ABSTRACT
As stated earlier, the emergence of electronic document forms such as hypertext, make it possible to embody alternative and multiple structures for electronic texts that could not be supported feasibly in the comparatively standard format of paper. Typically, advocates of the ‘new structures’ approach dismiss paper as a limiting medium, claiming it imposes a ‘linear strait-jacket of ink on paper’ (Collier, 1987). This is contrasted with the supposedly liberating characteristics of hypertext, which, with its basic form of nodes and links, is seen to be somehow freer or more natural. Nielsen (1990, p. 1) for example, would appear to reflect the consensus view with the following summary:
All traditional text, whether in printed form or computer files, is sequential, meaning that there is a single linear sequence defining the order in which it is to be read. First you read page one. Then you read page two. Then you read page three. And you do not have to be much of a mathematician to generalize the formula which determines which page to read next___Hypertext is nonsequential; there is no single order in which the text is to be read.
