Well, it’s December, so the season of yearly wrap-ups has begun. One of the first pieces to cross my path was A List Apart‘s “What I learned About the Web in 2011“, a collection of short (1-3 paragraph) thoughts by various members of the web community. It’s a nice read, and covers a lot of ground, ranging from standards to what constitutes a book in these Kindle/Nook/Kobo saturated days. My favorite was probably Jon Tan’s “We Who Are Web Designers”, and his article of the same name he linked to. It’s a nice little manifesto of the field, and definitely worth a read. That being said, I think that the big issue of the year was mobile, and the development of responsive design. The List Apart article has plenty of thoughts on those issues, but here are mine.
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A rhetorician, as I’ve said earlier, is fundamentally a student of effective communication. An internet rhetorician, therefore, understands the web and uses it to effectively impact their audience. In my mind, four characteristics define the internet rhetorician.

The most fundamental characteristic of an internet rhetorician is mindfulness. Being mindful means being aware of not only the primary effects of a decision concerning design or coding techniques, but also for secondary effects. For instance, when deciding on a font to use for a website, a non-mindful decision would be based on how the font looks. (more…)