The digital world has permanently altered written communication. Copying and pasting ease the sharing and transferring of large blocks of text. Independent and joint editing of text is much easier and much less time consuming. Searching for specific parts of a long text is quick and easy. Checking for plagiarism takes only a few seconds. Multimodal compositions can be created by incorporating visual and auditory material into written texts.
Both as a student and in other aspects of your life, you will continue to write information and publish it on the Internet. Zoom and WebEx have a chat feature. Any question or comment entered there is written for the public. The discussion boards and group projects are another form of public writing. Blogs are not a totally bygone form. Fan sites, memorial sites, personal sites and professional sites, show that writing, it is patently absurd to argue that “people don’t write (or read) anymore. Given that few of these media or genres existed a generation ago, it iss difficult to argue that writing teachers shouldn’t try to account for what’s at stake when you write on and for the web.
Like every other kind of written communication, how you write on the web depends on the purpose of the specific situation. If you have an unlimited data plan and maintain at least one profile on a social networking site, you concern yourself with matters of voice, message, audience, tone, attitude, and reception hundreds of times a day. Take a moment to analyze the sophisticated rhetorical strategies you use in your casual communication. How many of those skills can you transfer to your more serious academic and professional endeavors?
Because you are often multitasking while texting or using the web and because of the speed and convenience of electronic communication, this realm is prone to carelessness. In casual situations, rules are minimal and you can use very casual language that includes abbreviations, slang, and shortcuts. Your use of a casual tone depends solely on whether your audience will understand what you are saying. Writing for school or work does not fall into the casual category. In these situations, you cannot use abbreviations, slang, and shortcuts. In fact, you need to use proper punctuation, grammar, and capitalization. You should also use traditional writing rules and a more formal tone when responding to diverse populations and serious situations.
Whether writing in a casual or formal situation, always be aware of the population that has access to your content. Also keep in mind that even if you are writing on a semi private venue like a class-wide course management system or on an invitation-only wiki, your digital text can easily be copied by someone with access and forwarded to someone without access. So don’t write anything that could embarrass or cause problems for you or others.
Due to the non-private nature of the Internet, you should not provide full contact information. Depending on the situation, you might choose to use your full name, or you might choose to use a pseudonym (such as in a response to a blog or to an online article). Never post your social security number online. Never post any identification number in public. This includes your LCC ID, X000002021. .
Using links effectively
Links are placed within digital texts to reroute readers to other locations. They have a wide range of purposes based on where and why they are used. You can use links to organize a page, to save space on a page, to add interest to your text, to incorporate someone else’s ideas into your work, to provide conveniences for your reader, sponsor content, third party content, or to complement text in other creative ways. Most often, links are in blue font that is underlined. You can, however, choose to present links in other ways, such as by using buttons, images, or non-underlined text. Your main consideration when making a style choice for a link is that it be immediately recognizable as a link.
You can typically copy and paste a web address or an e-mail address into your main text to make it a hyperlink automatically. However, there are accessibility concerns as well as visual appeal. You can link to a website using the Insert menu of your word processing program. You can choose to insert a bookmark (e.g., internal links from one section to another section of the same file) instead of a hyperlink. Whether linking to a website, an e-mail address, another part of the same document, or another file entirely, you will be given the option of naming the link so that it appears the way you want it in your main text. Remember that a link to another file will not work for outside readers unless the file to which you are linking is actually on the web.
When you choose to create a link to a website, use your best judgment to determine if the link will remain intact for the duration of your need. In other words, if you are putting a link in a paper to turn in for a class assignment, you need to feel relatively certain that the link will remain active until your paper is graded. On the other hand, if you are inserting a link into a website or a blog you are producing or managing, you will need to be reasonably certain that the link will be live for a longer period. In such situations, you should periodically make sure the link is still active. Dead links frustrate readers, and they reflect badly on your website’s credibility and currency.
“Public and Personal Writing”, chapter 14 from the book Writers’ Handbook (v. 1.0) is licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license.
Adapted by Amy Larson 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
