“We must write with an awareness that we are writing in the presence of other texts”

For me this sentence in the Hypertext reading by Landow really clicked as to what we are doing when we are writing online and this is the major difference between content online and in a book. Yes, when writing in a book you can reference another person’s work but there is no physical connection between your text and theirs. Whereas, online there is a link that can be clicked which physically connects the two pages.

This is something we should be fully aware of, that we’re writing within other texts and this can potentially change how the message we are trying to get across is decoded by the reader and how we are potentially changing the message the other text is trying to say.