Sunday, September 14, 2008

A true puzzle

Online journalism, because of its lack of traditional boundaries such as word counts, can be more dynamic than more traditional forms of journalism. However, this leaves us asking how much is too much?

The New York Times has a feature on its Web site that allows readers to double click on any given word and multiple definitions from American Heritage Dictionary, Columbia Encyclopedia, Medical Dictionary, WordNet, etc. While this tool can be useful to medical terminology or looking at references that are specific to New York, I was reading an article called The Bipolar Puzzle when I accidentally double clicked on the word "earlier." Sure enough a definition popped up, informing me of the definition of a word I already knew.

So like I said, this tool could be useful in some cases, but to put links to definitions with every word could prove to be bothersome for those of us who like to highlight as we read online.

When it comes to online, how much is too much?

2 comments:

Trisha said...

haha that's helpful

LKH said...

The absolute worst job ever: making sure each and every word in each and every story has a definition ready to pop up!