Students entering the workplace of the twenty-first century face the challenge of communicating through electronic media. Electronic media is a new rhetorical environment, similar in some ways, but significantly different from print media in others. This course will explore the unique constraints of writing on the World Wide Web. Our emphasis will be on discovering new graphic and rhetorical structures for thinking and writing which are best suited for the nonlinear environment of the web. This course will apply techniques of professional writing for real world audiences, both community-based and commercial. My instruction will assume most of the knowledge of writing and design that you have learned in WRT 200 and WRT 251.
This course is primarily a writing course. As such we are concerned with traditional rhetorical matters of content, audience, and persuasion. And as in most writing courses, we are also are concerned with matters of document design, language, correctness, and style. Yet writing to the web throws these concerns into a new and challenging context. The visual and hypertextual opportunities of the web require that we rethink many traditional notions handed to us from print media. You can’t learn everything you need to know about writing for the web in one semester. If you work hard, however, you will complete the course with a solid conceptual framework and basic knowledge of what it takes to communicate effectively on the web.
If you miss three class periods, you'll not be able to earn better than a C in this course. If you miss 4 classes, you cannot pass this course.