypertext in Documents]]
Elaina Sundwall
</div>An author may create a good document by utilizing all the [[modalities|multimodality]] that will best serve the assertion made by the document. The author seeks to create the most [[readable]] document they can, using [[tabular]] and [[textual]] elements, to best express the meaning of their document. [[Hypertext]] is the most [[effective]] way to convey meaning, because it allows the author to direct how their document should be read and allows readers the freedom to traverse the document in the best way for them to [[comprehend]] it.
[[Conclusion]]Vandendorpe explains that in a tabular text “readers can visually access data in the order they choose, identifying sections of interest beforehand”.(Vandendorpe 22) Tabular aspects of a text may be functional or visual. Examples of functional tabularity include indexes, bibliographies, tables of contents, and very basic tabular elements, like pagination and chapter headings. Functional tabularity refers the reader to other information and makes up the structure of the document. Visual tabularity describes elements that give more information in the same location, such as glosses and illustrations. (Vandendorpe 38)
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<img src="https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3023/2552078350_07275c26b3.jpg" alt="An image of hypertext pagination on a popular search engine.">
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An image of hypertext pagination on a popular search engine.
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To best argue in favor of their assertion, the foundation of the document, the author must make it as easy as possible for the reader to comprehend the text. Comprehension is built when old information is combined with new information to discover meaning.(Vandendorpe 41)
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</div>Much of what makes a document readable are its textual elements. Textual elements of documents that are standardized for readability include the size of letters, spacing, justification, spelling, and style conventions, such as capital letters, indents, abbreviations and quotation marks. These textual elements are also used to denote tabular elements of the text, such as increased font size of section headings, or paragraph indentations. When textual elements are displayed in nonstandard ways, it changes the meaning of the text, either in an informative way, or an artistic way. A word may be displayed in blue to represent a link, or it may be blue to represent sadness.
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<img src="https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/disp/f880e114197185.5627f378e58bc.jpg" alt="An image of a swiss design brochure, illustrating effective font choice.">
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An image of a swiss design brochure, showing strong font choice.
[[Thesis|document]] Hypertextuality is described by Vandendorpe as “A way of making direct connections among various pieces of information, textual or nontextual … by means of embedded links.”(70) Riccardo explains that hypertextual documents are “composed of several information units (nodes) interconnected by links that users can freely and indefinitely cover by following a plurality of possible different paths”(1) Both Vandendorpe and Riccardo explain that hypertext is not limited to the digital world, and tabular elements in print media are hypertextual, such as indexes and encyclopedias. Hypertext in print media are any elements that guide the reader directly to a related piece of text, such as synonyms in dictionaries or pages that relate to the same subject, such as in an index. Hypertextuality refers to direct, and in the case of digital media, immediate tabularity. Each chunk of information in a hypertext document is called a node. The more nodes in a document, the more granular it is. Riccardo breaks down hypertext as having four qualities, [[granularity]], [[interactivity]], [[integrability]], and multimediality or [[multimodality]].
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<img src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5189/5615480514_3c7f02390b.jpg" alt="An image of nodes">
</div>Some elements of readability have to do with content, such as referring to time in the third person, avoiding referencing the writer or addressing the reader, and staying on theme.(Vandendorpe 16-20) But all of the readability standards concerning content may be abandoned or deliberately broken to create an author’s style. An author may choose to reference themselves, or the reader, or refer to time in the present tense, but breaking the content rules of readability pulls the reader out of the text, disturbing their efforts to find the meaning of the text, just as straying from the theme of the document would. Hypertext offers a [[solution]] to this.Problems of readability concerning content can be solved with hypertext. Rather than pulling the reader out of the text and muddling their efforts to build comprehension, a hyperlink may be used. The author can link out to a separate space where the author may refer to themselves or the reader, or refer to time in a different manner, without disturbing the flow of the main body of text. Perhaps this is most important when straying from theme, allowing the author to fully follow tangent thoughts or sidebars without worrying about how the thought must tie back into the rest of the text. An off-topic thought may be appraised completely separately from the body of the work, or ignored entirely by the reader.
[[Thesis|document]]Granularity refers to how well a document can be broken down into comprehensible stand alone pieces. (Riccardo 2.1) For example, this document is made up of pieces of text that do not follow a prescribed order, and will make sense in no matter what order read. The granularity of a hypertext document refers to how well parts of the work can be comprehended independently. Breaking up information into more digestible pieces improves documents and makes it easier for readers to comprehend the material. The act of separating and reorganizing a document into hypertext can help the author edit the content of the document, as well as add new meaning to it, by making new connections. Readers can build comprehension in the order they choose, leading to better understanding of the text.
[[Thesis|document]] Riccardo uses interactivity to describe to what extent a reader may add hypertext links within the work. (2.1) While viewed in the browser, this work is not interactive. But one of the affordances of twine, the software used to hyperlink this document, is that anyone may download this document and edit it themselves using twine. If the reader has twine, this document is completely interactive. Interactivity in this sense is equally important for editing linear documents, such as through google documents or any other online word processor that can be edited and viewed by multiple people. Hypertext allows authors to edit shared hypertext in a more intuitive way, by seeing where thoughts connect and end in a more concrete way than through text alone. Group editing text restricts authors to understanding other authors writing in a linear way, rather than organized more like thoughts, which can be achieved through hypertext.
[[Thesis|document]] Integrability refers to whether the document has a definite end or beginning.(Riccardo 2.1) All the branches of this document lead back to the thesis statement, so there is no definite end, so it has some integrability. It does not link out to other documents, meaning it has less integrability than a hypertext work like Wikipedia, which has almost infinitely greater integrability than this document. An author may improve their document by linking it back into itself to strengthen their argument, and provide the reader with more connections to build comprehension. A document can be improved with more hyperlinks to outside sources, to support an authors argument. Or an author can decide that they would like a definite beginning and end of their document, and use hypertext to enforce this.
[[Thesis|document]] Finally, multimediality or multimodality refers to how much the document includes different mediums, such as audio, images, and video.(Riccardo 2.1) Hypertext allows authors to embed or link to media that they could not in print, allowing authors to best represent the information they are sharing. Here, a video under a creative commons license explains hypermedia, media objects linked together like hypertext, but where text is not the main medium. . Other media enriches text, creates interest, and deepens understanding. Hypertext allows the author to represent their text in the most effective way by enhancing their text with media.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/__9zwbFdsiM" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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“Documents act as agents in the sense that their existence and features do have material consequences in enabling (affording) outcomes and further actions.”(Buckland 5.4) The content of a document determines how tabular the document should be.
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“An object is considered to be a [[document]] when there is an assertion or a perception of evidence for some belief.”(Buckland 3)
</div>Documents can be made more readable and comprehendible through [[hypertext.|Hypertext]] By making a document more [[granular|granularity]] to be displayed using hypertext, an author must separate their ideas in to more comprehensible pieces, improving the organization of the document, and inspiring the author to edit the document to make it more readable. [[Interactivity|interactivity]] in the sense of multiple authors being able to edit one hypertext document allows authors to group edit text in a more intuitive way than a block of text. Assessing a documents [[integrability]] forces the author to make the nodes of their work as cohesive, circular, or linear as will best serve their assertion, strengthening the quality of their document. Finally, [[multimodality]] allow the author to select the best mediums for representing their work. Hypertext allows authors to create the most effective document to support their assertion.
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