Writing online differs from using paper and pencil, too.It’s more informal, although most texts should be grammat-ically acceptable and use conventional spelling. Immediacy isanother difference: Writers post their writing within sec-onds. Third, writers create multimodal texts with digitalphotos, video clips, and website links. The fourth differenceis audience: Writers send e-mail messages to people in dis-tant locations, including military parents serving in Iraq andAfghanistan, and their postings are read by people world-wide.
Now, we need to teach our students how to navigate communicating in a much different way than what was taught in previous years. What I believe is most important in this list, though all aspects of online literacy are important, is teaching tone and understanding how to communicate with different audiences appropriately.