Topical Index to the report
How I relate to titles
How I make up file names
E-mail addresses
How I select a title
Anchors
Reactions to the instructor's article
Go back to the lab report.
Go somewhere more fun than the lab report
How I relate to titles....
I think titles, file names, and e-mail addresses have different purposes. The obvious retort is: "of course they do, they are different functions!". this insight is on a personal level. The system I employ for remembering e-mail addresses is much different than that which I employ for writing file names or titles.
Since the e-mail addresses I have in my address book are personal, I use my knowledge of the person as their nickname. My roommate's name is Amy, so for a short name, I simply type in "amy". I have her listed as "roomie", because that's what she is. My boyfriend has his own nickname,(which I won't mention), and I call my brother "bro". These nicknames are easily remembered, because they serve as a personal mnemonic device.
This system of personal filing would not be appropriate in creating a title for a public document or a file name. Titles should be an indication of the content or "job" of what you are seeking. For example, file names. If I wanted to access this file, I have named it "hw14.html". This indicates to me that it is homework 14. For my other class (psych 459) I use "week14.html" instead of the prefix "hw". This serves a twofold purpose. It (1.) Tells me which class the homework belongs to, as indicated by the prefix "hw" or "week", and (2.) Tells me which week the homework is for.
My main exception to this method of naming files is my artistic home page (homework 10) that I call The Ladybug Zone. This name has a personal meaning, and really has no relation to the content (which, in turn, doesn't have much relation to the assignment) of the file. I did, however, use the excuse that this was an artistic home page, and therefore it was okay to use a personal aspect in the title. Besides, the title of the page is the LADYBUG ZONE, and the file name is "ladybug.html", so at least they have thos two threads in common. (I'm being defensive, huh?)
This semster has been quite a confusing one, having both classes on the Web. I've had to go to some lengths to keep both accounts seperate, as a result of being in only one of the two (psy 459a, or psy 409a) directories.
My first milestone seperating these directories was to give each and every file a clear title. For example: The title of this page is: "Diane Beauchemin's week 14 psych 409 lab report". I realize the title is lengthy, but it gives all of the important information necessary to answer the quetions: Who is the author? Which homework assignment am I reading? Which class is this for? These are questions I ask myself when I'm reading someone else's report. I think it's especially important to put your name in the title ( not necessarily first and last), so others can always know which lab report is being read.
Often, I have found myself reading a report, and see an interesting idea. It's frustrating to have to go to the information page (using the =) to look up the author. For those of us living in UNIX hell, this is somewhat of an inconvenience.
Anchors and headings
I try to make anchors and headings that fit the subject matter being discussed. I'm not going to write about submarines and use "fruitbowl" as my heading or anchor. Also, as Dr James requested, it's really nice when your anchor name that apears as text matches the actual anchor. That way, we don't have to flip the page and do a string search.
The Instructor's article
Dr. James' article on titles Psychological Characteristics and Document Retrievability was extremely long. He mentions the importance of titles as an orderly way of transferring ideas, and asserts that titles, sub-titles, headings and such are comments about the surounding text.
Dr. James says that titles have changed and evolved over the years; lengthening, sporting new features (colons), and new terminology (like the less frequent use of the word "disablity").
He talks about the experiments and their designs and howhe collected his data, and basically says that the subjects could more readily match subject headings in Humanities articles than Scientific or Technological articles. This is related to the fact that it's more dificult for non-professional (ie people not in careers related to the scientific ot technological field) to pick out related headings and such, because they have less knowledge of that subject.
The rest of the article relates titles to cognitive, affective, and sensoriomoter domains.
I found the file a little difficult to read, due to the technical terms, length, and lack of spaces between paragraphs. These are new problems we face when setting up e-text.