Electronic discourse ... is what you will be studying and practicing here. So from time to time remind yourself: Electronic discourse is not Oral discourse and is not Printed discourse. It is (becoming) something else. Your success as a communicator on the WWW will in great part, therefore, be based on your understanding the differences among these three technologies and media.

     And yet, being able to understand and to practice the differences among Oral, Printed, and Electronic discourses is not--nor will it ever be--enough to know; for Electronic discourse often incorporates Oral and Printed discourses. Electronic discourse is an olio of technologies and media including words, speech and music, and graphics and video. It's a lot like operas, classical or rock, with all of the elements of words, speech, music, graphics, props, etc. It will become more and more like MTV, but interactive. In learning to write for the WWW, you will have to learn eventually how to mix all three forms of discourse in terms of multimedia, though we will concentrate more so on words and graphics in what is called hypertext (a format, literally, of extended-words that may or may not be always logically, but figuratively, connected). You, therefore, will be doing more than is suggested in the foregoing by the word writing; we might better characterize, instead, what you will be learning and doing as COMPOSING. Here is what the American Heritage Dictionary variously has to say about the word composing:

--v. tr. 1. To make up the constituent parts of; constitute or form.... 2. To make or create by putting together parts or elements. 3. To create or produce (a literary or musical piece). 4. To make (one's mind or body) calm or tranquil; quiet: compose yourself and deal with the problems. 5. To settle or adjust; reconcile: composed their differences. 6. To arrange aesthetically or artistically. 7. Printing. To arrange or set (type or matter to be printed). --intr. 1. To create literary or musical pieces. 2. Printing. To set type.

You will be shown how to perform everyone of these tasks. (For example, you will be setting type when you put in hypertext markup language [HTML] for the fonts and their sizes and colors.) And you will be invited to improve on these tasks.

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