3020: Great Job at Revising for Coherence
Notice the smart techniques this writer used:
- The Q&A format, which allows for understandable and specific headings.
- The way the title describes both the content and the format.
- The way the first paragraph tells us why we're here.
- The smart use of the list format to describe the advantages to CDs.
- The use of typographical aids like bolding and italicizing to "queue," or create information hierarchies.
Books on Compact
Discs: Questions and Answers
Compact discs, which have revolutionized the recorded music industry, are now
doing the same for the book publishing industry. This article tries to answer
some of the more common questions concerning this new technology.
How is the sound-recording technology applied to books? Music is
quite different from words and pictures.
The heart of the system is the same as that used for recorded music.
Any kind of information that can be digitized - converted to combinations of
the numbers 0 and 1 - can be transferred to the 4.7-in. diameter compact discs.
Instead of sound, words and pictures are digitized on common personal
computers, and transferred to compact disc. New technology hooks up a compact
disc player to a computer, and the information stored on the disc is then
output as words and pictures on the screen and as sound emitted through
a speaker.
What advantages do compact discs have over traditional storage and delivery
systems for printed information?
- Compact discs hold a tremendous amount of information. A 100-
volume encyclopedia could fit on a single disc! The space storage advantages
are considerable.
- Updates are much less expensive than with paper information. The
subscriber or purchaser simply receives an updated disc periodically.
- Compact discs offer the accessing ease of an on-line system. If the
user wants information on subatomic particles, he or she simply types in the
phrase and the system finds every reference to the subject. The
citations or even the entries themselves can be printed out on paper!
What about the legal issues, such as copyrights?
A number of reference books - such as trade directories and multivolume
encyclopedias - are already available in electronic form. Most trade
publishers are busy working out the legal issues involved in publishing their
books in compact disc format.
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