The Interactivity of Digital Text

What do I mean by interactivity?

J. D. Applen writes in his book Writing for the Web: Composing, Coding, and Constructing Web Sites that traditional literary mediums, like printed books, are unchangeable in structure, format, font, font size, color, etc. that how a reader thinks about that text is limited. They don’t think about how all those previously mentioned elements come into play as easily. However, when text is presented through digital media that is more likely to change.

Readers are more likely to consider many more aspects of the text than just what the words mean. They’ll take into account more visual aspects of the text, even if the text doesn’t include imagery. Such as the previously mentioned font and size.

This attention to these aspects, helps readers connect and further decode the text that they are reading. Even though text tends to be minimal in the visuals department, any sort of variation in what little visual stimuli it presents is bound to grab the attention of any reader.

Digital media tends to be great at utilizing visuals to promote interaction with the information it presents. Which is why digital text tends to have a more interactive element to it.

An example of digital text interactivity:

When you read an article online, such as this one, you will likely come across a link embedded in some text. If that text is referencing another page that you’re unfamiliar with, just click that text. Then– boom! In an instant you also have a hold of that reference.

While printed text has footnotes and a works cited/references page the ability to get a handle of that further information is not as speedy or convenient as that of an embedded link.