Assessment Category A: Print-Based Conventions

Traditional, print-based conventions governing scholarly writing are well known and generally accepted by the English Studies community. Texts that adhere to these conventions are more likely to be recognized and valued as legitimate scholarship. Print-based conventions most often reflected in submission guidelines for academic journals involve four significant aspects of scholarly arguments:

• content (what is argued within a text)
• arrangement (how the content is formally organized)
• documentation (how content is supported and contextualized)
• tone (how the content is delivered)

Identifying traditional conventions of scholarship within webtexts establishes familiar criteria upon which to assess these texts. Additionally, it is necessary to question the function of each convention and whether value is added in the shift to the non-traditional form. As the discussion below shows, more comprehensive criteria to account for the changes inherent in the presentation of arguments in the online medium can be added to this familiar assessment framework.