Writing with hyperlinks

The Rhetoric of the Hyperlink (blog post) provides a fascinating perspective on how the hyperlink can be used to enrich the stylistic possibilities of narrative writing.

In contrast to traditional print, hyperlinks in online writing provide the author with a means to include inline explanations of or additional information about concepts within their text. This not only allows the author to excercise more stylistic freedom when composing their text, but also allows the reader to choose whether or not to read this additional information. Additionally, the hyperlink provides a means for the author to mix form and content within their writing, to create a more interactive and therefore engaging text (according to this article, through the suggestion that the more readers follow the external links from the text, the more they will be enticed back to continue reading).

It can be argued that these kinds of hyperlinks distract from the ludic nature of the text, though I agree with the alternative opinion, that this type of reading (or browsing) is a new kind of ludic experience. Not only does it seem much more practical for the author to include links to additional information which is optionally viewable rather than including this additional information within the structure of the text, but also more importantly, less invasive to the reader, as they may choose to ignore this hyperlink if they are already knowledgable of the relevant information. This of course would only apply in situations where the content of  hyperlink is obvious; however, if the hyperlink is used in the “form and content mixing” method described in this article, this still provides a ludic experience in the sense that the reader has the opportunity to construct their own narrative through their own choice of whether or not to explore this linked text. The ability to explore these hyperlinks in a separate browser window or tab also contributes to this new ludic experience, allowing the reader to either continue reading the main body of text and browse the links later on, or vice versa – which I feel is again less distracting and invasive than other traditional methods of “linking” additional information into the main body of the text, such as printed footnotes or references.