The Question | Two Paths | Remediation | Recommendations | Works Cited Two Paths to Hypertext: Pros and Cons (For the purposes of this essay, I will be using an artificial binary of two main paths to conceiving/composing/constructing hypertext: native and translated print text to hypertext.  In reality, there are nearly as many variations of these paths as there are writers. Although the binary of native and translated hypertexts is an artificial one, I hope it is a useful one too.)           Writers conceive/compose/construct hypertextual texts using two main paths. Some texts are created as native hypertexts; that is to say that from its conception, the text was intended to be hypertextual, with multiple nodes (and possibly multiple media) and a high degree of reader interactivity. Other texts, however, are converted – first born as a more traditional print document, then translated for a hypertextual medium. Some writers, particularly those steeped in hypertextuality, might argue that the purity of native hypertexts makes those superior to translated texts. Certainly, native hypertexts have the advantage that their arrangement and graphics are integral to the original plan, rather than being an afterthought in the translation process. On the other hand, beginning in a traditional writing environment may produce less anxiety for writers (see Bowie for a discussion of student discomfort in reading hypertext); translating a traditional, linear print text to hypertext makes palpable the commonly applied discourse conventions as well as highlighting those conventions in need of adaptation for a hypertextual writing/reading space.           While creating native hypertexts and translating print texts to hypertexts may both have advantages, when the writers are students and their texts are course assignments, we as teachers usually dictate, suggest, or at least influence which path our students take. As I debated which path my students should pursue, I worried that working in a hypertextual environment, foreign to my students, would be too disconcerting for them.  On the other hand, based on my students’ reticence to make substantive revisions to their print essays, I worried that they would never be able to make the sorts of global “re-visioning” necessary to translate a print text to a true hypertext. By playing with Jay David Bolter’s concept of “remediation,” I began to see that such translations are not only possible, but natural, not only on the larger scale of shifting media, but also on the much smaller level of writing individual texts.