Email
exchanges, MOO meetings, instant messaging, and bulletin boards build context
through multiple messages. Individual messages within these genres are brief and
succinct, rarely elaborating ideas.
In
email, replies routinely copy previous messages into the body of the current
message. In chat environments, the reader may scroll through preceding messages
or may open a file to "record" an entire session. Electronic bulletin
boards generally allow writers to reread previous posts in a separate window
while composing their own contributions to the discussion. Therefore, only the
briefest references to others' comments are needed to orient the reader to the
specifics of the writer's context for the current message.
The Web page, in contrast, supplies context and reference to others' writing through links to other Web pages.