‘Seeing the Text’ Stephan A. Bernhardt

SUMMARY:

In his article ‘Seeing the Text’ Stephan Bernhardt attempts to show us how written and visual communications can work together, and how they go together. He provides a couple visuals to interpret the text differently. He has information organized on a chart. The audience he gears this towards is students and teachers. It’s geared towards teachers because he wants them to encourage students to become creative composers. He argues that writing, when visually informative helps to make the writer more organized, because it encourages the writer to be exact about grouping related ideas, and delineating beginnings and endings.

CONVERSATION:

In a way this writing reminds me of the McCloud and Berger articles. They are all more informative and less of an argument. They also include information about visual text. They differ in the way they show the visual components, but they are on the same path of making text more visual.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. The advantages of using these visual cues is that it achieves rhetorical control. They are highly informative and share features. Headings might be most appropriate when you have a lot of different types of information you are trying to put out. It helps to organize your writing.
2. Yes, sometimes I feel like I am writing the same paper over and over again. I feel like a lot of my assignments have the same pattern and I do them the same way. I could add different styles of writing into my writing. I could make it more visual, by adding pictures, or charts and graphs. I could group the information better and put it into categories to make it more understanding for the reader. Bernhardt would recommend to make it organized through branching and recursion.

OPINIONS:

I thought it was very informative. However I didn’t think it was interesting at all. I didn’t like the whole concept of the sample text of the wetlands, it was just boring to me. I don’t think I will really take anything out of this reading.