Readings about Forms & Delivery

In this section we offer further consideration of multimodality from three different perspectives, that of multimodal composing, visual rhetoric, and document design. While reading these texts please consider how you might take up these ideas in the delivery of your research project, as well as how might you work across genres to meet different audiences. A good prompt to consider here is: Which modes might you compose in to communicate your ideas most effectively?

Melanie Gagich, in An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing, provides a  review of key terms and more thoroughly addresses the five modes of communication. She offers a game-plan for creating a multimodal text through her shared pre-drafting and drafting strategies.

In Understanding Visual Rhetoric, Jenae Cohn offers examples of visual rhetoric and clarifies how everyday images can be persuasive on their own. Additionally, she provides her reader with a vocabulary that can be used when discussing and analyzing visual rhetoric.

Michael J. Klein and Kristi L. Shackelford’s Beyond Black on White: Document Design and Formatting in the Writing Classroom shares the importance of not only content but also design. In this chapter, they provide a crash course in design that will aid your understanding of its importance.

The objectives targeted in Readings about Form & Delivery are Composing Processes, Reading, and Rhetorical Knowledge. Chapter 24 carries the theme of multimodal composition (Composing Processes) from Chapter 23 and Chapter 25 addresses how to analyze “visual rhetoric” (Reading). Chapter 26 privileges the importance of document design and delivery, specifically formatting procedures for academic writing genres (Composing Processes and Rhetorical Knowledge).