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Web Wise: Understanding the Grammar of the Internet |
The Internet provides massive amounts of information making it essential to understand how it's organized. We know how to evaluate a book, magazine or other familiar print items. The Internet has a basic grammar and we need to understand it so we won't be manipulated by those who do.
To evaluate information on the Internet you need to know:
- Meta-Web information, URLs and links.
- Who the author of the site is.
- What the purpose of the site is.
- How to site a web site using MLA format.
- How Search Engines Work.
Anatomy of a Web Address
This is the web address of Arthur Butz, a chemical engineering professor at Northwestern University. His site Arthur Butz - http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/di/dc/camps.html presents a revised version of the Nazi Death Camps.
©Alan November-2003
Digital Threads, Links in and Links Out
Scan the links within a site (drag your mouse over the link) to see where the sites links go. By using your knowledge of web grammar you can get an idea of the author's purpose. A pattern of all internal links should be a red flag. Next find out who links into the site. Copy the URL of the site you are evaluating by selecting it and choosing copy from the edit menu.
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Go to www.altavista.com.
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Click in the search box and type link: (do not forget the colon).
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Paste the web address after the colon and click the search button.
Check it out, AltaVista gives you a list of sites that are linked into the site you are evaluating. Tip: if you get no results using the link command try shortening the web address.
The second step is to identify the author and investigate their credentials. Why would I want to know who owns a web site? You may want to know who publishes the information you are reading or identify the group that pays for the site. Remember, anyone can publish on the web, there are no Web Police to check on the content or if the authors are lying. Go to www.martinlutherking.org. Who is the author or group that created this site? Ownership of a web site can be found at -AllWhois This web site gives you information about the domain that hosts the site.
Sometimes it is difficult to determine what the domain name is. www.alltheweb.com will usually tell you the domain name for a given site. Paste the URL of the site you are interested in the search box. You will see information about links in and the links out which are a good indication of who endorses the site (or doesn't). Try using their Way Back Machine to see pictures of earlier versions of their web pages or to figure out the author of a tricky site.
Get in the habit of asking what the purpose of
the web site is. Many sites try to do several things at once.
Who is the author? Is he/she an authority you can trust on
the subject?
When was the site last updated? Is it current?
Why is the site on the Internet? Information? Entertainment?
Sales? Persuade/Manipulate?
MLA Citation for Web Sites
Internet (World Wide
Web)
The basic MLA format for online sources includes: 1. author’s name, 2. title of the work you used, 3. title of the online site or homepage, 4. date of its publication, if known, 5. date you found the source and 6. source’s complete web address in angle brackets < >. Note dates are written “international style” with day, month, & year.
These examples are form the Edmonds Community College web page:
A Professional or Personal Site:
Cook, Jeff. Half-Barrel Pond Page. 8 Nov. 2001 <http://www.jeffcook.com/hbpond.shtml>.
Latner, Richard B. Crisis at Fort Sumter. 1996. Tulane University. 14 Feb. 1998.
<http://www.tulane.edu/~latner/CrisisMain.html>.
Searching the Internet can be exciting and frustrating. It is important to be able to evaluate the sites you find by reading the web addresses, identifying the author and deciding on the purpose of the site. If you understand how search engines work you can be a more effective searcher. Knowing and using all these skills make you an information literate person. Check out Alan November's page to learn more details about how search engines work.
