Hyperlinks and other sexy tools

hyplink illustration

I love hyperlinking. Opening up a portal to another world through the simplest tools of highlighting, cutting and pasting has always been a special piece of magic. I am writing and editing suites of technical documents for a legal company and adore playing in the references sections. All those arcane statutes with their Parts, Divisions, Sections and Sub-sections are thrillingly express-posted to Go (collect $200) under my fingers.

I am musing on this because recently came across the term ‘immersive reading’ for the wholesale, complete transportation into the written word, being able to draw the reader into the writer’s world. I like the term for all reading where the goal is to come away with more than you started. Compliance documentation for management of aged care homes? Gotcha. Build my comprehension, give me a process to follow, let me see what to do, and how. Or perhaps it’s your favourite author’s new novel and you feel a pinpricking sense of a character’s inner self or your stomach drops with a plot turn…. Vastly different pursuits for different goals but immersion in the act of reading is required for both.

Be vigilant with hyperlinks. Be alert to their overuse or misuse. Peter Meyers is a builder of digital publications. He says: “Exercise restraint. The challenge can be in what to leave out. The first wave of experimentation was all about adding things, which can mess with the immersive reading experience. Don’t eject the reader from the experience of reading through distracting hyperlinks.” (Morrow 2011).

I feel this. I deplore the scraps of information we are fed, often with a hyperlink attached which says ‘over to you, dear reader. Work it out for yourself.’   Tie them into your text, interpret their best, their juiciest bits for your reader and leave them feeling a warmth towards you, the host, rather than like a refugee.

And hyperlinks are just the beginning of interactive tools. What makes you swoon?

 

 

 

References

P Meyers, blog, http://newkindofbook.com/about/

J Morrow (2011), ‘Going Digital: An Australian editor’s observations of developments in US publishing’, Beatrice Davis Editorial Report 2011-12, https://www.publishers.asn.au/documents/item/110, viewed 18/3/16.

Revise the Style manual!

Style manual Editors don’t rally. We’re not activists. Not in the marching in the streets ‘What do we want?’! More commas! When do we want them? Now!’ kind of way. Apart from the occasional guerrilla warfare on rogue apostrophes (who amongst us hasn’t erased one?), we prefer to do our work quietly.

The Queensland Society of Editors has dipped its toe into collective activism with its petition on change.org. It is asking the Commonwealth Parliament Standing Committee on Publications to approve funding for a new, seventh edition of the Commonwealth Government’s Style manual. Last updated in 2002, this is well overdue.

In 2002, my phone had buttons to make calls, an ipad was either your feminine hygiene product or your city apartment and tablets were found in the recesses of the bathroom cabinet. And paper only takes us so far. The data/information explosion is almost beyond comprehension (The Data Explosion in 2014 Minute by Minute – Infographic).

When everybody can be a publisher, we need some new standards. We need some rules and consistency to let writers write for different ways of reading. When we break them, we want to be noticed for the right reasons. We need a new Style manual and we need it online.

It might not be sexy. It might not stir your conscience but there are 847 supporters so far. Sign the petition to fund an updated Style manual here.

Commonwealth Government of Australia, Style manual for authors, editors and printers, 2002, John Wiley & Sons, Australia, 6th edn.
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