Composing in Technological Contexts

Abstract

This article contrasts writing-as-transcribing and writing-as-composing, arguing that true composing requires conceptual reformulation and speculating that contradictions in studies of composing with computers may be partly explained as a confusion between transcribing and composing. The article also reviews what we know of predraft planning and writing, or note-making, and claims that note-making is at once a monitoring process and a planning strategy and as such may be particularly valuable for composing. Following this, a descriptive study examines the note-making activities of a group of experienced writers and contrasted the same writers' note-making in pen and paper and word processing conditions. A four-part classification scheme accounted for virtually all notes that writers generated; the four kinds of note were content, structure, emphasis, and procedural notes. Early writing sessions and note-making patterns of individual writers are examined in detail, revealing important differences in note-making between writers. Further, individual writers also had distinctly different note-making patterns when writing in different technological contexts—with pen and paper and with word processing. This research shows note-making, and accompanying predraft planning, to be a critical juncture in the composing process and supports the notion that writers' composing, or at least their early composing, may be markedly different when working with traditional and with computer writing tools.