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TRANSFORMING TEXTS 45

becomes so critical to ensure that a student's visual rhetorical ability
stands equal to his or her written rhetorical skill. Students must be
aware of the many contexts in which their work may be read as well
as of the many audiences who may read the work.
However, demanding that students sharpen their visual rhetori-
cal skills may challenge a writing instructor's own control over
textual production in networked spaces. The professor may not
possess the knowledge or the comfort level to evaluate more than
surface errors in the writing. In some instances, the professor may
not even know how to use the software a student used to create an
internetworked writing form. Or the professor may only have a
rudimentary understanding of how something like HTML or even
e-mail functions. There also may be instances where the instructor
feels that if he or she reduces the emphasis on surface error to focus
more on the visual rhetoric, then claims of poor quality control or
weak instructional curriculum can sneak more easily into perfor-
mance reviews or recontracting dossier letters. Last, some faculty
members may sense that they must grade surface errors rather
than the more complex visual rhetoric issues because they or their
writing programs view internetworked writing activities as being
akin to journaling.
Still, if instructors are going to assign writing activities in net-
worked spaces, they must find a way to assess those assignments if
this work is to be given any serious consideration by students, ad-
ministrators, or other faculty members. This causes another prob-
lem with evaluating mundane e-texts. These e-texts are slippery
ones to assess because they conform more to professional writing or
everyday writing needs compared with the culturally salient texts or
aesthetically valued texts preferred in most academic circles. The
two latter groupings illustrate traditional textuality in ways that
mundane texts do not. Culturally salient and aesthetically valued
texts are rule or convention driven and dependent on extensive
top-down or linear beginning-to-end structures to function prop-
erly. Conversely, mundane texts link to pragmatic issues for specific
outcomes. Moreover, the language use that occurs in mundane texts
also echoes informal, pragmatic usage. Additionally, the mundane
text category frequently blurs the boundaries of conventional gen-
res—such as when a Ben and Jerry's annual business report chroni-
cles a corporation's cultural or social history or a Wall Street Journal
or Los Angeles Times article draws on the language of academics to