Stephen Bernhardt

Reader Response

In “Seeing the Text,” Stephen Bernhardt stresses visual presentation of writing as a way for the audience to understand the text. Bernhardt wants his readers to organize their writings in a format that will interest the reader. When writing a paper, visual methods are used show which ideas are most important to the overall meaning. Other methods are used to separate ideas and to group ideas with others. Bernhardt wants the reader to be aware of these methods, which may seem obvious, but will help with connecting to the audience.

Bernhardt’s passage has connections to Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” article. Berger explained the ways an image can be interpreted just by differences in the way people look, the background, etc. The same can be applied to text; someone can decide how they see text by how it is grouped, if anything is in the background of the text, any pictures or graphics, etc. McCloud’s article also goes along with the idea of visual text. Instead of simply writing a paper full of paragraphs, McCloud used a comic book format because he believed it would transfer his ideas to his audience in a more appropriate way.

I thought it was weird that Bernhardt would spend so much time on the concept of visual text when his use of it was not very interesting. Besides adding an example of something with effective visual organization, Bernhardt did not keep me engaged with his reading. I thought that someone who seemed to understand the concept could have done a better job of displaying it to the audience. Also, it would be tricky using Bernhardt’s concept in papers such as essays because there are so many established formats that students have to follow when writing. When making ads, power-points, or other graphic-aided texts, however, Bernhardt is helpful in making decisions on how to organize the work.

QDJ

#4) I believe essays are supposed to follow a specific format because it would be easier to point out features of the essay that should be included. For instance, in the typical five paragraph essay has the format of one introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and one conclusion paragraph. If an instructor wanted to find the main goal or idea in the essay, one could simply look to the intro. By established formats, the reader does not have to search all over for the point, and it also allows the writer to be organized in his or her approach to the paper.

AEI

#3) Gestalt is the way that the visual aspect of the text affects the reader. How the text is presented to the reader will determine the way that he or she takes in the information, if at all. Bernhardt uses gestalt as he has all the paragraphs closely connected, meaning that they all are related in some way. In between some of the paragraphs, he places graphics. These images give the reader a break from tiny font, chunks of words and actually lets the reader interact with Bernhardt’s ideas.