North Carolina Writing Project

When we use the term “digital writing,” we refer to a changed writing environment—that is, to writing produced on the computer and distributed via the Internet and World Wide Web. We are not talking about the computer as a stand-alone machine for writing; although that particular technological development has indeed changed the writing process, the computer itself as a stand-alone machine is not revolutionary in the sense we mean. Rather, the dramatic change is the networked computer connected to the Internet and the World Wide Web. Connectivity allows writers to access and participate more seamlessly and instantaneously within web spaces and to distribute writing to large and widely dispersed audiences.