Anyone in academia has endless experience with the stagnation of MLA or APA formatted papers. We write the same papers over and over again. It’s the same editing, the same punchy lines in expected places. Academic writing exists in a form of stasis that refuses to be broken.
Melanie Gagich’s “An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing” and Michael J. Klein & Kristi L. Shackelford’s “Beyond Black on White: Document Design and Formatting in the Writing Classroom” make crucial points to rally against this pervasive stagnation.
Gagich
The focus of her theory of multimodal writing breaks into two sections: communication and drafting.
In an effort to simplify, communication splits off into five sections. The first section is visual, self explanatory as it is, which focuses on what the audience can see. Accordingly, anything from photos to text font counts. Her second section is linguistics, which she categorizes as “alphabetic text or spoken word” and centers on language use. Next, the third section, spatial, works off of the first by utilizing an element of sight. Spatial elements are all about space and using size and orientation for emphasis. Fourth, gestural, is also self-explanatory. Gagich is clear that “gesture and movement” make up the bulk of this section. Lastly, at least for communication, is aural. It’s the compliment to the visual stage, using sound or the absence of it to make a point and catch attention. A good multimodal piece uses multiple sections of communication concurrently.
Drafting, that essential yet rather annoying stage of writing, makes an appearance here. For multimodal projects, Gagich posits using rhetorical situations to properly draft and frame ideas. In this case, knowing your audience, the message you’re sending, the genre (used as Swales does, meaning a specific form of document or text), the medium or distribution type, and the bias you may have as an author form the rhetorical building blocks. Playing with these elements is a great way to avoid stagnation in assignments.
Klein & Shackelford
The direction Klein and Shackelford go in is unexpected, yet is ultimately a breath of fresh air. After a brief run-through of what elements of text mean, the interesting sections take center stage. Paper formatting beyond the standard MLA or APA designs, including Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity (CRAP)is a skill I aim to indulge. They are firm on the point that students “can still design… documents to be appealing”, even when formatting is constrained by MLA or APA styles.
If I were allowed italics in my papers, or to bold certain words. or even to play with the margins or text colors, my assignments would be that much more enjoyable. Students deserve to learn how to play with language and written text. Most people who work in bookbinding, for instance, know that style and liveliness can be added through stylized page numbers or text font. Why do only creatives get to experience the joy of finding a font that fits just right? The stagnation of academic design is so sunken in that a simple margin shift would make a world of difference.
Breaking Free
My first art class didn’t have papers. Our final: a binder filled with illustrations of different artistic concepts. I struggled so much in that class, essay-trained as I am. Yet as time has gone on, I find myself looking forward to classes without essays. PowerPoints have become my favorite homework, as I can stretch my creative muscles with formatting and layouts. I will happily do a presentation over a paper, despite the fact that I’m a psych major who loves writing.
Gagich makes it clear that academic writing is not the only way to communicate. In fact, it may be a better test of student understanding to have creative projects over papers. We all think differently; the way those differences in understanding manifest is worth noting and nurturing. If we must do papers, Klein and Shackelford present a creative tie-in that would stretch both understanding and creative muscles in a similar way.
If even I, someone trained to love and write long laborious papers, longs for a change in academic project types, I cannot be the only one. There are other options out there. Isn’t it time we make use of them?
Multimodal writing is not a new phenomenon. For further opinions and discussions, see our class page.
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