What is a Text?

As a college student, much of your time will be spent interacting with texts of all types, shapes, sizes, and delivery methods. Sound interesting? It is. So it’s important to understand what constitutes a text.

If you glance at almost any page of this textbook, you’ll see different elements of text: words, images, videos. Taken together OR taken separately, all of these things constitute a text.  A text is anything that you see, interpret, and assign meaning to.

You might have thought that texts were limited to written materials, such as books, magazines, newspapers, web pages, or social media posts. Those items are indeed texts, but so are movies, paintings, television shows, songs, political cartoons, videos, advertisements, maps, works of art, and even rooms full of people. If you can look at something, explore it, find meaning in it, and draw information and conclusions from it, you’re looking at a text.

So know that, although this digital textbook deals primarily with written text – how to read it and how to write about it at a college level – the concepts and competencies you learn can be applied to any type of text.  You’ll learn to interact with text, think about it, and express ideas about it.  The skills and strategies learned here have wide applicability.

The following video offers an interesting discussion of text, which comes from a Latin root meaning “to weave together,” as well as some interesting thoughts about reading text.

_{What is a Text and When is Reading?. Authored by: UNF Writes. Provided by: University of Northern Florida. Located at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOsxB6hd9Uk. License: Other. License Terms: YouTube video}

Content Attributions

• page on What is a Text?. Authored by: Carol Burnell, Jaime Wood, Monique Babin, Susan Pesznecker, and Nicole Rosevear. Adapted by Susan Oaks. Provided by: OpenOregon Educational Resources. Located at: https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/wrd/chapter/what-is-a-text/. Project: The Word on College Reading and Writing. License: CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial