The language of the Web 201
Certain defining properties of traditional written language
(p. 25) are also fundamentally altered by the Web. In particular, its
staticness is no longer obligatory, in that the software controlling a
page may make the text move about the screen, appear and disap-
pear, change colour and shape, or morph into animated characters.
As the user moves the mouse-controlledarrow around a screen, the
switch from arrow to hand will be accompanied by the arrival of
new text. A mouse-click will produce yet more new text. Some sites
bring text on-screen as the user watches – for example,BBC News
Online had (October 2000) a top-of-the-screen headline appear
in the manner of a teleprinter, letter-by-letter. It is all a dynamic
graphology, in which the range of visual contrastivity available for
linguistic purposes is much increased, compared with traditional
print. One of the immediate consequences of this is that new con-
ventions have emerged as signals for certain types of functionality –
for example, the use of colours and underlining to identify hy-
pertext links (see below) and e-mail addresses, or to establish the
distinct identity of different areas of the screen (main body, links,
help, advertising banner, etc.). Web pages need to achieve coher-
ence while making immediate impact; they need structure as well
as detail; interactive areas need to be clear and practicable; words,
pictures, and icons need to be harmonized. These are substantial
communicative demands, and the increased use of colour is the
main means of enabling them to be met. As Roger Pring puts it, in
a discussion of Web legibility:^9
Control of the colour of text and background is the single most
important issue, followed by an attempt to direct the browser’s
choice of size and style of typeface.Whatever else the Web is, it is noticeably a colourful medium, and
in this respect alone it is distinct from other Netspeak situations.
(^9) Pring (1999: 14). It can be quite tricky, especially in relation to the choice of fonts, to
ensure that WYSIWTS [‘What You Send Is What They See’] (pp. 30–1).