‘WE’blog

So, Herman has set up this blog for us to discuss all manner of things, and we are hoping/expecting our readers – presumably our students – to comment.

When I saw the page layout, I noticed that the hyperlink for adding a comment was called ‘no comments’, which of course means ‘zero comments’, but could be misunderstood to mean ‘no comments, please!’, which is the opposite of the message we want to send.

Here is a perfect opportunity to introduce ‘digital rhetoric’, a fascinating ‘new’ discipline whose object of study is the language of the internet and other digital/non-linear media. In particular, the way that the technicalities of digital media affect the human-level communications that go on there.

For example, when presented with the dialog box “Are you sure you want to cancel?” with the buttons “OK” and “Cancel”, what kind of choice is being offered? Such dialog boxes have been spotted ‘in the wild’. An important part of interactive design is making sure that the text (understood most broadly) you present to your user is unambiguous and clear.

But digital rhetoric may also be applied to other aspects of interactive design. For example, in Microsoft Word, when you choose ‘Save As…’ and choose any format other than .DOC, the program presents you with a slightly scary, vaguely stated warning that ’some of your information may be lost’ if you save in another format. Those of us with some experience know to disregard this warning (especially if we have already saved the document as .DOC), but it is clearly designed to ‘give people the creeps’ and, ultimately, cause them to ‘lock-in’ all of their word-processing documents in the closed, proprietary Microsoft Word format. I would argue that this particular ‘Save As…’ warning dialog box has been significant in the rise and eventual dominance of Microsoft Word and the .DOC format.

Now I notice that in the latest version of Microsoft Office, the ‘Save As…’ functionality is hidden away altogether. You have to mess around with your preferences or options, and click the inconspicuous ‘All’ tab to even get ‘Save As…’ to appear in your File menu (or whatever it’s now called). Those guys from Redmond never miss a trick, no wonder they make so much money.

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I asked Herman about this ‘no comments’ thing yesterday, and he said it’s probably the wordpress default, and promised to look into it. Interestingly, he expressed some reluctance to ‘dig too deep’ into the standard setup, for fear of opening up security holes, which is quite understandable I think.

The key points here are:

• The default template may include ‘bad copy’ (i.e. fudged formulation and screwy rhetoric)
• Anxiety about maintaining the stability or security of a system can even lead to us tolerating (or being expected to tolerate) screwy rhetoric because the alternative is not obvious.
• Consider whether your text can be interpreted in other ways than what you intend
• Equip yourself with a critical understanding of warning messages, especially those from large software companies

Now I see that Herman has changed ‘no comments’ to ‘comments are welcome’, which is much better, but I thought I would make this post here anyway, to bring Digital Rhetoric to your attention. I think it’s one of the most interesting areas of digital communication. What do you think?