The New Writing Environment

Book excerpt: Information technology is changing the way we write. Special features such as outliners, spelling checkers and graphic facilities have transformed word processors into document processors; document processors have, in turn, integrated with other electronic resources such as e-mail and the Internet to provide a complete writing environment. The New Writing Environment examines the knowledge that is needed in order to develop, use and evaluate computer-based writing environments. The emphasis is firmly on practical issues: tasks performed by writers at work, problems they encounter, and documents they actually produce. Writing is defined within a wide social and organisational context, in order to give an accurate assessment of how the new technology affects the social and cooperative aspects of authorship. The result is a wide-ranging and comprehensive assessment of the relationship between writing and computers.