How do interactive texts reflect interactive functions?

ABSTRACT

The purpose of strings of text that are embedded in hyperlinks, buttons and other interactive elements on Web pages is to inform the user of the interactive function and its effects. The explicitness of these i-texts, such as link anchors or button labels, depends on their linguistic structure. I-texts that profile a process and contain a verb are more explicit than labels with a nominal profile. Clicking an i-text, an acteme, may have different interactive effects. The explicitness of the i-text seems to correlate with the impact of the interactive function, but the degree of interaction that the target page requires is not reflected clearly in the linguistic form of the i-text.

REFERENCES

• 1: Mark Bernstein, More than legible: on links that readers don't want to follow, Proceedings of the eleventh ACM on Hypertext and hypermedia, p.216-217, May 30-June 03, 2000, San Antonio, Texas, United States [doi>10.1145/336296.336370]
• 2: Andrew Bonime , Ken C. Pohlmann, Writing for New Media; The Essential Guide to Writing for Interactive Media, Cdrom, and the Web, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1997
• 3: Engebretsen, Martin (2000). Hypernews and Coherence. In Journal of Digital Information. 1:7 {online}. Available:http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v01/i07/Engebretsen/
• 4: Langacker, Ronald W. (1991). Concept, Image and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter
• 5: Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theatre, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 1993
• 6: Jim Rosenberg, The structure of hypertext activity, Proceedings of the the seventh ACM conference on Hypertext, p.22-30, March 16-20, 1996, Bethesda, Maryland, United States [doi>10.1145/234828.234831]
• 7: Susana Pajares Tosca, A pragmatics of links, Proceedings of the eleventh ACM on Hypertext and hypermedia, p.77-84, May 30-June 03, 2000, San Antonio, Texas, United States [doi>10.1145/336296.336327]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)

General Terms:
Design, Documentation, Human Factors

Keywords:
hypertext, interface, linguistics, links, navigation, semantics, usability