Day 12: Digital Rhetorics.

Happy Friday the 13th!


So, as we think about what rhetoric is, and what it does, we need to think beyond writing with text alone.  We make arguments with all kinds of media.  We've looked at print ads, cartoons, videos, magazines, and more.  Today, I'd like to talk about digital rhetorics a bit.

Mainly, I'd like to look at web design and how it can be very rhetorical.  Just as the design of an argument is very important for making your case, the design of a website is also important for being persuasive when your audience isn't right in front of you.  And sometimes websites can really suck, and sometimes they're amazingly attractive.  So, here are a few from each category.


So, it's more fun to start with the bad.  There's a website called http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ that seeks out notoriously bad websites.  Here's a few of my favorite from that collection.  I won't post screenshots since you just need to experience them for yourself.  Try to figure out what the sites are trying to communicate!


Bad Design:


http://www.dokimos.org/ajff/


http://yvettesbridalformal.com/


http://www.georgehutchins.com/


http://anselme.homestead.com/AFPHAITI.html


All right.  Funny.  But there's a lot of great web design out there.  Google.com has all that clean whitespace, and a lot of functionality.  You may not have thought about the way Facebook looks before you log in, but that blue color is becoming a common one in well designed sites.  The website for the Whitehouse, whitehouse.gov, is wonderfully designed.  It's amazing, really.  But, it's interesting that the government site is presenting itself as a news source.  I mean, how can we trust that?

Let's see, think about the design of other good sites: youtube.com, yahoo.com, msn.com, or even mcdonalds.com.  McDonald's is frighteningly good at design.

So, now you look for some sites yourself!  I'm sure you'll discover something interesting.


Grammar Review:


Active Verbs:


How many of you as you're writing have gotten the green squiggly line from Microsoft Word telling you that you've written a sentence in the passive voice, and that you've been very naughty for doing that?


Most of us.  Unless your the type that doesn't write with the grammar checker on, then you're just plain nuts.  But what about that green squiggly line?  Why is the passive so bad?


Well, to explain, I'd like for you to stand up and jump up and down for a minute.  Just do it for a second.  Come on; it gets blood going to your brain and makes you smarter.


All right. Good.


Now, to talk about active voice versus passive voice, I want you to think about a sentence where you are the subject and the floor is the object.  Something like this:


Mr. B was jumping on the floor.


Fine.  Wonderful.


Now what if we rewrote it and made the floor the subject?  Like so:


The floor was being jumped on by Mr. B.


So what?  What's the difference?  The active verb has the subject doing the action.  The passive verb has the subject of the sentence receiving the action.  Simple.


So, why does Microsoft Word get on your case about this one?  Well, usually, the active voice is better; it's more direct and, well, more active.


But sometimes you need the passive.  Just don't use it all the time.  You might need the passive if you don't know who did the action, like in this sentence:


The cute, little puppy was killed.


Science writing also uses the passive to take out the human factor (they don't actually take out the humans, they just make it seem like the humans aren't there... see, science is very rhetorical...).


The beaker was placed on the burner for one hour at 100 degrees Celsius.


Got it?  Good.




Note:  No little puppies were harmed in the making of this blog post.




Your Daily Assignment:


Find a website that sucks and one that looks good.  Get a screen capture of them (If you don't know how to do that, Google how to get a screen capture...), post them to your blog, and briefly explain why they suck or don't suck.  Remember our little game?


Read EID,  Read EID, “"America's Toughest Sherif' Takes on Immigration” p. 539 or online (you can even listen to it!) at NPR.org (a website that doesn't suck).  Come on.  It's a few measly pages!


Have a lovely weekend!