Last updated: December 9, 2016
From chapter 1 of the Writing and Editing book, I learned that simple is better. Using jargon would only serve to make your point harder to understand. In fact, if you can cut out a word or phrase and have it still make sense and get to the point, then do so. All first drafts, no matter how skilled the writer, are essentially crap. The point important part of writing is not to look fancy but rather get straight to the point. Also:
From reading chapter 1 of the Writer/Designer book, most, if not all, media and texts are multimodal. Academic papers have texts and pictures of graphs. News TV have audio, pictures, motions/gestures. There are several different modes:
Through reading chapter 2 of the Writing and Editing book, the roles and responsibilities of the writer are more clearly defined, so now I know what I should strive to do when writing. When communicating, I should seek to convey a message that grabs the reader's attention by being provocative, clever, witty, and amusing as well as profound. To organize information, show what's important first. In addition there's also a three-second rule as people demand more: faster and more engaging. Therefore webpages have 3 second to download, present, and engage the viewer. Chapter 2 of the Arola/Ball book had pointed out the one mistake that I consistently made, in a misguided to attempt to lend more credibility to my work, and that is to cram too much information into too little space. This means that just because there's blank space doesn't mean that it's a waste. In fact, I should hold the context and the audience into account and group similar content together, topic by topic. However, I have to balance between creating contrast while still maintaining a flowing, cohesive unit. Chapter 3 of the Writing and Editing book shows me that I still have to have an attention to detail as it is more important than ever to scrutinize and edit media, especially digital media, even though there's a need for digital media to be be urgent, published as quick as possible. This reminds me of online news outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, or Atlanta Journal-Constitution as even after the article is published to the web. The article still has to be read, reread, and fact-checked as shown with the corrections listed at the bottom, describing the mistake and how it was fixed. Chapter 3 of the Arola/Ball book-Choosing a Genre and Pitching Your Project
Chapter 4 of the Writing and Editing book It is a very well-known fact that people do not like to read everything. One early study by Jacob Nielsen shows that more than 75% of web users merely scan the pages, looking for whatever they seek. Only 16% reported reading word for word. Therefore, to accomodate for their scanning, there should be:
Rules for Headlines
Chapter 4 of the Arola/Ball book-Working With Multimodal Sources When reading the chapter, some of what was pointed out seemed very obvious. One instance of this is the caption "Credible Sources Make You Credible." However, even after knowing this, I still often use sources that are not very credible such as articles on blogs because the information is much more simplified and easily understandable. Furthermore, there might have not been many peer-reviewed journals and other credible sources to look at, especially if the topic is new and only recently beginning to be addressed. Working with multimodal sources often requires different strategies than what you're familiar with for traditional paper essays. Finding Credible Sources
Also, since digital media gets updated frequently, it's important that you save a copy of any asset you'd want to use when you first find it. After all, things don't stay on the Web forever. A whole 60-page report may vanish in one night. I've had the misfortune of experiencing this quite recently as the 2015 Expanding Access and Opportunity report, which I've took pictures and information from for my presentation, simply vanished in one night, causing me to go through the trouble of looking at the cached version on Google, which is simply an all text version of what I had seen days prior. Fortunately, I managed to copy the graph before the report got taken down. Chapter 5 of the Writing and Editing book-Style and Voice While I hardly thought of this before reading the chapter, choosing different fonts can convey different voices. This makes a lot of sense if I think about it as Times New Roman conveys a sense of professionalism, whereas a script with too much elaborate cursive seems too fancy and girly. Furthermore, role-playing can give you a sense of how to convey something. Here are some examples from the book: Professional voice:
There are many softwares and programs available to create assets for ypour multimodal project. The ones that I've heard of are underlined: Micro- and Multimedia Blogs
There are two different strategies, depending on what you project is like:
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Today, I just created my home page. Some of the topics I am considering are Living as a Vietnamese Catholic in Atlanta, Vietnam War in Multiple Perspectives, and First Generation Students at Emory. Although it somewhat seems interesting to interview people who lived during the Vietnam War era, whether it'd be former soldiers of both sides or citizens from both countries at the time, it would be to extensive and time-consuming. As for Living as a Vietnamese Catholic in Atlanta, although it is a breath of fresh air to get a perspective that is rarely heard of, I do not feel a very strong connection to that community, so it would be much more difficult to interview people from that community.
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November 2016
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