Online vs. Print

Many people assumed that online medium is the same as prints. Although there are a number of similarities about both online and prints such as the ‘meaning-making’ and the interpreting process when readers are reading it (Walsh 2006, p.32), there are differences in both online and prints as well.

According to Nielsen (1997), he stated that concise writing, scannable layout and objective writing should be used in online. For an example, the image below is taken from ‘Google Image’ shows a page from a web. It can be seen that there are many images, hyperlinks and so on in the image which is the same as what it is in Lemke’s (cited in Walsh 2006, p.30) detailed study said. In the study, the research of hypertexts has verified that there is a complex and ‘multiplicative effect’ in the way language and modes of image, text and sound are combined in websites and linked to layers of interconnections within and between sites.

Title: The Monitor
Source: Goggle images

As for prints, Kress and van Leeuwan (2006, p.188) said that the layout for prints, for instance a newspaper, there are three signifying systems which are the information value, salience and framing. Both authors also stated that these three signifying systems are serving to structure the text, to bring the different elements of the page such as images, headlines and blocks of text together into a coherent and meaningful whole. An example of ‘The Star’ newspaper’s cover is shown below where we can see the design of the layout is totally different from online. There are no hyperlinks and full story is shown in the same page unlike the web, there are many hyperlinks which lead to other related sites and hence, there are no full stories in the same page in the web due to the hyperlinks.

Title: The Star newspaper
Source: Goggle images

Hence, the layout of both online and prints are different in their own ways. Besides that, the language used in both online and prints are quite different as well where online uses short, brief and simple words such as bullet points and as for prints, it uses lengthier words in order to describe something.

References

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. 2006. Reading images. Chapter 1:
The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication.

Nielsen, J, 1997. How Users Read on the Web, viewed 5th May 2008 at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

Walsh, M. 2006,” ‘Textual shift’: Examining the reading process
with print, visual and multimodal texts", Australian Journal of
Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, p.24-37.