Digital Writing 

Final Assignment 

What to write: A multimodal piece which conforms to the interests and criteria of a publishing  venue, either one listed in this course or one selected by you with my permission. It can be on  any topic of interest listed by the venue, may be digital or analogue, but it must me multimodal  and must use the venue’s criteria in terms of formatting, citations, file type, etc.  

How to Write it: Follow the canons of rhetoric. We have seen how Writer/Designer already has  built in thinking about writing as a process. So, trust the process in order to think through your ideas rather than produce an idea. Don’t worry about anything wholly new or groundbreaking – 

just support what you see. I once got a huge splash from a paper I wrote in my Bible as  Literature course where I examined the passages regarding the term sheol, the ancient Hebrew  word for hell, and concluded they described the hot basin and range geography the east of  Judea (what is now Jordan and Iraq).  

You may choose to look at, interview, or say something about composition and writing studies or you may chose to say something about literature or creative writing. About the only thing  you cannot do is write a piece designed to be judged on its aesthetic criteria alone (i.e., a purely  “creative writing” piece).  

Latin Term	Greek Term	English Term	Process Activities
Inventio		Invention	Pre-writing; thinking;  planning; dreaming;  brainstorming
Memoria		Memory	Drafting; putting pen  to paper; writing; note  taking; shaping
Dispositio		Arrangement	Global Revision;  arranging; structuring
Elocutio		Style	Local Revision;  checking grammar;  word choice;  proofreading; line  editing
Actio		Delivery	Final proofing; printing

Make sure to understand that your own process is not linear or a matter of checking off boxes.  Instead, it is recursive, meaning it folds back on itself in several iterations/ drafts. As we draft,  we naturally attend somewhat to local revision, but that does not mean we can forego a  concerted effort at looking directly at local revision as its own separate stage of writing. You will  still need to come back to local revision even as you make sure everything is spelled correctly  the first time. 

Make sure the design augments or highlights the message. Don’t try multimodal for the sake of  being multimodal. Make smart design choices that help your audience see your point about  something.  

You are free to revise something written earlier. After all, this is about the writing process, not  the uniqueness of the product itself.