Price: So You Wannabe a Web Writer or Editor
Where web writers and editors come from:
Price discusses becoming a web writer and editor and the skills that you need to have. The pay is also from $35,000-100,000. To be a web writer there is a wide range of skills that you need to have, and knowledge of the internet and your consumer base is one of the main ingredients to a great website. My FAVORITE website happens to be the National Geographic site. I know that it is maintained by a professional web editing firm, however there are still people who have to decide what is best for the web and what is better to keep for their magazine.
I recently went on a tour of the London Free Press, and got a chance to talk to the sports editor David Langford about how they use the web in their writing. I was told that they use twitter as a place to get stories and post little nibblers of their stories. I was also told that while they do print their articles they often use the web as a place to regurgitate their material, and often write things specifically for the web, just little snippets of their stories. Pretty cool eh!
Basic knowledge of HTML and XML can be important but aren't necessary for writing for the web. I know that this is what Price says however, in this day and age I believe that knowledge of HTML is now essential to the web writer. Like for this course we were going to have to use Dream Weaver but I have never done basic HTML anything. I also talked to the people at ITS at Western and they said that if I don't know anything about HTML that I would totally flop on Dream Weaver because thats what is needed.
Web Editing - The basics:
Word Count = Words that Count! Price says that it is important to be a person who can make the words that count hit the page rather than sending in a whole bunch of words in a story that don't really matter. I am known to have a bit of word vomit as it hits the page and have to constantly go back over my stories to cut them down to size. This is why I don't think I would be a good web editor according to Price.
Editors Tools:
- Word
- Be able to follow a template
- How to create simple web pages
- Be able to take screen shots
- Be able to edit photos
- Be Organized.
Editors must be:
- Organized
- Self-determined
- Flexible
- Ethical
- Persistent
- Sense of Humour
- Humility
Make your text consistent, think on a global scale but relate it locally. Remember there are many different names for being a web editor.
The Debate: Free Lance Gigs vs. a Staff Job:
On Staff: there are many benefits to working on staff...
- Health benefits
- Workman's Comp
- Pay you can count on
- Office relationships (friends!!)
- Good computer
- Lots of schmooze time
- Compensation package if laid off
- Job title for your resume
Boo working on staff...
- Work long hours
- CUBICAL
- Sharing a printer
- Lunch rooms
- Meetings
- You don't have privacy
- Horrible office coffee
- Less freedom
YAY FREELANCE
- Spending all day in your housecoat
- You can take as long as you need to wake up
- You can write for as many people at a time as you want
- If you want to stop writing you can
Freelance = bad
- No paid sick leave
- Work isn't constant
- No health benefits
- No options
- Not a constant cash flow
- Miss out on breaking news
- No close office friends
Freelance Markets for Web Writers and Editors:
Every writing class that I've been in has pitched for the students to write freelance. There is nothing different from Price. There are so many markets for free lance writers out there. Almost every magazine allows for free lance, and are looking for ideas and stories. And for us Western Students, writing for he Gazette is the perfect place to start writing to get clips. Clips will help a person get hired for a writing job, everyone will always ask for clippings of your work, and its great to offer more than just something you've handed in to class.
My Personal Site: BAKING
My site is informative.
There are a lot of people who turn to the internet to learn new recipes, and tricks that will help them if they aren't a real baker. It has always been said that baking is a science. I am going to have several pages on my site:
1. Welcome (home)
2. Tools (pots, bowls, pans, utensils)
3. My recipes
4. Terms of interest
5. Links to other pages that may be of interest (products, other baking sites, bakeware)
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Wikis Create Online Communities
FINAL EDITED
The Internet has progressed and has been adapted to conform to the needs of the user. Web 2.0 and user generated content is where the Internet is currently operating. There are still domains that are dominated by its creator and doesn’t allow for outside content. However wikis allow for collaboration on the web. A wiki is a website that allows for user generated content. They also allow for communal and collaborative writing on the web, where a user can contribute whatever information they want. A wiki also lets you incorporate hypertext linking various websites to the central wiki site, which allows for the expansion of a central idea. Although some wikis like Wikipedia are open forums on the web, others are private. The private wikis are most commonly provided by corporations and can only be edited and updated by that specific enterprise. Various wiki sites allow for an increase in user generated content and connectivity between users on the Internet. In today’s western culture wikis have become an essential part of everyday life on the Internet. Wikis have become credible online encyclopedias that have current and credible information, and create a larger online information-sharing centre.
Wikipedia the worlds leading wiki site, the tag line The Free Encyclopedia. “In this century American encyclopedia have cut out scholarly subjects in favour of articles of popular interest in order to maintain the largest possible readership” (Bolter, 90). The Wikipedia site has millions of topics to pick from, currently there is 3 588 000 wiki sites within the main site of Wikipedia. There are also more than 14 million contributors with named accounts who collaborate on Wikipedia, the Internets largest wiki. One of the sites within Wikipedia for example, is the topic of writing. From this wiki site someone would be able to discover the definition, history, and other various information regarding the topic. There are also links on the page that will take a person from writing to other related topics. There are twenty-four references for the writing page alone, this does not count how many people actually contribute to the site however.
The Internet is littered with various wikis, from personal wiki space to a search engine that searches specific wikis from Wikipedia to personal and encyclopedia wikis. Creating your own wiki can allow you to develop a space that is of personal interest to the creator. From there you can collaborate with other wikis, and not just wikis there is also the opportunity to link to other information on the Internet that is pertinent to what you are discussing.
User generated interconnectivity on the Internet through wikis is really an art form of its own. “The computer could textualize all the arts: that is, it could incorporate sound and images into hypertext as easily as words” (Bolter, 184). Which, is what wiki’s have the ability to do, they have the ability to tie various medias together. Hypertext and links link text, visuals, and sounds together to elaborate a specific point, argument, or topic together.
The way in which a wiki works is that all wikis have an edit button that allows the user to edit the page on the wiki site. Once the user clicks edit the page becomes like a word document, this is where the user can edit the text. Once finished editing the text the user clicks save and the document turns back into a web page. From here the user can also edit to attach links within the wiki page. The links connect different sites and wiki sites together. Wiki in plain English describes how a wiki works by editing, saving, and having several people do the editing and saving to create a completed document. Because of e-mail and other social medias that have been relied on to complete a task, wikis have been proven to be a better solution.
It seems as though the Internet is becoming one mass space for information. The ‘information highway’ as it has been referred to. However, it is no longer just straight paths through the Internet to straightforward information. There are now links to pages, and pages linked to photos and videos, and back to text. There is no longer straightforward paths with no links to other pages. The information runs through different pathways that allow the read/user to navigate through a web of information. The links have the ability to lead the reader to sites that are not pertinent to their search.
A book titles Hot Text by Jonathan Price and Lisa Price is a book on writing for the online reader. They decipher the reader and the writer for the online world. What they say in chapter 7 of their book entitled Cook Up Hot Links tells the writer to create links within their writing, but only links that will emphasize a specific point that they are trying to elaborate. It is difficult to decipher the useful links form the ones that will in no way enhance the understanding of the topic that is being presented. The links do increase the connectivity through the Internet from site to site, but if the link does not enhance the point that it is not worth it to put a link it. This is where it is hard to navigate through some wikis. Wikipedia for example will highlight words as links to take the reader from one site within the Wikipedia domain to another. The only disadvantage of this is that it may be a single word and not the entire idea that is being linked to another site.
One of the largest issues with wikis is making sure that the user-generated content is in fact the most correct and the most current. Wikipedia will argue however that their content is closely monitored and that incorrect content is caught quickly and taken down. In one instance the page for Nickleback on the Wikipedia site has been blocked from user generated content and can now only be updated privately by Wikipedia staff.
What certain wiki’s will boost is that the connectivity between wikis is outstanding. The Nickleback page links to the band members through hypertext and then can connect you to their hometowns and other information that is presented from that page. It is still very likely that a user can get lost in the amount of information that is being thrown at them.
It is because of wikis that it seems there is a decrease in the amount of people who use books from the library. The more information that is available from the Internet and through wikis is much faster to find and navigate. The wiki is now an essential part of everyday Internet use because it is a mecca of information. This is evident in Wikipedia being the 8th most popular and used site on the top 500 sites list. This could be because of its vast amount of information, and connectivity between the wikis. It could also be because users have the ability to alter the information if they find out something new or important. Much like a blog people want to leave their mark and through a wiki like Wikipedia they have the opportunity to have their work seen and noted through the reference list.
Wikis are an asset on the information highway of the Internet. It allows people to connect and contribute in a different form that e-mail and plain text. The linkage in the wiki also allows for a reader to become more involved and dig deeper into a topic that he/she is looking for. Wikis have become credible online encyclopedias, which are arguably more credible than a printed version of an encyclopedia because it is constantly updated. Wikis are an important and integral part of the Internet that create a connectivity between users and an increase in information sharing online.
Works cited.
Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print.
New York: Routledge, 2001. Print.
Leelefever. Wiki in Plain English. Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY. Web Video. 29 March 2007.
Wikipedia. Wikipedia.org. Web. 18 March 2011.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Week 11 March 14-20
Hypertext Essay: Thus far with no edits...
The Internet has progressed and has been adapted to conform to the needs of the user. Web 2.0 and user generated content is where the Internet is currently operating. There are still domains that are dominated by its creator and doesn’t allow for outside content. However wikis allow for collaboration on the web. A wiki is a website that allows for user generated content. They also allow for communal and collaborative writing on the web, where a user can contribute whatever information they want. A wiki also lets you incorporate hypertext linking various websites to the central wiki site, which allows for the expansion of a central idea. Although some wikis like Wikipedia are open forums on the web, others are private. The private wikis are most commonly provided by corporations and can only be edited and updated by that specific enterprise. Various wiki sites allow for an increase in user generated content and connectivity between users on the Internet. It is because of the interconnectivity of the Internet through wikis that creates a blob of information is a web that can be difficult to navigate.
Wikipedia the worlds leading wiki site, the tag line The Free Encyclopedia. When in the Wikipedia site there are millions of topics to pick from. Whatever a person is researching can be found in some part on Wikipedia. For example, if someone were to look up writing on Wikipedia they would find a page with the history, definition, and the references used to help build that page, further reading and external links. Currently another wiki site is being launched by Wikipedia called Wikiquote which, is a quotation repository the “project is to produce collaboratively a vast reference of quotations from prominent people, books, films and proverbs, and to give details about them with appropriate attribution” (Wikipedia.com).
The Internet is littered with various wikis, from personal wiki space to a search engine that searches specific wikis from Wikipedia to personal and encyclopedia wikis. Creating your own wiki can allow you to develop a space that is of personal interest to the creator. From there you can collaborate with other wikis, and not just wikis other information on the Internet that is pertinent to what you are discussing.
User generated interconnectivity on the Internet through wikis is really an art form of its own. “The computer could textualize all the arts: that is, it could incorporate sound and images into hypertext as easily as words” (Bolter, 184). Which, is what wiki’s have the ability to do, they have the ability to tie various medias together. Hypertext and links link text, visuals, and sounds together to elaborate a specific point, argument, or topic together.
The way in which a wiki works is that all wikis have an edit button that allows the user to edit the page on the wiki site. Once the user clicks edit the page becomes like a word document, this is where the user can edit the text. Once finished editing the text the user clicks save and the document turns back into a web page. From here the user can also edit to attach links within the wiki page. The links connect different sites and wiki sites together.
It seems as though the Internet is becoming one mass space for information. The ‘information highway’ as it has been referred to. However, it is no longer just straight paths through the Internet to straightforward information. There are now links to pages, and pages linked to photos and videos. There is no longer very many straightforward sites that just have information listed. The information runs through different pathways that allow the read/user to navigate through a web of information. The links have the ability to lead the reader to sites that are not pertinent to their search.
A book titles Hot Text by Jonathan Price and Lisa Price is a book on writing for the online reader. They decipher the reader and the writer for the online world. What they say in chapter 7 of their book entitled Cook Up Hot Links tells the writer to create links within their writing, but only links that will emphasize a specific point that they are trying to elaborate. It is difficult to decipher the useful links form the ones that will in no way enhance the understanding of the topic that is being presented. The links do increase the connectivity through the Internet from site to site, but if the link does not enhance the point that it is not worth it to put a link it. This is where it is hard to navigate through some wikis. Wikipedia for example will highlight words as links to take the reader from one site within the Wikipedia domain to another. The only disadvantage of this is that it may be a single word and not the entire idea that is being linked to another site.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Week 10 - Web Writing: Self and Other (March 7-13)
Bolter Chapter 9: Writing the Self
This chapter discusses the connection between reading, writing, and the intelligent mind. In order to produce some sort of intelligent thought it had to be shared. Through writing has been the way of great philosophers to express their thought. This connection isn’t far from the truth, today in a world of people producing thought it is judged on a mass scale by the READER.
This chapter discusses the connection between reading, writing, and the intelligent mind. In order to produce some sort of intelligent thought it had to be shared. Through writing has been the way of great philosophers to express their thought. This connection isn’t far from the truth, today in a world of people producing thought it is judged on a mass scale by the READER.
The philosophers Snell, Havelock, and Ong all thought that the writing process allowed for there to be thought without emotions to defile and confuse the original and most central thought. Which emphasized Descartes notion that we as a society have the ability to reason.
Cartesian philosophy however, isn’t simply confined by print technology. Cartesian philosophy defined writing as the ego. Everyone has an ego and writing is simply lining our ego’s out on paper (or some form or cataloging thought in writing).
Price Chapter 7: Cook Up Hot Links
This chapter discusses links and how to utilize and emphasize a link. It also discusses the advantages of describing the link so that the user can either skip or continue with the link. The advantage of the link is to allow the audience to further explore a topic, but one thing that is often skipped is describing the link and wasting the readers time.
Using a link as a clincher in a sentence also emphasizes it as important, and catches the attention of the reader. Highlighting and creating a clincher link makes the reader want to click on it to find out more information. However, Price does say on page 142, that you don't have to announce a link, the reader will understand its their and click if they want to.
Making sure that the link is visible and not over elaborated is a key in making writing coherent and non abrasive towards the reader. Outbound links create increased credibility. By adding links to outside sites it shows the reader that you know what you're talking about. Outbound links also have the ability to show people who you are and your credentials.
Your URL is also important. Price says that it is important to keep it short, simple, and straight to the point. Companies need to get the URL that pertains to their company name. This is why I try to choose websites that have my name in it since I am not associated with a company. This is how companies become more recognizable on the web, making their companies easy to find.
My Final:
What I have chosen to do is a wordpress site. I am going to do it on baking. There will be various pages, I want the first one to be about the science behind baking and how it is important to get measurements right; this will be the informational type of baking site. The second page will be about various baking equipment. Baking sheets, cookie tins, and tools to help with the actual baking process. I also want a page with recipes, ones that are easy and work every time. The forth page is going to be mine, and I mean that as I will bake things and put them on the site for people to see and comment on. I want people to know they can trust what I am saying and by putting up various things I have actually done I feel it would help my credibility. For the final page I want to have ways of presenting the baked goods. Not only will it be the presentation but there will be lots of links to other sites that show fun and interesting ways to make novice baking look like a super star bake off!
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