I love hyperlinking. Opening up a portal to another world through the simplest tools of highlighting, cutting and pasting has always been a special piece of magic. I am writing and editing suites of technical documents for a legal company and adore playing in the references sections. All those arcane statutes with their Parts, Divisions, Sections and Sub-sections are thrillingly express-posted to Go (collect $200) under my fingers.
I am musing on this because recently came across the term ‘immersive reading’ for the wholesale, complete transportation into the written word, being able to draw the reader into the writer’s world. I like the term for all reading where the goal is to come away with more than you started. Compliance documentation for management of aged care homes? Gotcha. Build my comprehension, give me a process to follow, let me see what to do, and how. Or perhaps it’s your favourite author’s new novel and you feel a pinpricking sense of a character’s inner self or your stomach drops with a plot turn…. Vastly different pursuits for different goals but immersion in the act of reading is required for both.
Be vigilant with hyperlinks. Be alert to their overuse or misuse. Peter Meyers is a builder of digital publications. He says: “Exercise restraint. The challenge can be in what to leave out. The first wave of experimentation was all about adding things, which can mess with the immersive reading experience. Don’t eject the reader from the experience of reading through distracting hyperlinks.” (Morrow 2011).
I feel this. I deplore the scraps of information we are fed, often with a hyperlink attached which says ‘over to you, dear reader. Work it out for yourself.’ Tie them into your text, interpret their best, their juiciest bits for your reader and leave them feeling a warmth towards you, the host, rather than like a refugee.
And hyperlinks are just the beginning of interactive tools. What makes you swoon?
References
P Meyers, blog, http://newkindofbook.com/about/
J Morrow (2011), ‘Going Digital: An Australian editor’s observations of developments in US publishing’, Beatrice Davis Editorial Report 2011-12, https://www.publishers.asn.au/documents/item/110, viewed 18/3/16.
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