As more of our reading moves from print to screens, learning how to write on the Web will become an increasingly important part of history writing skills. Just as we teach fundamental research and writing skills for print essays, we will likely begin to teach digital writing skills for the Web. Writing for the Web will also become an important component of teaching public history (as it has already).
These are some of the assumptions that have informed my current course on the history of Toronto at York University. I have asked students to write a Web essay for their Fall semester assignment, using WordPress on a course site that I set up at DevelopmentofToronto.com. This is not a unique or revolutionary idea. I have known several colleagues who have had students write Web essays and I have had students write optional Web assignments in the past. This is the first time that I will be asking all students in the class to write Web essays. As such, it is an opportunity to think about how to teach specific Web-based history writing skills.
I chose WordPress for a number of technical reasons, but mainly because I have been writing and editing history on the Web in WordPress for several years now at SeanKheraj.com, ActiveHistory.ca, and NiCHE-Canada.org. In my experience, I have identified a number of key skills for history writing on the Web. However, I am still looking for more ideas to generate a good list of best practices (please post in the comments). Here are some best practices that I have developed over the course of my own experience writing history on the Web:
Fundamental History Research and Writing Skills Still Apply
As with traditional print essays or articles, fundamental history research and writing skills should still apply to writing on the Web. I will still require my students to conduct original primary source research, contextualize that research with high-quality scholarly secondary sources, and situate their arguments within the relevant scholarly literature. Their writing should still be clear, well-organized, and persuasive in its argumentative structure. The writer should present evidence in such a manner that conveys to the reader adequate context, chronology, and a sense of change over time. Writing should be free of grammatical errors.
Write in an Accessible Manner
Again, this is often something I try to stress for print essays, but the imperative to write in an accessible manner is all the more significant when writing on the Web for a broad audience. The assignments students write for history courses in university are generally intended for a single reader, the instructor. A Web essay potentially has a much broader audience. This affords the opportunity to teach students about how to think of their audience when writing.
How can one convey nuanced arguments and ample historical evidence in an accessible manner? The best way to do this, in my opinion, is to write for an intelligent reader who does not necessarily know many of the specifics of your topic. George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” provides some additional good tips for accessible writing:
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous. [1]
Hyperlinks as Super Footnotes
I wrote about this idea in a blog post a couple of years ago here. Writing on the Web provides historians with the opportunity to place their research sources directly before the reader through hyperlinks. With the abundance of digitized historical primary sources now available online, historians can link directly to the sources rather than just simply providing breadcrumbs in their footnotes. As I demonstrate below, when possible, historians should link their footnotes directly to their sources online. Rather than chasing down a copy of Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” to confirm the accuracy of my citation or to consult the complete source, history on the Web can bring readers to the source immediately. With the growing abundance of online storage options and institutional digital repositories, we may one day require graduate students to upload digital copies of all of their research materials to be linked directly to the footnotes/endnotes in their dissertations.
This approach to citation on the Web can bring research to the forefront and expose the work of historians in stitching together complex narratives from disparate historical documents. It unveils, in part, the historian’s craft, but in ways that might strengthen scholarship and better facilitate future research and knowledge production. My link to Orwell’s essay below might be the beginning of a new research project for another scholar or support ongoing work.
Visualizing History
Writing history on the Web obviously creates new opportunities to incorporate visual sources into research and presentation. If you have ever flipped through the pages of an old dissertation and come across a photograph awkwardly pasted onto one of the pages, you know how far we have come with the integration of visual sources into historical research and writing. History on the Web can (and probably should, when possible) include large, high-resolution, and full-colour images. If a Web article is focused on the interpretation of visual historical sources, rather than including just a few examples of those sources, the historian can include a complete slideshow of all visual sources that she/he analyzed.
The fidelity of digital images in a Web format can potentially far exceed that which is possible in print. Take for example the following photograph of a 1935 streetcar accident in Toronto at the intersection of Danforth and Glebemount:
Photographs are just one type of visual source one might include in a history Web essay. Simple online mapping software, such as Google Maps Engine, makes it possible to build and embed interactive maps into your writing. For example, this is a map I produced to accompany a book chapter I wrote on the history of domestic animals in nineteenth-century Toronto:
View Finding Animals in Nineteenth-Century Toronto in a larger map
Again, this is a type of visual source that can be used both for research and presentation in ways that are not possible in print.
Audio and Video Sources
Finally, I think writing history on the Web should integrate audio and video sources, when possible. Oral history is an increasingly important part of historical scholarship. With permission from the interviewees, a historian could include audio or video clips from her/his oral history work in a Web essay. The complete archive of oral history interviews could also be linked to the essay online. This would provide an incredible resource for future researchers.
Video and audio sources could also include the growing archive of radio, television, and film as historical documents. For example, one could easily analyze the following 1975 PBS interview with Donald Rumsfeld as a historical document and present the full interview to the reader/viewer:
Or, one could include digital audio of the Nixon tapes directly in a Web essay on the history of the administration of Richard Nixon and its overthrow of the Allende government in Chile in 1973:
Sample from NixonTapes.org [Download here]
I am looking forward to seeing what my students come up with for their Web essays for DevelopmentofToronto.com later this year. There are numerous possibilities for history writing on the Web and I would also love to hear from readers of Active History about their own approaches and best practices. Please leave your ideas and suggestions in the comments section below.
Sean Kheraj is an assistant professor of Canadian and environmental history at York University. He writes at seankheraj.com.
[1] George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” Horizon (April 1946):Â 264.
