A Copyeditor's Adventures in Multimedia Land

Publication in the 1990s encompasses worlds that most copyeditors never dreamed of when, with a mixture of delight and mistrust, we cautiously approached the first spell checkers. At least we could relate to the idea of mechanically checking spelling. The whole idea of multimedia is a little more unnerving.

Whalen, Elizabeth A. Editorial Eye, The (1998). Articles>Editing>Multimedia

Mind Mapping: Discovering The Rhetoric Of The Right Brain  

Mind mapping is a visual technique of unleashing rightbrain rhetoric. Words and concepts are written down and circled; the circles are joined together into sets and subsets that indicate relationships but not necessarily organization. For the technical communicator, mind maps can improve the writing product by helping to break mental blocks, clarify project focus and connections, collect data without worrying about hierarchy and order, and begin to organize at any given level (detailed or general). Generating a mind map can help improve writing by consciously and deliberately using the right brain and its intuitive rhetoric.

Whalen, Elizabeth A. STC Proceedings (1994). Presentations>Rhetoric