Language and Literature 2007 16(4)

While the book’s title could lead one to expect a book introducing the syntax of the HTML or Java code that underlies web pages, in fact the volume mainly deals with formatted text as encountered in a browser. Chapter 6, however, touches on issues of web page coding, noting, for example how some types of information are conveyed by the text while other types are relayed by the HTML tags. This chapter also contrasts the coder’s experiences reading and pasting HTML snippets with the reader’s experience encountering the formatted surface of a web page. Each of the chapters includes some examination of diachronic change in the short, but varied history of web-page stylistics. Common themes involve identification of the audience through pronoun choice and deictic terms, as well as font and color use. One illustration of the effect of lexeme choice concerns the distribution of verbal tense and aspect, showing how these can vary by the task that the page addresses, but may also show an American rather than British English influence on page design, as in the simple past tense of phrases like ‘AltaVista found 143,784 results ’ (p. 74). The syntax and layout of several error messages are analyzed, too, with Boardman including spoofs to show ho