Hypertext vs. Annotated Paper Text

A few weeks ago in class, we discussed different varieties of digital text. One type was hypertext, where students may click on an annotation to take them to another site with more specific information. I thought it could be beneficial in the quest for knowledge if students used it properly; I could also see it used as a tool in the quest for distractions. I am not saying that the information on those sites is not important to the text or anything, but some students keep clicking and clicking until they are so far away from the chapter to be read, they get tired of reading and feel they have done enough for the day.   

 

As an ultra-book person (and employee at a bookstore), I think teachers could take advantage of the wide range of newly annotated titles. If you are reading something and come across a helpful annotation, it is much easier to think about it, then apply that new knowledge in relation to the text if you can get right back in to it. With hypertext, there are other links, each placing another page between you and the original text.

 

People from another school of thought are the novel purists. These people believe that any form of annotation detracts from the original story. I do not think it does. William Grimes of the New York Times puts it nicely in his article “You’ve Read the Novels (Now Read the Footnotes)” when he says:

The reader who does not know a farthing from a guinea, it is safe to say, will nonetheless grasp the great drama of attraction and repulsion that plays out between Darcy and Elizabeth. The cut and thrust of their conversation is timeless. Generations of young women who do not know the first thing about an entailed estate or a quadrille will recognize in Austen’s heroine a kindred spirit, a contemporary, a valued ally in the eternal war between the sexes.

Ultimately, I think annotations are a good thing, but it would depend on the class I was teaching at the time whether I would use a book or hypertext. If I thought the class would use the hypertext as a complement to the reading, and I could find the text online, it would work. Also, when I typed in “annotated fiction” at bn.com, almost 1,000 titles showed up from Alice in Wonderland and Cat in the Hat, to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ulysses. This tells me I probably have a greater chance of finding what I want to teach in print. Regardless, teaching with annotations will allow the reader to,

…insofar as such a thing as possible, read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ as it was read and understood at the time of its publication, with all the period details in place and correctly interpreted.  

William Grimes

“You’ve Read the Novels (Now Read the Footnotes)”

New York Times, March 16, 2007