Review

Writing Hypertext

Creating a Layout

Building with Integrity

Today's Assignment

Hypertext Workshop

  Creating a Layout for your Hypertext Essay

(Lesley Smith and Robert Matz first created this tutorial on layout, and notes on integrity, as part of a much larger hypertext project for the English Department at George Mason University.)

Layout refers to the way your work looks on the screen. The basic principles of layout involve the positioning of text and the arrangement of white space.

Text
While print is fixed in a permanent place on the page, it changes position on the screen every time someone opens a browser to your page. For example, unless you control your layout, your 'line' may stretch for fifteen words on a relatively small screen to twenty-five words (or more) on a larger screen. The reading of such a long line is a bit like watching a tennis match, and uncomfortable for most readers.

White Space
White space fulfills two functions on the screen. It offers readers visual clues about meaning, just as it does on the page. For example, the spacing between paragraphs in prose tells the reader that the subject is shifting in some way.
Second, it provides places for the eye (and the mind) to pause, process information, and project forward into your text. As reading from the screen strains the eye more than reading from the page, white space (which on screen can be green or blue or multi-hued or...) is critical.


You can control both the length of your line and the provision of 'white' space through the use of tables