The New Writing Environment Writers at Work in a World of Technology

Information technology is changing the way we write. Special features such as outliners, spelling checkers and graphic facilities have transformed word processors into document processors; document processors have, in turn, integrated with other electronic resources such as e-mail and the Internet to provide a complete writing environment. The New Writing Environment examines the knowledge that is needed in order to develop, use and evaluate computer-based writing environments. The emphasis is firmly on practical issues: tasks performed by writers at work, problems they encounter, and documents they actually produce. Writing is defined within a wide social and organisational context, in order to give an accurate assessment of how the new technology affects the social and cooperative aspects of authorship. The result is a wide-ranging and comprehensive assessment of the relationship between writing and computers.

Section 1 Writers at Work: Expanding the Notion of Writing.- Section 1: Contents.- Section 1: Introduction.- 1 Professional Writing Studied: Authors’ Accounts of Planning in Document Production Processes.- 2 Writing, Speaking, Drawing: the Distribution of Meaning in Architects’ Communication.- 3 Adjusting Target Figures Downwards: On the Collaborative Writing of Policy Documents in the Dutch Government.- Section 2 Writers at Work in a New Writing Environment.- Section 2: Contents.- Section 2: Introduction.- 4 Computer Support for Producing Software Documentation: Some Possible Futures.- 5 Academic Writing and Information Retrieval.- 6 Professional Authorship in the Electronic World.- 7 Designs for New Writing Environments.- Section 3 Designing and Developing the New Writing Environment.- Section 3: Contents.- Section 3: Introduction.- 8 Two Investigations into Intelligent Text Processing.- 9 Detecting Stylistic Inconsistencies in Collaborative Writing.- 10 User-oriented Index Design for Computer-based Documentation.- Section 4 New Ways of Writing: Multimedia and Networks.- Section 4: Contents.- Section 4: Introduction.- 11 Spider Webs, Symphonies and the Yellow-Brick Road: Form and Structure in Electronic Texts.- 12 Knowledge Package Construction and Conceptual Navigation using a System for Universal Media Searching (SUMS).- 13 When Worlds Collide: Merging Face-to-face and Virtual Academic Conferences.- 14 Citizens’ Networks: Examples of Utopian Uses of Computer-mediated Communication.- About the Authors.- Name Index.