The Visual Dimension of Writing

James E Richardson

Technical Writer Califomia, USA

In the spring of 1991 I received a phone call from Richard Doyle, who was then director of the art)ficial intelligence group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He was looking for someone who could write a popular science book with Graziella Tonfoni, his Italian friend and colleague. He explained that Tonfoni was a linguistics professor at the University of Bologna, Italy, and that he met her while working at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Doyle indicated she would be in California for a brief period and would like to sketch out a book for an English-speaking audience. He said the book would be about Tonfoni's visual approach to writing.

The possibility of a new approach to writingpiqued my interest. Even though I have earned a living as a technical writer for nearly 20 years, my relationship with writing has been less than idyllic. I understand the sentiments of an academic friend who recently confided to me that writing is the most difficult thing he does.

Figure 1: Word Explosion canvas

I write mostly software user guides and technical manuals, and as a freelancer nearly all of my work comes from steady clients or referrals. When some unfamiliar person calls me looking for a writer, I always politely refer the caller to someone else. But not so with Doyle's inquiry&emdash;I agreed to talk further with him. It was the concept of a visual approach to writing that intrigued me. For years I had felt something missing in my own approach.

I contacted Tonfoni in Italy shortly thereafter to convey my interest directly, and we agreed to work together when she arrived in California. Prior to her arrival, she began to introduce her ideas to me as we conversed by phone. She talked about writing in terms of 'shaping up text'&emdash;as if a writer uses language like a potter uses clay. The materials she mailed me were even more puzzling.

I must say I found Tonfoni's ideas about writing very strange at first. They were wholly novel and provocative. She had obviously dedicated an enormous amount of energy to developing and refining her ideas and techniques, and she had convincing evidence that they helped people communicate better. I was curious, captivated and looking forward to meeting her.

We met inJanuary 1992 and for about three weeks I got a crash course in Tonfoni's concept of visual writing. In our meetings we talked our way chapter-by-chapter through the contents ofthe book. I tape recorded our conversations, and, in a sense, they were a verbal draft of the book from which I later made a written draft. Tonfoni reviewed the written draft in Italy as I produced it and sent comments back to me to sharpen and expand it into a final form. The book was recently released as Writing as a Visual Art (Intellect Books, 1994).

Figure 2: Text-style symbols

Tonfoni's Visual Approach to Writing

Tonfoni's unusual combination of interests makes her approach to writing unexpectedly refreshing. Her concepts shows both a strong scientific influence as well as an historical and artistic one.

As a young linguist in Italy, she accepted an invitation as a visiting researcher in the Linguistics Department at MIT. After a brief period of work with Noam Chomsky, the father of transformational linguistics, she realised that her real interest was in helping people communicate better by understanding the complicated mechanisms of communication. She soon met Marvin Minsky, whose contributions to our understanding of how the mind works are prodigious, and shifted her research to MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Tonfoni expanded her expertise to cognitive science and art)ficial intelligence, and, during the years that followed, her research at both MIT and at the University of Bologna focused on how the human mind perceives, organises and communicates knowledge.

Tonfoni is quick to point out that in addition to her background in science, her long-standing interest in antiquity and art has also shaped her thinking. She notes, 'I've examined Egyptian sarcophagi, obelisks, and other artefacts exhibiting writing in the British Museum. I've visited Etruscan ruins in my native Italy and have observed many ancient forms of writing. Throughout Tuscany I've visually experienced hundreds of paintings. These encounters with antiquity and art have been vital stimuli for my thoughts about the visual aspects of writing.'

The desire to help people communicate more effectively led Tonfoni to work out a visual, physical approach to writing. Over the last ten years she has successfully applied it in education programs in Italy and Europe, as well as in workshops at various corporations in the United States. Her approach provides a robust set of carefully conceived visual aids and tools for writers.

Canvases

One visual aid is oddly enough called a canvas. Tonfoni takes the word 'canvas' from the realm of art and uses it as a metaphor for representing thought processes connected to writing. Just as an artist chooses a canvas appropriate in texture and size before actually drawing or painting, a writer needs to prepare to write by thinking about the text. Tonfoni's metaphorical canvases visually depict how the writer narrows the infinite possibilities of writing down to a text that has specific perspective, focus, intention and organisation.

There are fourteen canvases to help writers reflect on and visualise what they are doing as they prepare for and begin writing. The canvases progress from those that visually represent simple concepts related to words and sentences to those that depict complicated processes such narrating, explaining, and analyzing.

The simplest canvas is called 'Word Explosion' (Figure 1) and is a visual scheme for brainstorming. This canvas facilitates the cognitive process offree association, in which a writer thinks freely about a particular word or concept. The process of free association triggers in the writer's mind additional words and adjectives that give specificity to his or her thinking and writing.

Visual Symbols

Tonfoni has also invented visual symbols to enhance the communication and . cooperation between a writer and reader (figure 2). The visual symbols are like road signs that tell a driver what lies ahead, or the notation that directs a musician how to play a musical score. A writer places them beside or within text.

Text itself is often not precise enough to alert a reader to the writer's communicative intention. For example, can anyone know with certainty the intention ofthe simple sentence 'The window is open'? Is the writer just describing the state ofthe window, or perhaps implicitly expressing a desire to have the window closed because a cold draft is coming through it?

There are two kinds of visual symbols. The first kind makes a writer's communicative intention explicit, and these symbols characterise the communicative style of the text. The text-style symbols have action-oriented names, and their meaning is visually conveyed by the symbol itself.

The second kind of visual textual symbol facilitates an interaction between the writer and reader. These 'turn-taking' symbols enable the writer and reader to interact or take turns. A writer uses them to tell the reader exactly how and where to participate in interpreting or adding to the text. The turntaking symbols act much as the musical notation in a composition to direct the actions of orchestra members.

Figure 3: A combination of textual shapes

Textual Shapes and Objects

Tonfoni also uses the 'shape' oftext as a visual, explicit cue to its intention. She notes that we all passively accept 'message shapes' in our everyday lives. Traffic signs, for instance, are specific messages that we know immediately because of their shapes: round traffic signs carry prohibition messages, whereas triangular traffic signs carry beware messages. She reasons that since the concept of message shapes is so immediate and effective for traffic signs, why not apply it to planning, delivering and structuring text?

A writer then places text within a simple two-dimensional geometric shape such as a square, triangle or circle according to the particular function and intention of the text. Since readers trained in Tonfoni's system also understand the meaning of the various textual shapes, they perceive the genre of the text immediately.

For example, someone writing a story would inscribe the text that he or she creates in a square (figure 3). The square shape of the text then explicitly conveys that the text is a story. Likewise, a writer writing about a personal experience would shape the text into a triangle since that shape identifies it as a text related to the writer's memory of his or her own experience.

A writer is moreover free to organise and combine textual shapes as he or she wishes. On a twodimensional level, these shaped-text combinations take on an interesting and provocative quality.

A writer can also extend the shaping of text from twodimensional geometric shapes to three-dimensional objects. Textual shapes and objects share this fundamental feature: consistency and coherence between the spaceorganisation they imply and the specific kind of text they contain.

Tonfoni has developed six textual objects as visual aids for writers. These objects have roots in antiquity, and they include a cube, pyramid and cylinder (figure 4). The cube is for story writing. Each square facet ofthe cube represents a segment of narrative text that tells part of the story. The arrangement of each textual square on the cube shows how the parts of the story relate to one another.

The pyramid is for writing a story that triggers memories about something such as a wedding, birthday or some other personal experience. It consists of a square base containing the story and triangular sides, which each contain a memory text. The cylinder is more accurately called a cylinder/ column/papyrus. It is an invented object that allows writing on both the outside and inside, and it is for explaining something or providing instructions

Tonfoni challenges writers to use the textual objects as building blocks in creating their own unique spatial textual designs. For example, a writer might construct a kind of 'textual building' consisting of cubes, pyramids and columns. The experience of structuring text with objects in space gives the writer unique insight into the particular functions of the text and his or her specific intentions.

Click to Enlarge image

Figure 4: Textual pyramid and cylinder

Textual Machines

Of Tonfoni's visual aids for writers, textual machines are perhaps the most provocative and abstract. Textual machines represent cognitive processes - such as selecting and focusing - that occur during writing and reading text. Unlike the textual objects, a writer does not actually construct these machines. Instead, he or she imagines and observes the textual machines performing their functions in a kind of virtual reality. As a spectator in this virtual reality, the writer has an opportunity to experience and reflect on the processes occurring in his or her mind. As a writer imagines, visualises and experience the physical motion of the textual machines, he or she gains a deeper understanding of the complex, interconnected processes of writing and reading.

One ofthe textual machines that Tonfoni has developed is the Wheel for Text Browsing (figure 5). This machine resembles a waterwheel, in that it has a large wheel with bucket-like elements around its rim. The bucket-like elements contain paragraphs of a text. A reader reads the text by simply turning the wheel by hand.

One purpose of this machine is to help a writer think about how a reader moves through text. As the reader moves the wheel, how fast he or she turns the wheel relates to the speed of reading. The more difficult and implicit the text, the slower the reader turns the wheel. By imagining a textual machine such as this, the writer assesses how quickly or slowly a reader will be able to process information contained in the text that he or she is writing. If the writer assesses that the pace is too slow, he or she may wish to rewrite the text to make it easier and quicker to read.

Figure 5: Wheel for text browsing

The Promise of Tonfoni's Approach to Writing

Tonfoni's unique approach to writing is the most promising one I have encountered. I base my assessment on a reflection of my own struggles as a writer. Frequently I have felt I was not communicating what I wanted to when writing. I have also experienced writing as an arduous task, totally devoid of fun. Moreover in the throws of writing many technical ~nanuals, I have thought that my work was as far removed from a creative endeavour as the work of a bricklayer is from that of an architect. Had I been tutored in Tonfoni's approach to writing years ago, I most certainly could have avoided experiencing the brunt of these difficulties.

Writing as Effective Communication

Most of my negative experiences with writing have their origin in how I was taught to write. From the very beginning as a child up to the time I was an adult I was taught that grammar and syntax were not only the foundation but the essence of good writing. Writing was taught to me as the process of stringing words, sentences and paragraphs together, rigidly adhering to the rules of grammar and syntax.

As a consequence of the way I learned about writing, whenever I wrote I always got distracted by the details of grammar and syntax. I would write a sentence, read it and then start thinking about whether it was proper- or even worse - about how ambiguous its meaning was. I would also think about how the sentence related to the sentence that I wrote before it and to the next sentence I was going to have to write after it. Paragraphs provoked even bigger concerns, so that by the end of a few pages I was either confused about what I was trying to communicate or convinced that I had failed to communicate it clearly.

While not minimising the importance ofthe details of grammar and syntax, Tonfoni's approach emphasises a visual dimension of text. The visual aids and techniques invented by her help us become aware of the cognitive processes that come into play when we write. They also enable us to make our communicative intentions explicit to ourselves and our readers. Moreover, they empower us to go beyond the verbal details of language to visualising and structuring text so that it achieves the effects we want it to have on readers.

Writing as Fun

It is not surprising that given the way I learned to write, writing became for me a tortuous activity - much like trying to drive from Los Angeles to Boston while checking each mile of the roadway for defects. In fact, until I was well into adulthood, I sought to avoid writing whenever possible because it was such an unpleasant experience.

Sensing the plight of people such as myself, Tonfoni endeavours to put the fun back into writing. She believes that people learn and do best when they are enjoying themselves, and she openly says 'there is a very strong accent in my work on having fun'. She delights in referring to the application of her visual writing techniques as 'text origami' and 'text decoration' activities that imply a free, playful attitude.

Writing and Creativity

In high school I acquired the notion that 'creative writing' was a particular kind of writing. My teachers seemed to associate creative writing with 'literature' such as poetry, short stories, novels and the like. I was not inclined toward writing literature, so I assumed that the writing I did was somehow 'uncreative.' This distinction between so-called creative writing and other types of writing still has a subtle, self-deprecating affect on me today: Dare I consider the technical stuff I write as creative?

Tonfoni addresses this issue straight on and utterly rejects any notion that one type of writing is inherently more creative than any other. As a consultant for various corporations, she encountered an all too prevalent attitude that sees work-related writing as necessarily lacking creativity. She observed that people sometimes had such a dim view of their on-thejob writing that after hours they would go to a creative writing class to satisfy their desire to write creatively.

In Tonfoni's approach to writing, creativity is always connected with furfilling one's intention or purpose in writing. Tonfoni points out that a potter's creativity is not lessened when he or she makes an object that has a specific use or function: the potter can fashion a coffee cup just as creatively as an ornamental vessel. Similarly, a person can be just as creative in writing a technical report as he or she can be in writing a poem. The writer's creativity comes into play when he or she thinks visually about the text and thinks of ways to structure the text to achieve a specific communicative intention.

The promise of Graziella Tonfoni's approach to writing is that it provides a coherent, simple set oftools and techniques that leads one to experience a totally new way to think about and practice writing. As this experience occurs, one discovers how much fun writing is and how much more creatively and effectively he or she can write. As Graziella Tonfoni often says, 'Explore the possibilities and see what happens!'