The Digital Frontier for the Literate

Chances are if you’re reading this you take for granted that the digital, online arena is

a place to find ideas of people who want to share. In the year 2021 it’s pretty common,

especially with the past year leaving everyone with no better way to communicate. But

there are so many places and so many ways to communicate, and it’s worth exploring

your options for getting your idea out there for free.

Brining the Digital?

To put it in the simplest You might be designing something to print, display on

words, something is a screen, display in a presentation, or just write to

digital if you make it or yourself. Regardless of what you use it for, you use it

find it on a digital for something. Digital writing is meaningful and has

device. But a broad purpose.

definition like that helps

Otherwise you just have a pointless string of letters
no one, so let’s delve a
and shapes.
bit deeper. You don’t
Digital writing also includes more than just text. Since
necessarily need your
digital writing is on devices that are capable of showing
words to be online in
more than just text, your writing should include
order for it to be digital.
pictures, shapes, colors, fonts, and formatting to

enhance your reader’s experience. Good Digital writing

uses everything in its disposal to create something that

reflects the writer’s intent. In that way, digital writing

can be like art. But there are more resources than tools

for making your writing.

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Digital distribution is a media. If you’re setting increasable freedom in

huge tool for spreading up a presentation, email your writing, and some

your work so can reach everyone who is more things you must

more readers. Now I participating. Whatever consider. This brings

know I said digital your project or message even more truth to the

writing didn’t need to be is you can reach farther statement “Writing is

online, and it doesn’t. using online methods. never finished, only

abandoned.”(Morey,p7)

Keeping a personal One last tool at your

digital journal is as disposal is how easy it

Since it’s possible, it is
much digital writing as is to change your work
important to keep your
a public blog. But if the after you post it. This is
writing well researched
purpose of your writing a huge difference from
and up to date. The
is to spread a message print, where once you
world of writing and
then you should use the apply ink to paper there
ideas is an ever
resources at hand. Even is no going back. Every
changing landscape,
if you’re printing your form of digital writing
but more than anything
materials, you could lets you change your
it’s a long conversation.
post the same flyer or work, even after you’ve
In order to participate
statement with social let people read it. This
you need to know what
brings with it

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people are already said, and where you can find something new to

saying, what has been say.

Bringing the Force.

So you have your idea you want to share, but how do

you get people behind your idea? Well let me start by

Even the definition of
telling you how you don’t get people to listen to you. No
rhetoric as a tool of
one wants to listen to a shouting match, or at least no
persuasion came from
one will be persuaded by shouting. Rhetoric is the
Aristotle. And with that:
answer. In short rhetoric is the very idea of finding
“Aristotle gives us the
ways to be persuasive.
concepts of logos, ethos,

While I could go into the works of Plato and Aristotle as and pathos, as well as

they developed the idea of rhetoric to what we know the canons of rhetoric –

today, instead I’ll just give you what each provided us invention, arrangement,

in the end. Plato made the important distinction that style, memory, and

rhetoric will only help you find situational truths. But delivery. . .” (Morey,p13)

it was Aristotle that emphasized that even these

situational truths are important for communication. He

went as far as to argue that rhetorical power is just as

important as physical power. And we can see that

influence today, when getting ‘burned’ by words can

hurt more than getting physical burns.

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While I may not be going into depth about any of these, persuasion.

it’s very easy to do the research and find the basics of

Bringing it Together.
So what happens when you bring helps our readers trust us.

‘digital’ and ‘rhetoric’ together into

‘digital rhetoric?’ Well Aristotle and

Plato were largely talking about

conversational or written rhetoric, but

as we went over before digital writing is

more than just words. For us writers,

digital rhetoric is sticking to good use of

our resources and applying logos,

ethos, and pathos. We can use pictures,

fonts, and formats to invoke feelings
and ideas in our readers. And good use
of research and objectivity gives us the
upper hand of being logical. And an
overall neat and appealing composition
But there are more ways to be digitally
persuasive then just writing. Movies,
videos, and animations use digital
rhetoric in ways writing only touches
on. And the world of digital music is

almost untouchable to the typed word.

This makes it all the more important to

include these elements in your digital

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writing, or to explore other digital of not being in the same room as the

mediums to spread your message. people you are conversing with or

reaching with your writing. This is a

But the one weakness of digital rhetoric
hurdle you constantly need to overcome
is trust. Especially on the internet,
in order to let the meaning of your
anyone can write just about anything.
writing bring meaning to others.
And there is a significant disadvantage

Reaching Now.
There have always been different hype or attention, and it’s important to

methods you need to use to gain the have an identity that sets you apart

trust of your audience. But for this from other writers.

topic I like to turn to Seth Godin’s blog.

Once upon a time you could just put
Godin has an incredible understanding
flashy graphics and fun fonts to get
of business and advertising. In his blog
peoples attention. But in a skeptical
post Big Company Advertising he talks
modern viewership you need to earn
about how advertisements need to
trust through more personalized
change in order to be more effective.
means. That means caring about
While you might not be making an ad,
individual readers and setting yourself
you can apply these ideas to whatever
apart from every other writer on the
you’re writing in order to find your
internet. If you could put your post in
following. To summarize Seth’s points
someone else’s feed or blog and it
that apply to writers, great writing and
wouldn’t seem out of place, you’re doing
content are better than building up
something wrong.

Reaching Giants.

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Now, you might not bring about world could be the one to plant the seed of a

peace within a few months of starting a new idea, one that through nurturing

blog. Change takes time, and ideas and good discussion will grow beyond

need to naturally grow within a culture. your own writing. If you’re lucky and

Ideas need people to talk about them in smart about how you grow your idea,

order to grow, and you could help by you might even see it reach and change

being a part of the conversation. Or you the world.

Reaching Myself.
Personally, I haven’t really had the chance, or at least the motivation to explore

and share my own ideas through writing. I’ve seeded some ideas here or there through

my college and high school experience. But after seeding I never took the time to care

or talk about the ideas further. But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been growth.

Sometimes you need to grow yourself so you can better communicate and grow your

ideas.

For myself, I’ve been incidentally doing this through most of my classes. But the

two that helped the most in finding how to spread and grow my ideas were public

speaking, and digital writing classes. My public speaking class got me used to

recording more official presentations with slides and everything. But digital writing

had me working on everything else discussed here. I think can say I was already

proficient at writing, sine I had done several conversational and persuasive papers

before. But I learned how to add good and interesting presentation to my words to

make them all the more effective. Not to mention the few graphics I had to make,

which I had no prior experience with. I had skills but not much experience applying

them, and my digital writing class gave me just the push and starting experience I

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need to go out and spread my ideas.

Thanks to Professor McElwee for making a challenging but fun experience out of class

EN241.6294.W21!

By John Nowak

Works Cited:

Godin, Seth. “Big Company Advertising.” Seth’s Blog, 30 Aug. 2016, seths.blog/2016/08/big-company-
advertising/.

Morey, Sean. The Digital Writer. Fountainhead Press, 2017.

Design Statement:

The images very closely relate to the subject matter, giving a lot of association between the text and
image.

The audience is anyone wanting to take this class, as a sort of taste of what they will learn, and why.

This will be going on my website shortly after submitting. It will serve as part of my introduction as a
writer. (Although it won’t go in the introduction section of the website.)

For the first three sections I wanted to alternate from one side to the other, giving the idea of both
being incomplete. Then the third section is solid to show wholeness of the idea. The next three sections
had boxes just to break up the text.

For color, shades of blue were used to signify beginnings and ends. Orange is for more explaining or
logical text. And green is for growth.

I used single columns for the beginning and end because I felt it was more personal. Meanwhile two or
three columns feels more information heavy since it is for more text to be broke up.

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