Melanie Gagich writes about the use of multimodal texts. She describes five different multimodal texts, as well as five steps to creating a multimodal text. The five different multimodal texts that are described include linguistic, visual, spatial, gestural and aural. The use of these multimodal texts can coincide with digital format and design, and can accompany presentations or be the presentations themselves. Michael J. Klein and Kristi L. Shackelford both write about how to format college papers, whether it be MLA format or APA format, and this helpful guide may also be applied to multimodal texts. Images, for example, can be an example of the visual mode that can be included in a paper. Klein and Shackelford state that “images” can mean a variety of things to designers, such as illustrations, digital photos, and even charts and graphs. These are all forms of multimodal text. However, other multimodal texts can be used to create an assignment in and of itself. For example, when presenting, the gestural mode can be useful to point out important highlights or emotional importance within the topic at hand. Design can also be important to the use of these modes. Depending on the target and unintentional audiences, the way to format not only standard papers but also multimodal texts is vital to the presentation and layout of the assignment. Of course, images can play a big role in both academic papers and multimodal assignments, but design can vary between each mode, and may be far different than designing a paper. Overall, it is interesting to incorporate document design and multimodal texts together, comparing and contrasting elements between both.
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