The article Introduction to the Strategies for Multimodal Composing by Melanie Gagich explains the idea of multimodality in education. She emphasized the importance, while providing strategies for composing text the incorporate different forms of multimodal text. She list 5 steps in creating multimodal text. They include understanding modes, planning, drafting, revising, and sharing. She begins by defining the word multimodal which refers to integrating different modes of communication like textual, visual, gestural, and spatial to create meaning or a better understanding of the text. This concept showed me that communication isn’t just limited to words written on paper. Multimodal composing is used to enhance written text.
For me, anything outside of the standard graphs or tables used to display relevant information was seen as unacceptable. I’m not sure who created the rules, but I do know that all my life in schools and professional writing, I have never included images of any other modes of communication other than written text in my papers. It is what was expected, you say what you need to say and be done with it. I was taught that if you were descriptive enough the reader will “get what you’re trying to say” however, I don’t think this is true after reading this article. Imagines in a journal entry, diary, or poems can enhance writing in many ways for you and for your audience. I love the idea of being able to connect visual and audio to something that is being written for your personal enjoyment and from your heart. However, I cant say that I would be very confident using this concept in academic writing unless my professor specifically asked for them. I will say that adding visuals to a text allows me to be able to identify the text if I needed it for a reference, but I wouldn’t know how to display the visuals. I started thinking about text that wouldn’t traditionally incorporate and visuals, or gestural modalities and I thought about a resume. Although the idea works for other texts, I wouldn’t be confident in placing images on my resume, but what if this was a norm or broadly accepted, I think many people would adopt this norm and we would see lots of creative resumes.
“Beyond Black on White” by Michael Klein and Kristi Shackleford, addresses MLA format and design principles in academic writing. MLA format is widely used and accepted in academic writing for college students. MLA format is used when writing primarily on literature, with guidelines that are based on fundamental design principles the help with “readability and comprehension”. It helps the reader understand what is important in the text and provides clarity on the content without visual distractions. The whole idea of MLA format is to facilitate understanding and engagement with the text. MLA format incorporates font sizes, fonts, spacing, and image placement. The standard MLA format is “Times New Roman, twelve-point font, and one-inch margins” this is most of my academic papers for college are written I use MLA format so often that I find myself using these guidelines even in my personal writing.
After reading this article it made me reflect on my writing style outside of academia. I don’t think of why I am formatting my text this way. Like why I default to Times New Roman as my font of choice, and why do most teachers only accept this font. MLA has its place and purpose but breaking away from the restrictions of the MLA can be a great thing for students so they can explore and be creative while highlighting their work.
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