Location: Where are they?
Location summary table: map, menu, embedded

Text Menu

Anchor clustering vs. isolation

Readers tend to interpret anchors differently, depending on if they are:

• Anchor clusters (i.e., maps and menus). As anchors in anchor clusters are juxtaposed next to other anchors, the readers view these as navigational clues to the overall site: destinations, structure, and denotative nodal relationships. The anchor "father" when listed next to "mother" "son" "brother" sets up an expectation that the destination node will be about the father, and that the work has a node for all the other family members.
  
• Isolated anchors (i.e., embedded). As these anchors are juxtaposed to nonanchoral content, readers ask why one portion of the content is privileged as an anchor and use their answers to explore contextual relationships and connotations. The same embedded anchor in a sentence "my father was watching our every move" now raises the reader's expectation that the destination node will have something to do with the father's voyeuristic tendencies. If the destination node is about the father's adultery, we now can construct inferences about the sex scene in the current passage.

In our survey, most of the efferent sites used anchor clusters, inflating the navigational density of the sites. On the other side, aesthetic works were more evenly divided between isolated anchors and anchor clusters, reflecting the predilection for exploration.

What you interpret depends on what you see

Embedded anchors within the body of the node (either as part of the text or a portion of the graphic or the entire graphic) provide a visual or ergodic emphasis, depending on decorations:

• If visible, then the decoration becomes akin to textual emphasis such as italics or upper CASE or bold.
  
  
• If hidden (non-distinguished and not grouped in a menu), then the reader is expending a focused effort to find them. Readers tend to reward positive search results warrant a closer look, while punishing negative results by dismissing or devaluing their semiotic potential.

Two efferent sites (Wikipedia [68]and A List Apart [2]) had anchors embedded in the nodes, while aesthetic works had many different styles of embedding anchors in nodes from selective anchors such as Notes Toward Absolute Zero [42]to striking anchors such as I'm Simply Saying [35].

When you click depends on when you see the anchor

In discussing reader strategy, Jay Bolter sees the elements of hypertext as episodes (nodes) and decision points (links). He sees anchors as calls to participate by clicking, and assumes that hypertexts will put anchors at the end of a reading episode. He states, “episodes may be paragraphs of prose or poetry, they may include bit-mapped graphics as well, and they may be of any length. Their length will establish the rhythm of the story—how long the reader remains a conventional reader before he or she is called on to participate in the selection of the next episode. At the end of each episode, the author inserts a set of links to other episodes . . . [74, p. 122]" If Bolter is referring to anchor clusters in menus, then this desciption fits well. However, we found only a few sites where the anchor was at literally at the end of each episode or paragraph (Adaptive path [1]). Some works like Six Sex Scenes [14], Penetration [30], Joe's Heartbeat in Budapest [49], and Same Day Test [25], provide anchors only at the bottom of the node or screen, delaying the choice of following an anchor until the node is read--or at least scrolled through. Afterimage [7] embeds an anchor on the last word of the node, but as the node contains more than one paragraph, this may not fit Bolter's definition of episode.

Yet Bolter's point about the rhythm of the story rings true in all of these sites: the density, visibility, and location of embedded links determine the amount of words or content a reader processes before encountering the anchor's incipient invitation to leave the space. Earlier and more obvious anchors signal to readers the opportunity to leave the node without reading or scrolling further. In a performative reading, both Joyce and The Unknown authors will stop mid-node if an audience member shouts out another anchor, which shows the power of the early anchors. This illustrates that when faced with a decision point, readers may not wait to finish the current node before activating the anchor.