By Launie Gratto, April 1, 2001

We all know how distracting the computer screen can be. It has all those interesting buttons and menus that promise the ability to leap ahead in the writing process. We can even print what little we may have written and see it actually "published"!

Yes, the word processor appearance is highly visually engaging. The text looks more finished, more appealing than most handwriting. Because even a first draft looks close to publishable copy, we are easily distracted from the thought processes of encoding the rest of our ideas into language (getting it down on paper). Why we can even create a graphic element if we want to be diverted from our writing task!

The common experience of most "computer" writers is that they move quickly into a "finished" copy mode, engaging in editing and proofreading, before even finishing a full draft or revising.

The result, according to many researchers, is that much word processor produced text has qualities of hasty production, despite the dramatic ease of making all the necessary revision.

Clearly, we see the evidence of this with the writing on the Web. (This article may be an example.) We have now reached the point where the screen shot is the published copy.

So much for the process of writing I was taught in school: a tidy, sequential cycle of (1.) outline, (2.) draft, (3.) revise, (4.) proofread. Is this so bad? Was it ever really less messy, for most writers? When is it not important to produce quality final copy? What really has changed?

A very obvious change in writing style, driven by computer writing, is the trend toward what I call a modular structure, which includes a skeletal structure (much like an overlaid outline).

The computer screen does not facilitate reading a lengthy linear form (such as an essay format). Even scrolling is not a good work-around; we cannot easily cast our eyes back over the "page" to try to understand the flow, the coherence of the document. The reader and the writer are focused on what is on the screen, almost to the exclusion of the rest of an "article".

I like to think that writing style and writing processes are simply evolving to suit this relatively new medium. We may yet have a lot to learn to adjust to the new medium, and maybe the medium will change too quickly for us to pin down an effective style/process. I am thinking of (for example) the e-newspapers under development: thin, foldable sheets of "LCD-like plastic", instead of small, single page LCD screens (current e-books). How will we write for those?

We should note that modular writing has long been in existence in reference manuals such as dictionaries and encyclopedias: bites of information. Then we saw it creeping into technical manuals, then reports, proposals, and so on. Business writing has changed in the last 30 years ("coincident" with the introduction and increasing use of modern computers/word processing packages). Look at the use of numerical levels of headings (1.0, 1.1, 1.1.1, 2.0, etc.). I remember using IBM's DCF system in 1982; it generated these headings automatically. Modular style seems very appropriate for business writing.

Linear writing is great for narration, to tell a story. The ideas to be conveyed in a business context are inter-related, but not necessarily in a sequential fashion. So we come to hypertext, many-way links of information. Is hypertext closer to conversation than linear writing is? Do our brains work like hypertext?

Hypertext, modular writing, new processes of writing, what do they support? Scanning and skimming a skeletal structure is definitely easier. Modules of information are linked by hypertext into hierarchies of information. These are a few of the "upsides", and they are valuable.

The "downside" is weakened overall coherence (both transitions between ideas, and the order of ideas), and a lack of unity. The modern, computer writer needs to fight the tendency to focus too narrowly, must often review the macroscopic picture, must not forget to explain the nature of links--why the ideas are connected This responsibility, I believe, is the greatest, for readers tend to believe the inherent "right" for a link to exist. This is scary, because an argument is the linking of ideas and the explanation of those links. Hmm, something to think further about.