This essay explores "content," a word and concept now often associated with writing in fields including marketing, journalism, publishing, and technical communication. I present a definition of content appropriate to writing studies and explore a range of issues and practices that the content metaphor can bring to our professional,…

This article provides an analysis of Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore's "The Medium Is the Massage," a visual-verbal text that is generally acknowledged as innovative but seldom taken seriously or read carefully. The analysis draws on the visual language vocabulary developed by Scott McCloud in "Understanding Comics" and argues that the field of…

Discussions of intellectual property are often the focus of rhetoric and composition research, and the question of textual origins grounds these discussions. Through an examination of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia anyone can edit, this essay addresses disciplinary concerns about textual origins and intellectual property through a discussion…

The assessment framework presented here draws on theories of reflective practice and mediated activity to update or "multimodalize" the reflective texts students are sometimes asked to compose after completing an essay. The article underscores the importance of having students assume greater responsibility for cataloging and assessing the…

Explores the concept of ambiity in semantic relationships, and discusses several causes of relational ambiguity, including differing world views, subtext construction, and selective focusing. Asserts that while most instances of relational ambiguity do not impair text comprehension, readers should be aware of possible ambiguities. (MM)