Textmapping Exercise: Mapping a Magazine Article

These are your only instructions. If you have any questions which are not covered by these instructions, use your judgement and make a decision that makes sense to you. You have two tasks:

1. Make a scroll from the photocopies provided.
2. Map the scroll.

You have only 10 minutes to complete this exercise. Divide the work. Collaborate. Cooperate. Ask each other questions. Help each other.

In 10 minutes we will discuss the process and your experience of it.

Materials: A magazine. One photocopy set of an article from the magazine. One bag containing masking tape, glue stick, and colored markers.

Important Definitions

• typographic: Of or related to typography, which "...deals with all matters that affect the appearance of the page, and that contribute to the effectiveness of a printed message: the shapes and sizes of letters, diacritics, punctuation marks, and special symbols; the distances between letters and words; the length of lines; the space between lines; the size of margins; the extent and location of illustrations; the use of colour; the selection of headings and sub-headings; and all other matters of spatial organization or configuration."
  Crystal, David; "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language", p.190; Cambridge University Press (1987) ISBN 0-521-42443-7
• textstream: The linear flow of words in a text. Illustrations are not part of the textstream. By way of analogy, illustrations are like boulders in a stream; the textstream is like the water that flows around the boulders and down the stream bed.

Instructions

1. Make the scroll:
   • Arrange the pages in their proper sequence.
   • Use glue stick to assemble pages into a scroll.
   • Lay the scroll out on a long table or the floor; or use masking tape to hang the scroll on the wall.
2. Map the scroll:
   • Brown or Grey marker: Draw a box around each illustration.
   • Black marker: Separate the text from the illustrations by drawing a demarcating line around the textstream [see "Important Definitions"].
   • Red or Orange marker: Demarcate the beginning, middle, and end. Does this article have an introduction, a main body, and a conclusion or summary? Or perhaps just an introduction and a main body? Make an educated guess, then use the red/orange marker to demarcate each of these major chunks of text.
   • Green marker: Demarcate the sections. Is this article divided into sections? If you see typographic [see "Important Definitions"] evidence of this, circle each instance of that evidence and then draw a box around each corresponding section. If you see no typographic evidence of this, quickly read the first sentence of each paragraph, decide where you would put section divisions, and draw a box around each of those sections. Do not mark sub-headings (see "blue marker" instruction, below).
   • Blue marker: Demarcate the sub-sections within each section. Are the sections in this article further divided into sub-sections? If you see typographic [see "Important Definitions"] evidence of this, circle each instance of that evidence and then draw a box around each corresponding sub-section. If you see no typographic evidence of this, quickly read the first sentence of each paragraph, decide where you would put sub-section divisions, and draw a box around each of those sub-sections.
   • Yellow marker: Highlight unfamiliar words and potentially-important terms in the main body of the text. Scan quickly for them, and draw a box around any nearby text which offers more information - such as a definition (explicit or implied).