By Alan Houser | STC Fellow
I recently listened to a podcast about jury instructions. These instructions guide the jury in how to properly evaluate testimony and evidence presented during the trial, and how to deliberate to reach a verdict.
Unfortunately, these instructions are often so full of legal jargon and obscure language that jurors find them confusing, not enlightening. Given the importance of the juror’s task, some jurisdictions are rewriting jury instructions in plain language. The results have been encouraging.
The podcast highlighted the importance of clear written communication, in audience-appropriate language, to support readers in performing tasks or successfully using products and services. Mastery at the CPTC Foundation level requires knowledge and understanding of concepts and techniques for developing clear, effective written communication, that also meets requirements for global audiences and translations. This article details some of the principles you must know to achieve the CPTC Foundation certification.
Guidelines for Writing Plain Sentences
Clear writing starts with clear, plain sentences. Richard Johnson-Sheehan provides eight guidelines for writing plain sentences. I often use these guidelines myself when writing or editing. You can use these guidelines to untangle opaque writing and turn it into plain, clear prose.
- Make the subject of the sentence what the sentence is about. Readers should be able to identify the subject of the sentence. Opaque prose often hides the subject in an object or subordinate clause.
- Use the “Doer” as the subject of the sentence. Would a sports writer ever write “The ball was thrown by her?” The actor should generally be the subject of a sentence.
- Use a verb to express the action, or what the doer is doing.Action verbs form the basis for clear, direct sentences. Sentences based on forms of to be (e.g., is, are, were) are generally more verbose and less clear.
- Put the subject of the sentence early in the sentence. Don’t defer the subject with lengthy subordinate clauses. Clear, direct sentences will put the subject early in the sentence.
- Eliminate nominalizations. Nominalizations are verbs turned into nouns, and are especially common in business and technical jargon. For example, decontamination (n) vs. decontaminate (v). Nominalizations result in longer sentences, with weaker verbs than equivalent sentences written with the original verb forms.
Johnson-Sheehan notes that first drafts are often filled with nominalizations, because we tend to think in terms of people, places, and things (all nouns). But on subsequent drafts, pay attention to nominalizations and convert them to action verbs.
- Eliminate excessive prepositional phrases. By specifying relationships between objects, prepositional phrases are invaluable in technical communication. However, multiple consecutive prepositional phrases quickly turn plain language into confusion.
Writers often use too many prepositional phrases, especially when writing highly technical material. Untangle your strings of prepositional phrases to turn ambiguous, confusing prose into clear technical communication.
- Eliminate redundancy in sentences. Can an item be singularly unique? Can a person be unexpectedly surprised? Can a resource be thoroughly depleted?
In each case, the adverbs singularly, unexpectedly, or thoroughly provide no additional or nuanced meaning over the single adjective. It is sufficient to say that an item is unique, a person is surprised, and a resource is depleted.
- Write sentences that are “breathing length.” How long should a sentence be? A good writer will vary sentence length, although long sentences are more likely to confuse the reader. Johnson-Sheehan recommends that sentences be “breathing length.” If you read a sentence out loud, and need to pause to inhale before you finish the sentence, the sentence may be too long.
Effective Writing Techniques for Websites
If you are writing for a website, plain language is especially critical. Websites bring their own challenges over other publishing formats. Websites present enhancements for our readers (navigation, search, linking) and challenges (constrained screen size, scrolling) compared to print. Johnson-Sheehan recommends the following techniques for website writing:
- Keep sentences short. While “breathing length” may be a reasonable guideline for sentences in print publications, sentences on websites should be shorter, on average, than sentences written for print publication.
- Keep paragraphs short. Paragraphs on websites should typically contain only a few sentences, to support readers who scan the website content to find the information they seek.
- Links should reflect titles. When writing links, be sure the text of the link matches the title of the target page.
- Create a consistent tone. The tone, or style, of the website should match the content. An e-commerce website should probably use a persuasive style. A medical website might use a plain style when describing symptoms, but use a persuasive style when encouraging readers to see a doctor.
Website Writing for Global Audiences
Because a website visitor can come from anywhere on the globe, writers for websites must be especially aware of the needs of a multinational audience. Johnson-Sheehan provides several tips for writing for transcultural readers.
- Use common words. Slang and business jargon tend to be cultural and meanings can change quickly. Favor common words with stable definitions.
- Avoid clichés and colloquialisms. Do you think your idea is a home run? Your international readers who are not familiar with baseball may wonder why your idea causes people to run home.
- Avoid cultural icons. Use symbols, particularly symbols that may have a political or religious significance, sparingly and only when necessary.
- Minimize humor. Humor is highly cultural and notoriously difficult to translate. Humor in one culture may not be funny, and may even be offensive, in another culture. Use humor with extreme caution.
- Translate your website. To provide the best possible experience for your international audience members, translate your website into the languages of your target visitors.
Other Components of the Written Communication Core Competency
The CPTC Foundation certification also requires knowledge and understanding of the following additional concepts and techniques for developing clear, effective written communication:
- Writing effective paragraphs
- Types of sentences in paragraphs
- Plain versus persuasive style: characteristics of each; when each is appropriate
- Techniques for writing plain paragraphs
- Techniques for writing in a persuasive style
You can learn more about each of these areas in the Certified Professional Technical Communicator (CPTC) Study Guide and the Johnson-Sheehan textbook.
Unreasonable Doubt? Clearing Up the Convoluted Language of Jury Instructions, http://www.wnyc.org/story/unreasonable-doubt-clearing-convoluted-language-jury-instructions/
Johnson-Sheehan, R. 2015. Technical Communication Today, 5th ed. Boston: Pearson.
Certified Professional Technical Communicator (CPTC) Study Guide, Society for Technical Communication, see https://www.stc.org/certification/ for current URL.
ALAN HOUSER is president of Group Wellesley, Inc., a Pittsburgh, PA-based company that provides authoring, content management, and workflow services to technology-oriented businesses, and training to technical communicators in technologies and best practices. Alan is a distinguished consultant and trainer in the fields of XML technologies, authoring and publishing tools, and technical communication best practices. Alan is an STC Fellow, Past Society President, member of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee and Lightweight DITA Subcommittee, and an authorized CPTC trainer.
Group Wellesley, Inc. is pleased to provide public, online, and private CPTC Exam Preparation trainings. See www.groupwellesley.com/cptc for our current schedule, or contact Alan at email@example.com.


Destructive Creativity on the Social Web: Learning through Wikis in Higher Education
Type of work: Book Chapter
Categories:Education | Social Media & Social Software
The use of group oriented software, or groupware, encourages students to generate their own content (McGill et al, 2005) and can foster supportive and dynamic communities of learning (Shaikh & Macauley, 2001). One form of open architecture groupware known as the Wiki is freely available online in several versions, and enables tutors to quickly set up online spaces which can be edited by students, at any time and from any location. Online social spaces of this nature can be used to encourage creative writing and to engage students in critical discourse through focused discussion, but Wikis also have disruptive potential and can cause dissent and disharmony within the group. This chapter aims to highlight some uses of the wiki as a social writing tool, reporting on student perceptions of the limitations and benefits. The chapter also focuses on the tension between creative and destructive uses of wikis and concludes by offering recommendations on the effective use of wikis in mainstream higher education. The use of interview data gathered from a study conducted with a group of student teachers in 2007 is included to support the key messages of this chapter.


Vanadium trioxide is dark gray crystalline powder, which is of orthorhombic system structure and odorlessness. It is insoluble in water and alkali, however soluble in acid. Vanadium(III) oxide burn fiercely after heating in air. It absorb oxygen in air and turn to vanadium(IV) oxide. Vanadium pentoxide is the raw material.
|CAS No.:1314-34-7||EINECS No.:215-230-9||Molecular Formula:V2O3||Molecular Weight:149.88|
|Melting Point:1970℃||Boiling Point:3000℃||Density:4.87||UN 2862 6.1/PG 3|
Vanadium(III) oxide is colouring agent for glass and ceramic. It also act as catalyst when sulfur dioxide oxidize to sulfur trioxide and ethyl alcohol oxidize to acetaldehyde. It plays a role in plant inoculate.
Vanadium trioxide is raw material for glass that prevent ultraviolet ray. It is also a kind of eikonogen. It is raw material for making yellow glass and nigrosine.


By: Jackie Kuehl, Kenitra Foote, Justin Ortt & Allison Larson (2017)
Concordia University- St. Paul
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kim Flottemesch
The topic of reactive body language and eye contact between strangers is necessary research because it differs from typical face to face relational interactions. Stranger interactions among genders and one’s eye contact are often avoided by most people, whether it’s due to the setting, awkward feelings, or one’s vulnerability. It seems like there is a common communicative trend found in Late Generation Y and Early Generation Z, is avoiding eye contact with strangers when outside of one’s comfort zone (Nemko, 2016). The lack of stranger interaction involving eye contact and its effect on society is considered in this study. The researchers chose to investigate how eye contact between strangers differs in today’s society. Specifically, the researchers explored the effect of eye contact in different settings and compared that with race and gender. Participants of the study hailed from a private, faith-based institution of higher education in an urban area in the Midwestern United States. The study thoroughly addressed the relationship between how one averts their eyes because there is an uncomfortable feeling. The lack of eye contact can show a lack of empathy towards the other person; they may go through their day feeling as if they don’t exist.


Available from Boydell and Brewer
Right of Election:
in the freemen
Number of Qualified Electors:
Number of voters:
at least 172 in 1702; 338 in 1713
|19 Feb. 1690||SIR THOMAS LITTLETON, Bt.|
|21 Oct. 1695||HON. JAMES BERTIE|
|SIR THOMAS LITTLETON, Bt.|
|23 July 1698||HON. JAMES BERTIE|
|SIR THOMAS LITTLETON, Bt.|
|4 Jan. 1701||HON. JAMES BERTIE|
|SIR THOMAS LITTLETON, Bt.|
|27 Nov. 1701||HON. JAMES BERTIE|
|SIR THOMAS LITTLETON, Bt.|
|18 July 1702||HON. JAMES BERTIE||145|
|SIR WILLIAM GLYNNE, Bt.||103|
|Sir Thomas Littleton, Bt.||72|
|Sir Thomas Wheate, Bt.||231|
|11 May 1705||HON. CHARLES BERTIE|
|Sir John Walter, Bt.|
|3 May 1708||SIR THOMAS WHEATE, Bt.|
|7 Oct. 1710||SIR THOMAS WHEATE, Bt.|
|27 Aug. 1713||SIR THOMAS WHEATE, Bt.||172|
|Sir Thomas Sebright, Bt.||165|
|Election declared void, 16 Mar. 1714|
|24 Mar. 1714||SIR THOMAS WHEATE, Bt.|
In the last decades of the 17th century Woodstock was a modestly sized market town of few charms and no special significance. Without a staple manufacture to sustain its economy, the town was, in the 1680s, considered to be ‘poor’. It was, however, beginning to feel some advantage as a social resort, as the local horse racing inaugurated by the 3rd Lord Lovelace (John†) in the later 1670s grew in popularity with gentry from the surrounding areas. The construction of Blenheim Palace nearby during the two decades after 1705 brought substantial economic benefit, and with it a new affluence. It also radically changed the face of politics in the town, as the Marlboroughs swiftly took over and dominated the parliamentary seats.2
Woodstock’s corporation and its 200-strong body of freemen invariably deferred to aristocratic influence. One key medium of outside intervention was the high stewardship of the corporation, another the stewardship of the royal manor and park of Woodstock which bounded the town on its western and southern flanks. In 1690 these offices were held by the young Earl of Lichfield by virtue of his marriage to one of Charles II’s natural daughters by Barbara Villiers. Lichfield’s close rival in the borough was Lord Lovelace, whose popularity in the Whig cause had put him out of favour with the Court and had earned his dismissal as steward of Woodstock Park in 1679 in favour of Lichfield. A third interested magnate was the Tory 1st Earl of Abingdon, who had established control over one of the seats during the 1680s. The outcome of the 1690 election in Woodstock was decidedly Whiggish in contrast to the balance struck between the parties in the previous decade, though quite why Abingdon chose not to mount any defence of his Tory interest in the borough as he had done in 1689 is unclear. It is possible that the strength of Whig sentiment among the electorate had for a while overwhelmed the Bertie interest, though it is equally possible that Abingdon’s attentions were elsewhere engaged. Sir Thomas Littleton, 3rd Bt., was returned for a second time alongside a Whig newcomer, Thomas Wheate of nearby Glympton Park. Though not himself an Oxfordshire man, Littleton owed his seat primarily to Sir Littleton Osbaldeston, 1st Bt.†, his kinsman. Osbaldeston’s influence in the borough derived in part from the proximity of his seat, Chadlington, a short distance to the east of the town, but chiefly from his earlier role as overseer of Lichfield’s interests in the town and as his deputy in the stewardship of the manor during the Earl’s minority. Lichfield’s acquiescence in the election of a Whig whose pretensions were unshakeably pro-Court was certainly incongruous in view of his own conduct at the Revolution. He had been one of James II’s last few retainers before the King’s departure for France in December 1688, and subsequently had refused the oaths to William III. By supporting Littleton, however, he may have hoped to make his peace with the new political order without compromising his conscience. Though it is not immediately apparent who instigated Wheate’s candidacy, Lovelace, recently restored to favour, and free once more to champion the Whig cause, was almost certainly involved in the election of both men. The fact that Lovelace had been at the forefront of the Whig interest in Woodstock and subsequently sought to consolidate his position was demonstrated by his brash attempt to ‘seize’ Woodstock Park from Lichfield in the summer. Lovelace no doubt felt that Lichfield’s persistent refusal to pledge loyalty to William III provided a justification for his own intentions of destroying the Earl’s influence. Both he and Hon. Thomas Wharton*, who also had budding electoral pretensions in the borough, had prevailed with the King to begin legal proceedings to divest Lichfield of the park. In mid-July Lovelace moved in, dismissing Lichfield’s agents and keepers, and spent two days ‘ordering affairs’ to his own liking, while at the same time, Wharton was declared ‘lieutenant’ of the park. However, Lichfield’s close royal connexions sprang immediately to his defence. On representations to the Queen from Lichfield’s brother-in-law, the 1st Duke of Grafton, Lovelace was commanded to leave the park. Lichfield’s chief man-of-business in the Woodstock area, John Cary of Wilcote, a lawyer and senior town councillor, informed an acquaintance that ‘the Duke carried it high there . . . and discharged one who had carried it ill against my lord before’. At court Lichfield was also supported by the leading minister, the Marquess of Carmarthen (Sir Thomas Osborne†) who had the legal proceedings quashed.3
The crusade against Lichfield was renewed in 1692, this time by the town’s governors. Senior members of the corporation had grown uneasy over Lichfield’s resistance to their invitations to take the statutory oaths for the high stewardship, and late in August the common council voted to deprive him of the office. Deeply mortified, Lichfield complained to Cary: ‘your town of Woodstock are the basest and meanest of people, else they could never intend so spiteful an action as to displace a man of my quality that has been so kind to them’. When shortly afterwards the council defied his instructions and elected Lovelace, he scented treachery among those formerly ‘my friends’. It would seem most likely that Lovelace himself had been the prime mover in what was clearly a preconcerted affair. This was not, however, the end of Lichfield’s role in Woodstock’s electoral politics. Lovelace proved himself a difficult patron to please, as Sir Thomas Littleton soon found. The death in 1691 of Osbaldeston had compelled Littleton himself to curry favour with the corporation, which he did largely through the assistance of John Cary, and with the benefit of Lovelace’s goodwill. But by March 1693 Lovelace suddenly turned against him, threatening to replace him at the next election. Mystified by this change of heart, Littleton could only speculate that his support for the East India Company had annoyed Lovelace’s son-in-law, Sir Henry Johnson*, a leading member of the interloping syndicate, who ‘possibly has influenced his lordship against me’. He made the strongest professions of gratitude to the corporation via Cary for ‘their service with which I have been already so much honoured’, hoping thereby to preserve his chances at the next election should he fail to win back Lovelace’s esteem. The opportunity during the summer of effecting some ‘small piece of service’ for the corporation enabled him to demonstrate his continuing commitment to the town. In August he told Cary of his intention of waiting upon Lovelace, ‘to tender my service’, but added, ‘if any other ways are requisite to reinstate me in his good opinion, I am too old to learn them’. However, Lovelace was already terminally ill from the effects of excessive drink and died the following month. But it was not until 1705 that the vacant high stewardship was filled.4
Abingdon encountered no difficulties in reasserting his interest in the borough during the election of 1695. At first he made offers ‘off and on’ to Sir John Walter, 3rd Bt.*, of Sarsden, who held the fee farm rent of the manor of Woodstock, but then set up his younger son Hon. James Bertie and was soon reported to be ‘secure for him by consent of all the town’. As the outgoing Court Whig Members, Littleton and Wheate, both sought re-election, they faced the unseemly prospect of opposing each other over the second seat. Wheate was considered to have the better chance: Paul Foley I* informed Robert Harley* that ‘the election is about 19 townsmen and 20 foreigners’, the majority of whom were expected to vote for him. There was some early optimism among senior Tory figures, such as the Earl of Clarendon (Henry Hyde†), that an alliance between Wheate and the Bertie interest might have the desirable effect of unseating Littleton, an important pillar of the Court Whig interest in the Commons. None the less, Wheate was most reluctant to disoblige his party chiefs, and seems to have been finally discouraged from standing by Wharton. For his own part, Littleton had prepared the ground for a possible contest with Wheate by enlisting support from Lichfield, who as early as July had instructed Cary that ‘nothing ought to be done to seem to show any sort of regard or civility to him [Wheate], or anything he says’, while contingency arrangements had been made by Cary and other important townsmen to fight for Littleton in the event of a contest. Throughout the election period, however, Lichfield was compelled to disguise his support for Littleton and publicly declare his neutrality. This was primarily owing to the animosity then subsisting between Littleton and the Duke of Leeds (the former Lord Carmarthen) who was Lichfield’s great ally and protector at court. Cary, an effective channel of corporation support and approbation, led the way therefore in promoting a joint return of Littleton and Bertie, and Lichfield gave him instructions to distribute venison from the park as he saw fit, but not to do it in his name. Despite outward displays of ‘civility’ between Littleton on the one hand and Abingdon and his sons on the other, the re-establishment of the alliance was fraught with underlying tensions which became pronounced in the weeks immediately after the election. Much to his annoyance, Lichfield discovered that the Berties, notably Abingdon himself, his heir Lord Norreys (Montagu Venables-Bertie*) and his half-brother Hon. Charles Bertie*, were privately endeavouring to make mischief for him with Leeds by intimating that Lichfield had connived, through Cary, at Littleton’s recent selection as recorder of the borough and as MP. The newly elected James Bertie was openly contemptuous of Cary despite having received vital ‘kindness’ and assistance from him in the election. Lichfield thought it ‘very silly and mean in Abingdon to show so much spleen at Littleton privately, when I think outwardly at Woodstock he seemed well pleased that his son James should join with him’. The ‘spiteful underhand actings of these Berties’, as Lichfield described them, was clear evidence of how grudgingly they regarded their electoral arrangement with Littleton. In December Lichfield cautioned Cary to ‘continue your friendly correspondence to Sir Thomas without regarding whether they are much pleased with it or no, and you will be much in the right so to do’. Although its beginnings were inauspicious, the Littleton–Bertie partnership endured, albeit uneasily, through three more elections.5
By the next election, in 1698, Abingdon had lost his power base within the county, Wharton, now Lord Wharton, having replaced him in May the preceding year as lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum. In Woodstock Littleton was keen to capitalize on this change and stress his own personal association with the new lord lieutenant, thus to establish a superiority over the Bertie interest. He encouraged Wharton’s intention to hold the summer quarter sessions in the town. Legal advice had to be sought from the attorney-general since Oxford was the usual venue, but, as Littleton commented to Cary towards the end of April, ‘my lord, when he shall be well advised of his own power, seems resolved to exert it for the benefit of Woodstock, and you may be sure I shall use my best endeavours with him to bring anything about that may so much tend to the town’s advantage’. Littleton felt confident at this early stage that Abingdon ‘will not use his endeavours to throw me out, but rather permit the corporation to proceed to a friendly and unanimous election’. On 17 May he wrote to Cary expressing pleasure at news that ‘the town seems inclinable to choose their present representatives again, which will occasion the continuance of their goodwill and kindness to one another and avoid all the heat and divisions betwixt friends and neighbours’. With little apparent difficulty, he and Abingdon agreed to conduct the election in a spirit of concord, each realizing that too much risk was involved in a contest, and that neither side was strong enough to overpower the other.6
The partnership entered a period of renewed uncertainty following the death of Abingdon in May 1699 and the succession of his son Lord Norreys. In December Littleton, now Speaker of the House, broached with James Bertie the subject of their future electoral collaboration, reporting the outcome to Cary: ‘I acquainted him I had so far a good correspondence with my Lord his father as that we joined together to keep the corporation good friends without dividing neighbours.’ However, Bertie’s response was far from encouraging: ‘he was pleased to tell me he did not join against me, or something to that purpose, but his answer was so cold that I find I must shift for myself as I can’. It was plain by December 1700, during the run-up to the first election of 1701, that the Berties’ attitudes had become more bellicose, their mood reflecting the recent Tory gains at court. They appear at first to have partnered Bertie with Sir John Walter, a Tory whose adoption as candidate the previous Lord Abingdon had considered in 1695. But the uncontested re-election of Bertie with Littleton would suggest that the latter’s own carefully cultivated standing with the corporation and among the freemen was too strong to be disregarded. Much the same conditions prevailed in the second election of 1701 when Littleton was again able to rely solely upon the goodwill of the corporation. To Cary he wrote on 13 Nov.:
it is impossible for me to forget your long kindness and friendship. I have already acquainted Mr mayor and Mr Ryves [the town clerk] of my design to appear again and beg the continuance of my friends’ favour at Woodstock which I have desired them to communicate to the corporation.7
With the appointment of Abingdon to the lord lieutenancy in place of Wharton soon after Queen Anne’s accession, the Berties acquired fresh political confidence. Their objective in Woodstock by this stage was to oust Littleton, the one remaining Whig Member in the county, by forcing a contest. Alongside James Bertie they set up Sir William Glynne, 2nd Bt., of Ambrosden, who had represented Oxford University during the 1698 Parliament. On the Whig side, Littleton drafted in Thomas Wheate, who, since being forced to stand down in 1695, had failed to secure a seat elsewhere, but had been created a baronet in 1696. Bertie’s position being assured, the main struggle was between ‘the Littleton party’ and Abingdon on behalf of Glynne, each side seeking to maximize its support from the previously untapped reserves of non-resident freemen also entitled to vote. The Tories scoured resourcefully, their range of tactics illustrated in a letter from William Whitton, the comptroller and surveyor of the park, to Sir William Trumbull*, the former Tory secretary of state:
Mr Napier, who is my Lord Abingdon’s friend in this troublesome election, came to me last night and says that they have found [that] Mr Pawling, a mercer of Oxford formerly but now belonging to the stamp office, is a freeman of Woodstock and they are afraid the Littleton party will engage him now. Mr Napier requests the favour of you to send to this Mr Pawling to give his vote for my Lord Abingdon which he will believe he will do, having received his place from you as Napier is informed.
At polling the Tory candidates secured both seats while Littleton trailed in third place by a margin of 31 votes. Though Wheate evidently fought his campaign in tandem with Littleton, his mere 23 votes revealed the weakness of his own interest in the borough.8
The Berties’ dominion over the borough was short-lived, however. In January 1705 the Queen granted the Duke of Marlborough (John Churchill†) the royal manor of Woodstock and hundred of Wotton, a demesne of some 22,000 acres, in recognition of the nation’s gratitude for his military prowess. The commissioning of a sumptuous baroque ducal seat within sight of the town’s south-western edge indicated the arrival of a mighty new interest in the borough which was bound to conflict with the longstanding influence of Abingdon. The corporation lost little time in honouring the great man whose residence would lie in their midst, and in March they selected Marlborough as their high steward, a distinction which they had never accorded Abingdon. The Duke moved quickly in bringing his new-found authority to bear in the locality during the spring months as the general election approached, though initial caution and a desire to compromise with Abingdon was apparent in his preference for fielding only one, and not two candidates. Since both Tory Members elected in 1702 had chosen to retire, Abingdon put forward as new candidates his cousin, Hon. Charles Bertie, and Sir John Walter, whose election at Woodstock the Berties had sought previously. Marlborough had initially given Abingdon ‘all assurances and promises’ that Bertie and Walters would not be opposed, but then intruded his own candidate, his right-hand man William Cadogan, ‘an Irish colonel’, which Abingdon, as he told a meeting of Tory magistrates, ‘conceived was no small dishonour to the gentry of this county’, and resolved to oppose with the ‘utmost vigour’. It would seem that Marlborough had wished from the start to bring in Cadogan, and was irritated to discover that the directions he had given to this effect to his surveyor-general of works at Woodstock Park, Samuel Travers*, who henceforth was to play a key part in managing the Duke’s interest in the borough, had been overlooked. Marlborough entrusted the task of securing Cadogan’s election to two close associates, Henry St John II* and James Craggs I*, and enlisted support from (Sir) Simon Harcourt I*, whom he had appointed as his deputy to preside over Woodstock’s manorial court. He had been led to believe, probably by St. John, that Cadogan’s election was secure, and that any dispute or contest would be between the two Tories, Bertie and Walter. Despite his own seigneurial position, however, he was forced to give way to Abingdon over Bertie’s election and accept a contest between his own candidate, Cadogan, and Walter, a situation which St. John regretted he himself had not been able to avoid, and which led the Duke to conclude he ‘may not be well used’ by the freemen. Marlborough was determined none the less ‘to suffer anything rather than give it up, for by standing the poll I shall know who are for and who are against me, so that I may be the better able to take my measures for another time’. In a letter to Robert Harley, Lord Treasurer Godolphin (Sidney†) reflected on the irony of the electoral struggle now confronting Marlborough at his very doorstep, and the potential humiliation if he failed: ‘this battle at Woodstock vexes me very much; what good will it do us to have Lord Marlborough beat the French abroad if the French at home beat him’. But in spite of all their fears and anxieties, the Marlborough camp was successful, St. John soon afterwards informing the Duke that Cadogan had succeeded ‘by a considerable majority’. In June Godolphin contemplated removing Abingdon from his office as constable of the Tower on account of his opposition at Woodstock, but Marlborough felt some other ‘occasion’ should be found, ‘it being a reason that will not be approved of’. Abingdon, whom Marlborough knew to be ‘so idle a talker’, later blamed the Duke for making unreasonable demands over the Woodstock election which had ‘seemed to imply a desire you had to break with him’. It is doubtful, however, whether Abingdon ever in fact intended any agreement with Marlborough. The disharmony at Woodstock was made inevitable by the gulf already emerging between the ‘duumvirs’ and their Tory colleagues as a result of differences over occasional conformity. In the summer months further steps were taken in the consolidation of the new Marlborough interest. It was already apparent that the building of Blenheim was to be a Whiggish venture. Both John Vanbrugh, the architect, and Travers, the surveyor-general, were keenly disposed to the Whig cause. Appropriately, Vanbrugh had ascertained that stone could be obtained more economically from the quarries belonging to the Whig squire (Sir) Thomas Wheate at Glympton than from those of the Tory Earl of Rochester (Lawrence Hyde†) at Cornbury. In the aftermath of the election Travers engaged busily in the distribution of venison from the Duke’s parkland, ‘chiefly to such persons of condition as were serviceable in the late election, without taking any notice of those gentlemen who so violently espoused the Lord Abingdon’s cause, unless I had your Grace’s or my lady Duchess’ positive orders therein’.9
The construction of Blenheim and the management of the surrounding estate became the town’s principal preoccupation. Most of the resident freemen, being tradesmen, were thus directly or indirectly beholden to the Duke, while his primacy in the county at large was confirmed in February 1706 by his appointment as lord lieutenant in place of Abingdon. So all-pervasive was the Marlborough interest by 1708 that Abingdon offered no resistance and even refrained from backing the re-election of his cousin Bertie. The election proceedings were therefore concluded with minimal fuss. Travers, accompanied by Lord Rialton (Hon. Francis Godolphin*), Marlborough’s son-in-law, who was seeking election for the county, visited the town on the eve of the election, and, as he reported to the Duke,
went round to all the freemen telling them their high steward [Marlborough] would take it very kindly and look on it as a mark of the corporation’s friendship for him if they would accept of the service of Major-General Cadogan and Sir Thomas Wheate, which they all readily promised me, even the few who had been most zealous for Lord Abingdon, and accordingly last Monday they were unanimously elected.
Wheate was an appropriate second nominee. As shown by his poor fourth place in the 1702 election, his own interest in the town amounted to little, and the Duchess was later to claim that without her husband’s financial assistance Wheate would never have been elected in 1708. But Wheate’s pre-eminence as a leader of local Whiggery made him a useful electoral ally, while at the same time the demand for stone from his Glympton quarries yoked him securely into the Marlboroughs’ service. Since his own position as Member for the borough depended exclusively on the good ordering of the Duke’s political affairs there, it fell to him to oversee and liaise in these matters with Vanbrugh and Travers.10
Even at the height of Tory confidence in the months preceding the 1710 election there was no talk or semblance of opposition to the old Members, whom Marlborough ordered were to be retained. It was only in the final days before the election that the threat of a challenge produced a last-minute crisis which required the strenuous efforts of Wheate and Travers to defuse. On 3 Oct., just a few days before the election, Travers’ deputy Henry Joynes received instructions from the Duchess to cease all work on Blenheim. The ostensible reason was that a decision was awaited from the new ministry about the future financing of the project, but it would appear that this precipitate action was also intended as a show of strength towards a militant minority in the town who were threatening to flout the Duke’s wishes by setting up Travers instead of Wheate. In an open letter of support to Wheate she had already expressed irritation that certain elements in the Blenheim workforce were liable ‘to give trouble in the election’, adding, ‘I will give any directions that are necessary to prevent any disorder’. This restlessness seems to have originated in recent shortages of funds for the building. Large numbers of unpaid workmen were being forced to depend on credit from tradesmen and shopkeepers in the town, a situation which became a source of annoyance among the latter, who were well represented among the freemen. Not surprisingly, the wholesale laying-off of workmen caused an immediate furore in the town, and much to the Duchess’s disgust Vanbrugh and his assistant Nicholas Hawksmoor left in haste, fearing for their own safety. With characteristic imperiousness the Duchess dismissed Joynes’s warning of likely tumults, asserting that it was not in the interest of the Woodstock townsmen to disoblige the Duke: ‘I am very unwilling to believe they can be so ungrateful as to have a thought of any but the old Members and after all I have written to show my dissatisfaction for which there is but too much reason.’ Abingdon had already explored the possibility of forcing a contest, and on 3 Oct., the day on which the Duchess’s orders had been received, a group of local Tory gentlemen, including Walter and Sir Robert Jenkinson, 3rd Bt.*, visited the town announcing Abingdon’s intention of setting up ‘an honest gentleman, there being now a proper occasion for it’. Observers such as Dr Stratford of Christ Church thought that the animosity against Blenheim and the Duchess augured well for such an opposition. Wheate ‘being so apprehensive of their surprising us . . . sent expresses to all the gentlemen and foreign freemen who are our friends’ to attend the election, while Travers, in London, borrowed £300 on his own credit to pay off the labourers and the ‘most necessitous of this town’. Arriving on the morning before the election, Travers found a calmer scene, ‘much changed from what Mr Vanbrugh and Mr Hawksmoor had told me . . . The people who had been turned off without their wages were fuller of complaints and tears than threats and violence.’ He summoned the chief malcontents together and with difficulty persuaded them to renounce their intention of choosing himself rather than Wheate. Meanwhile, Abingdon and his supporters in the town had failed in the short time available to find any one prepared to accept nomination, and the opportunity of defeating Wheate was lost for good when the Earl’s attention was distracted at the last moment by another electoral crisis at Westbury. Accordingly, Cadogan and Wheate were returned unopposed. Travers briefed Marlborough that ‘all was done quietly and I congratulated the freemen on their choosing two such worthy Members, and thanked them in the name of the high steward for this mark of their respect and friendship for him’.11
The Marlborough interest at Woodstock suffered a grievous blow, however, following the Duke’s fall from favour at the end of 1711. By the Queen’s command work on Blenheim was stopped in the summer of 1712, and once more the ‘Blenheim debt’ became a major factor in the long struggle for votes that preceeded the next election. In a bid to preserve his electoral sway in the borough and to ‘oblige’ as many of the freemen as possible, Marlborough, from his self-imposed exile in Holland, issued a proposal for paving the town. The feasibility of the project was discussed and agreed upon locally by Vanbrugh, Wheate and Joynes at the beginning of 1713, while Rialton, now 2nd Earl of Godolphin, assumed overall financial responsibility on the Duke’s behalf. It became clear during these early months that local Tories were preparing for a serious electoral showdown later in the year. Leading this onslaught was Vincent Oakley, a local gentleman, who sought one of the seats for himself. The other contender was Sir Thomas Sebright, 4th Bt.†, who as a young Hertfordshire gentleman was much less conspicuous in the campaign. The lines were drawn in February when, much to the disturbance of Oakley and ‘his party’, Joynes, acting as Marlborough’s chief agent in Travers’ absence, began paying off outstanding bills to the Duke’s friends among the freemen. ‘I have asked not one person for his vote’, he reported to Travers, ‘but I find paying them has the same effect.’ Furthermore, at the end of the month the mayor, prompted by a letter from Vanbrugh in late January, admitted no fewer than 28 freemen, 25 of them honorary, and all known to be Marlborough supporters. Oakley’s agents, having intercepted Vanbrugh’s letter, a tirade against the government’s hounding of Marlborough, attempted to blackmail the architect into serving their own purposes. Notifying the Lord Treasurer Oxford (Harley) of the letter’s contents, they threatened to procure Vanbrugh’s dismissal as comptroller of the board of works unless he agreed to prevail with Marlborough’s candidates to stand down. Vanbrugh refused to be browbeaten, however, and was turned out in mid-March. The creation of new freemen prompted Oakley to step up his campaign. He encouraged all who were owed money on the Blenheim account to state their debts, whether or not they were freemen, and promised to secure cash from the Treasury. At first Joynes was apt to belittle these blandishments:
the talk here is, with Mr Oakley’s party, that Mr Oakley is the greatest man in the world with the Queen, my lord treasurer and my lord keeper [Harcourt]; and that the Queen has wished Mr Oakley success in his affairs at Woodstock, and such ridiculous talk is daily spread abroad.
Wheate and several senior corporation men in the Duke’s interest were rather more wary and concluded that if Oakley found means of disbursing any money, to the freemen in particular, ‘they should entirely lose their interest’. Accordingly, Joynes promptly obtained a loan of £600 from Marlborough’s son-in-law Godolphin, and immediately commenced distribution of the money to the freemen. Oakley’s plans for ‘a great dinner and meeting’ of all the freemen at nearby Bladon collapsed as soon as it was realized ‘that the entertainment was nothing more than a pretended payment to keep them from voting for Marlborough’s candidates’. Joynes also devised accounting procedures to ensure that the priority given to debts outstanding to freemen could not be construed as bribery should the election proceedings be investigated by the Commons. By the end of March Joynes could assure Godolphin: ‘the money I received of your lordship has been truly applied to the service it was desired for, and I hope will answer the purpose of getting friends and maintaining my lord Duke’s interest’. As work began in the spring on paving the streets, Joynes requested Godolphin to remit payments without delay, so ‘as not to become a debt, because the people at present about us are continually endeavouring to catch at anything for reflection’s sake’. Godolphin for his part was anxious to keep the work on foot ‘as long as may be contrived’. Though the campaign in its later stages is hardly documented, it is clear from the narrow margin of the result that each side must have battled hard during the summer months. Despite the earlier success of Marlborough’s agents in preserving the loyalties of resident freemen, the Tories under Oakley evidently gained much solid support from this body in the later stages of campaigning. So great were these pressures on the Marlborough interest that only by subsequent admissions of freemen in their favour, in June and August, were they able to maintain even a narrow lead over the Tories. Although Cadogan and Wheate were returned, there was every reason to expect that they would be unseated in the new Parliament. ‘I suppose one of the first things that will be endeavoured’, the Duchess wrote regarding the Woodstock result, ‘will be to turn out all the Members that will not blindly vote whatever they are ordered against the interest of their country.’ Sebright and Oakley’s joint petition was duly presented on 3 Mar. 1714 and, as the ministry were keen to stage-manage the case as a public demonstration of their resolve to purge the Commons of leading Whigs, it was the first for which a hearing at the bar was ordered. But the proceedings, which took place on the 16th, were, as one High Tory had to admit, ‘pitifully managed’ and conferred little credit on the ministry. Tory abuse heaped against Marlborough was simply ignored by the Duke’s friends. The petitioners’ insistence on the invalidity of the votes polled by recently admitted freemen was undermined by the defection of the Scots solicitor-general, Sir James Stewart, 1st Bt.*, who
looked upon it as the undoubted privilege of every corporation to assume what number of men, and at what time they pleased, into their corporation unless there were some law or custom to the contrary, which none of the petitioners’ lawyers pretended to advance . . . every man, if legally admitted any time before the writs were out, [was] entitled to vote at the very next election.
The House finally resolved that the votes of new freemen were admissible, but would accept that neither Cadogan and Wheate nor Oakley and Sebright had been duly elected and so declared the election void. At the election held eight days later, however, Cadogan and Wheate were chosen with none of the opposition that had plagued them over many months in 1713.12
During the first decade or so of Hanoverian rule, as the Duchess’s antipathy to the Court hardened, she used her influence in Woodstock to return MPs committed to opposition, regardless of their political colour. It was an indication of her adaptation to the changed political times that she was even prepared to co-operate amicably with those such as Abingdon, whom she had formerly despised as a patron of Jacobites.13
Author: Andrew A. Hanham
- 1. BL, Trumbull Alphab. mss 50, Thomas Bateman to Trumbull, 20 July 1702.
- 2. VCH Oxon. xii. 330, 332.
- 3. Ibid. 377, 382, 401; C104/109/2, Lichfield to Cary, 28 Nov. 1695; BL, Verney mss mic. 636/44, Cary to Sir Ralph Verney, 1st Bt.†, 31 July 1690; CSP Dom. 1690–1, p. 73.
- 4. C104/109/2, Lichfield to Cary, 2, 14, 17, n.d. Sept. 1692; C104/109/1, Littleton to same, 30 Mar., 12 Aug. 1693; VCH Oxon. 382, 401.
- 5. Add. 70018, f. 62; 18675, f. 42; C104/109/2, Lichfield to Cary, 25 July, 28 Sept., 28 Nov., 12 Dec. 1695; C104/109/1, Littleton to same, 24 Sept. 1695.
- 6. C104/109/1, same to same, 23 Apr., 17 May, 9, 12, July 1698.
- 7. C104/110/3, same to same, 14 Dec. 1699; C104/109/1, Littleton to same, 13 Nov. 1701; Bodl. Carte 228, f. 343.
- 8. Trumbull Misc. mss 32, Whitton to Trumbull, 17 June 1702; Alphab. mss 50, Bateman to same, 20 July 1702; CSP Dom. 1694–5, p. 464.
- 9. London Gazette, 29 Mar. 1705; Hereford and Worcester RO (Worcester), Hampton mss 705:349/BA 4657/iii/37, Thomas Rowney* to Sir John Pakington, 4th Bt.*, 25 Apr. 1705; Add. 69378, Arthur Charlett to John Thurbarne*, 25 Apr. 1705; 61131, ff. 126, 128; 61353, ff. 1, 3, 5; Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 417, 426, 428, 440; HMC Portland, iv. 180; Bodl. Rawl. D.863, ff. 89–90.
- 10. Add. 61353, f. 36.
- 11. Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1590; Add. 19606, ff. 31, 33, 35; 19609, ff. 54, 56; 61353, ff. 111, 117–18; 61468, ff. 162–3; HMC Portland, vii. 19–21.
- 12. F. Harris, Passion for Govt. 189; Add. 19603, ff. 24–29; 19609, ff. 136–8, 141; 19605, f. 171; 19606, ff. 54, 56, 58, 60; 61463, f. 107; 70280, Henry Watkins* to ‘Mr Harley’, 2 Apr. 1714; Stowe 246, f. 64; 226, f. 296; Duchess of Marlborough Letters at Madresfield, 44; DZA, Bonet despatch 16/22 Mar. 1714; Verney Letters 18th Century, i. 245; SRO, Mar and Kellie mss GD124/15/1119, [Stewart] to [?Edinburgh council], 17 Mar. 1714; Oley Douglas diary (Hist. of Parl. trans.), 18 Mar. 1714.
- 13. Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 440.


[From the Chapter 1] The main objective of this chapter is to introduce the concept of content-intensive websites (or information-intensive websites), since it is precisely this type of website, and its content-heavy webpages, to which the various concepts, ideas and techniques that we present in this book are best applied.
Following on from this presentation, we discuss the relationship between content-intensive websites and the contributions made by Library and Information Science to the universe of the World Wide Web. We conclude by providing a brief presentation of the overall content of this book, describing the subjects addressed in each of the remaining six chapters.
Characterization of Content-Intensive Sites
Content-intensive sites (CISs) are characterized by the fact that they belong to organizations that naturally produce large volumes of information. That is, they produce this content not as a result of having to come up with strategies to fill their website, as might be the case of other types of organization (we refer to the majority of firms operating in the business world, for example), but simply because they cannot not create it. In other words, they would cease to fulfil a fundamental part of their mission if they stopped creating content.
Generally speaking, there are three main types of organization that present this characteristic: the media, universities and museums. We do not automatically rule out the possibility of there being other classes, but given the widespread presence of these three in any moderately developed society, their great social significance and their impact on knowledge, they are by far the most important.
The three types of institution share a series of characteristics of enormous significance. First, the kind of information they produce and manage is of the broadest social interest and reach. Second, in their fields, they produce and manage information that enhances cultural quality and promotes the advancement of a nation’s knowledge (and their coming together in an international system, of course, improves the cultural quality, and promotes the knowledge, of mankind as a whole). Finally, in an era of unabated changes that can be traced to the beginning of the industrial revolution, they are three examples of centuries-old institutions which, despite suffering periodic crises, do not appear to be near the end of their existence; on the contrary, they would appear to be as strong as ever.
Briefly, the media provide the channels by which society, since at least the eighteenth century, has kept itself informed about what is going on around it and, since at least the beginning of the twentieth century, it has been a formidable instrument in the defence of democracy in its role of keeping a watchful eye on those in power and, indeed, is often referred to as the “fourth power”. Today, there is a widespread consensus that active, well-informed citizens thanks to a high-quality, free press are, in turn, the foundation of strong democracy.
The universities, for their part, have been responsible, since the Middle Ages, for a dual function whose importance cannot be exaggerated: the dissemination of knowledge and the creation of new knowledge. As if this were not enough, they house the great university libraries, or as is preferred in more modern circles, resource centres for learning and research.
Finally, the museums, in existence since the beginning of the eighteenth century, fulfil the function of the preservation of our tangible and intangible cultural heritage and of making it available not only to researchers and scholars but to society as a whole. Their permanent collections form a massive archive whose digitization and documentation represent an invaluable and, fortunately, vast source of information and knowledge.
While to an outside observer of the world of both search engine optimization (SEO) and the Library and Information Sciences, these three types of organization might appear to have little in common, we would claim (summing up what we have said so far) that they are institutions that share a number of important characteristics. First, they are all three deeply rooted in their respective societies. Second, they generate a wide variety of information as part of their natural activities. Third, their information is of broad social interest. They also generate multimedia information, that is, they produce content covering the entire spectrum of information morphologies (text, image, sound and video); and, more recently, they have begun to generate interactive content, linked even to augmented and virtual realities. Finally, all three are heavily conditioned to ensure that their contents are of quality and meet essential requirements of validity.
An opportunity for Library and Information Science
From the perspective of Library and Information Science (LIS), CISs and mixed sites are of great interest because they both require intense inputs from this field of study.
The reason for this is that LIS does not concern itself with just any kind of information. Indeed, information is the subject of study and the focus of many disciplines and professions. Biology, for example, is concerned with information (among other things) when it studies the laws of genetics, and so is Mass Communication, to choose a discipline at the other end of the academic spectrum, when it examines the messages circulating in the media.
Information is an ever-present facet in the life experience of human beings as individuals, and also of human societies as a whole. People constantly exchange information with each other as part of their vital interaction with their fellow man. Society deals with huge amounts of information on a permanent basis and in real time, including, for example, city traffic and pollution data.
What exactly is the focus of interest of LIS in this overwhelming panorama presided over by the constant exchange of information? We believe that by examining our specific object of study we are able to recognize a number of characteristics that are at the same time unique and exclusive to the information which concerns us in the field of LIS.
First, LIS does not concern itself with just any kind of information, as we have been at pains to illustrate with the above examples; rather, it concerns itself with information that is recorded in material supports, what we can refer to as documents.
For many years now LIS has not only focused its attention on printed documents and textual information. As mentioned, the concept of the document includes any kind of recorded material including digital supports and all types of information morphology, including text, image, video and sound. This means that LIS is not only concerned with monographs and articles in print magazines housed in libraries, but also with computer records hosted in database systems.
Second, LIS does not concern itself with administrative information, such as that produced daily by millions of businesses and individuals around the globe, which means the balance sheets of a country’s companies are not to be found in libraries, rather we have to visit the company archives or the nation’s historical archives (if the information is old) to find them.
How the book is structured
In this book, it is our understanding that Information Architecture (IA), via its contribution to the design of navigation systems, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) occupy a privileged place in their applications to content-intensive sites (see the reasons outlined above). Likewise, we believe both IA and SEO occupy privileged places in the applications of LIS to the universe of the web.
In keeping with these beliefs, we can build an interesting triangle, with one side being formed by the World Wide Web, the second by LIS and the third by the partnership forged between AI + SEO. It is precisely this triangle that has served as our motivation to work and research in these areas at our respective universities, and it is these ideas that we now wish to make available to the reader in this book.
In the next chapter, Chapter 2, we analyse the bases on which the navigation system is founded and that allow a user to explore and locate information in web environments and on mobile devices. To do so, we organize the chapter into four sections. In the first, we examine the subject of navigation in fairly broad terms. Specifically, the section begins by highlighting the basic importance of navigation and how this is manifest in web environments. We follow this up by offering a complete definition of the navigation system. Finally, we round off the section by providing a series of recommendations (or heuristics) that can be followed to improve the design and implementation of a website navigation system.
In the second section of this chapter, we show how the overall navigation system that can be found on a webpage is usually built up from different elements or subsystems. We examine this typology and describe the two basic navigation systems: embedded systems – constant, local and contextual systems; and supplementary systems – maps, indexes and guides. In the third section, we present the advanced or non-basic systems – personalization systems, visual navigation systems, and social navigation systems. And, in the fourth, we examine the components that enable us to add extra layers of semantic navigation to a site and which enhance both the user’s navigating experience and the site’s SEO.
In Chapter 3, we focus our attention on describing and analysing methodological questions associated with the implementation of navigation.
The first section is dedicated to examining the different phases or stages that have to be completed to ensure our navigation resources are designed efficiently. Specifically, we focus on the stages of analysis, design and implementation. The analysis stage examines in detail the scenario in which the site will be developed and includes contextual, content and user analyses. In the design phase, we present the navigation resources and develop a content inventory and content models, a representation of the vocabulary, the prototype and an evaluation of the proposed navigation system. Finally, in the implementation phase, an initial version of the navigation system that was drawn up in the design phase is developed, this is then communicated, before the eventual website is developed and the style guides created.
The next two sections are dedicated to addressing two of the most frequently used methodological strategies of user analysis, developed to ensure the efficient design of navigation resources: the Persona-Scenario method and the Card Sorting technique. The Persona-Scenario method is a non-participatory analysis technique that seeks both to identify the site’s target users and to place their actions within a given context, thus allowing decisions to be taken about the design and structure of our project. The Card Sorting technique is a participatory methodological strategy that allows us to design different (constant and local) navigation systems drawing on the cognitive organizations presented by the site’s target users.
Chapter 4 has two aims: first, to analyse the functions of prototyping and prototyping typologies and, second, to describe and review a series of online and desktop tools designed to facilitate the creation of prototypes for the design and creation of webpages and digital content for mobile devices. To meet these goals, the chapter is organised as follows. First, we begin by outlining the importance and functionality of prototyping for the architectural design of a website. Then, we analyse the two main types of prototypes or diagrams typically used to represent the architecture proposed for a webpage: blueprints and wireframes. Finally, we review some of the main (online and desktop) solutions for developing and implementing website diagramming or prototyping.
Introducing the essentials of SEO or website positioning is the main objective of Chapter 5. Here, we examine the basic guidelines and best practices that ensure a website is visible on the World Wide Web. First, we present a brief description of SEO from the point of view of its main objectives. Then we focus on one of its principal objects of study, search engines, to understand how they analyse and interpret information, and how they rank it on their results pages. Finally, in this chapter, we look at website positioning factors by grouping them in two sets, the OnSite and OffSite factors.
Having reviewed the essentials of SEO, in Chapter 6 we present the different phases of a positioning campaign, then move on to focus our attention on aspects of OnSite SEO and, in particular, on content-based SEO, as this is one of the strengths of content-intensive sites (CISs). Specifically, we introduce the main phases of an SEO campaign. But once these phases of the campaign have been implemented, the only way to sustain the site’s position is by promoting a continuous policy of content creation and publishing.
To meet this objective, we also present a framework proposal to optimize site content linked to the production of news and current affairs, given that this is one of the most characteristic cases of CISs. However, this proposal can be extended to all the other CISs that we refer to throughout this book (that is not only news media sites but also university and museum websites).
In the preceding chapters we therefore examine, first, the essentials of SEO and, second, the phases of an optimization campaign as well as a framework for optimizing the production of a CIS, taking as our example a media communication site, although the recommendations we make can be extrapolated to other CISs.
Finally, in Chapter 7, we first review the current state of the mobile web, considering a range of different devices based on their screen size, given that this characteristic is the main determinant of the user experience. We also consider mobile operating systems and applications, in particular, news aggregators. Finally, we link SEO and the mobile web via both searches and responsive web design.
Mario Pérez-Montoro; Lluís Codina. Navigation Design and SEO for Content-Intensive Websites: A Guide for an Efficient Digital Communication. Oxford: Chandos Publishing (Elsevier), 2017 (ISBN 9780081006764)


Summary and Keywords
Adolescent substance use and abuse has long been the target of public health prevention messages. These messages have adopted a variety of communication strategies, including fear appeals, information campaigns, and social marketing/branding strategies. A case history of keepin’ it REAL, a narrative-based substance abuse prevention intervention that exemplifies a translational research approach, involves theory development testing, formative and evaluation research, dissemination, and assessment of how the intervention is being used in the field by practitioners. The project, which started as an attempt to test the notion that the performance of personal narratives was an effective intervention strategy, has since produced two theories, an approach to implementation science that focused on communication processes, and, of course, a school-based curriculum that is now the most widely disseminated drug prevention program in the world.
At the core of the keepin’ it REAL program are the narratives that tell the story of how young people manage their health successfully through core skills or competencies, such as decision-making, risk assessment, communication, and relationship skills. Narrative forms not only the content of curriculum (e.g., what is taught) but also the pedagogy (e.g., how it is taught). This has enabled the developers to step inside the social worlds of youth from early childhood through young adulthood to describe how young people manage problematic health situations, such as drug offers. This knowledge was motivated by the need to create curricula that recount stories rather than preaching or scaring, that re-story health decisions and behaviors by providing skills that enable people to live healthy, safe, and responsible lives. Spin-offs from the main study have led to investigations of other problematic health situations, such as vaccination decisions and sexual pressure, in order to address crucial public health issues, such as cancer prevention and sex education, through community partnerships with organizations like D.A.R.E. America, 4-H clubs, and Planned Parenthood.
Keywords: keepin’ it REAL, narrative, engagement, cultural grounding, translational research, substance use prevention, prevention, dissemination, program implementation, case study, adolescent health, communication competence
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It seems fitting that His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama should deliver both a public talk and the Commencement keynote address at UC San Diego. His Holiness claims a special affinity for educators and for young people, whom he characterizes as the ones who shape the future; in his view each generation has the opportunity – indeed, the responsibility – to remake the world for the better and to redefine our place in it. Throughout his public life the Dalai Lama has extolled the nexus formed by mind, body, and spirit, stressing that to nurture one is to nurture the others, and that all are essential to lead a fulfilled life. To this end His Holiness is a strong advocate for universal and well-rounded education, and in particular believes that an understanding of the sciences is essential for safeguarding our planet’s health. (He was one of the first world leaders to warn of the dangers of climate change and the need for swift action, on both individual and societal levels.)
The Dalai Lama maintains that the true goal of a fulfilled life is happiness expressed through inner peace. Many Westerners view Tibetan Buddhism as a philosophy that emphasizes asceticism, but the Dalai Lama’s message eschews an isolated, purely contemplative “sackcloth and ashes” approach in favor of one that couples active engagement with the world with a realization that true happiness is not materially based. Rather, it comes from an optimistic outlook, good deeds, and above all, love, tolerance and compassion rooted in the acceptance of our interconnectedness through our shared humanity. Achieving this inner peace is never easy, and His Holiness acknowledges the difficulties when he tells the graduates, “Now you have completed your study period, now you begin another lifestyle – work: not easy; life will not be easy. Determination, willpower, optimism are very essential.”
For more programs with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama click here.


Checklist: Hazardous Materials
For all but two of these questions, a “no” answer indicates corrective action needs to be taken. The two exceptions are indicated below.
Note: This checklist is not meant to be all-inclusive and is not intended as a substitute for a comprehensive safety and health program.
Flammable and Combustible Materials
- Are combustible scrap, debris and waste materials (oily rags, etc.) stored in covered receptacles and removed from the worksite on a routine basis?
- Are regulation containers and tanks used for the storage of gasoline?
- Are bulk drums of flammable liquids grounded and bonded to containers during dispensing?
- Are flammable and combustible materials stored away from sources of ignition such as welders and heaters?
- Are “No Smoking” signs posted on liquefied petroleum gas tanks and bulk oxygen tanks?
- Are “No Smoking” signs posted where appropriate in areas where flammable or combustible materials are used or stored, and are “No Smoking” rules enforced in areas involving storage and use of hazardous materials?
- Are petroleum storage tanks guarded to prevent damage from vehicles?
- Are all solvent wastes and flammable liquids kept in fire-resistant, covered containers until they are removed from the worksite?
- Are fuel gas cylinders and oxygen cylinders separated by a distance of 20 feet or by 5-foot-high, fire-resistant barriers rated at 1/2 hour, while in storage?
- Are all spills of flammable or combustible liquids cleaned up promptly?
- Are safety cans used for dispensing flammable or combustible liquids?
Choose the most hazardous chemical an employee is exposed to and talk with the worker to determine if he or she is aware of the potential hazards involved with the product.
- Are all employees wearing personal protective clothing and equipment when handling chemicals (gloves, eye protection and respirators) and is the equipment maintained?
- Are flammable or toxic chemicals kept in closed containers when not in use?
For the following two questions, a “yes” answer indicates a need to take action:
- Do employees complain about dizziness, headaches, nausea, irritation or other factors of discomfort when they use solvents or other chemicals?
- Do employees complain about dryness, irritation or sensitization of the skin (evidence of a dermatitis problem)?
- Do employees avoid fueling internal combustion engines with a flammable liquid while the engine is running, thereby preventing employee exposure to the hazard of explosions?
- Are fueling operations being done in such a manner that the likelihood of spillage will be minimal?
- Are fueling hoses on site for use designed to handle the specific type of fuel?
- Do employees with open lights, open flames, sparking or arching equipment stay at a safe distance from fueling or transfer of fuel operations, thereby preventing the hazard of explosions?
- Is smoking prohibited in the vicinity of fueling operations?


Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.
Questions in this section focus on the following 2 areas from the CASEL framework, which provides a foundation for applying evidence-based SEL strategies in your learning community:
Social reflections encourage students to think about how they work with other students. These can be asked in response to an interpersonal school activity such as a group project, or in isolation, and can also be used as a warm up activity at the start of class.
Prime opportunities to engage with students about their social learning are in any group settings (for example a class project), helping students develop an understanding of how they can learn better as they progress through school and into society as adults.
Research highlights reflecting on SEL helps students improve crucial social traits like persistence, empathy and self confidence. It has also been linked to better academic performance, stronger rates of completion of work and a better mental state in their learning environment.
A full list of questions you can use in your class can be found in Ziplet’s question library under “Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) - Others”.
Ask your students to provide specific examples from their group experience in their responses.


Emergency Preparedness Resources –
During A Fire
Familiarize yourself with these items so you are prepared in the event of a fire. If your smoke alarm goes off or you see a fire:
- Remain calm and get out before calling 9-1-1.
- Feel the door with the back of your hand before you open it (burns on your fingers and palms can impair your ability to escape a fire using ladders or crawling).
- If you see smoke under the door, or if the door is hot, find another way out.
- If the door is cool, open it slowly and ensure fire or smoke is not blocking your escape. If clear, leave immediately through the door and close it behind you.
- Be ready to close a window or door immediately if it draws smoke into the room.
- If there’s smoke, crawl under the smoke and use a cloth, if possible, to cover your mouth and nose. Smoke and heat rise, so the air is clearer and cooler near the floor.
- If your escape route is blocked, shut the door immediately and use an alternate route, such as the window.
- If you are trapped in a burning building, stay near a window and close to the floor. Seal doors and vents with towels or duct tape to prevent smoke from entering. If possible, signal for help by hanging a light colored cloth at the window to alert firefighters to your location.
- If your clothes catch fire, STOP, DROP and ROLL until the fire is extinguished. Running will only make the fire burn faster.
- When safe call 9-1-1 and stay on the line until the operator hangs up.
- STAY OUT. Never go back into a burning building.
- In a multi-story building use the stairs to escape, never use an elevator to escape a fire.
Click here to return to the main page and find out how you and your employees can be prepared for an emergency. You can also learn what to do in response to a specific disaster.


Many children are growing up in an environment that is absent of authentic role models but increasingly flush with negative media influences that promote loudness and flash, over goodness and societal impact. This can create a habitat where engagement in character and values development is low or absent and an emphasis on looking good (e.g. social media and peer pressure) is prioritized over being good and doing good.
The results of this unhealthy cultural stew can range from:
- Absence of compassion, kindness and respect
- Sense of entitlement
- Lack of self confidence
- Lack of passion and motivation to excel
- Apathy towards learning
- Increased bullying
These undesirable attitudes and behaviors often start early and are revealed and magnified in the school environment.
Meanwhile, school administrators are presented with a myriad of programs that enable short term inspiration but little long term behavior and attitude change. To change school climate and students hearts requires commitment, focus and engagement.
InspireMyKids (IMK), the world’s leading online community of inspiration for children, has partnered with renowned youth motivational speaker and educator, Mike Marsteller, to bring its unique blend of inspiration and sustainable action to schools around the USA, commencing with a unique live event format featuring:
- Compelling, real-life, storytelling
- Actionable takeaways students can use right away
- Interaction with the audience to keep it fun and high energy
- Role model videos and inspirational quotes from IMK’s collection
Our signature program, “Cool To Be K.I.N.D.” is designed to change the culture and mindset in your school and the way students interact with each other, helping young people become the best version of themselves, increasing their intrinsic motivation and their desire to make the world a better place.
Through sincere and authentic conversation and real world examples from IMK, Mike inspires students to:
- Build self confidence
- Use empathy and compassion to help others
- Create an inner circle of friends
- Disarm a face-to-face or online bully
Mike takes these four topics and uses the word K.I.N.D. to break it down into four easy categories and action steps students can relate to and put into their own perspective:
Know and grow yourself first
Inspire those around you to change
Navigate with empathy
Develop meaningful friendships
This program is ideal for supporting character education and social/emotional learning initiatives in elementary, middle, and junior high schools.
Guaranteed to make a difference, “Cool to be K.I.N.D.” has helped schools to:
- Increase resilience and confidence in students
- Decrease bullying and increase friendships
- Provide a platform for important conversations
- Increase motivation and goal setting
- Teach students life skills such as empathy, resilience, and perseverance
*Each assembly comes with a postcard for each student, 15 posters to hang throughout the school, and talking points for teachers.
THE ONGOING PROCESS/PROGRAM
- Teacher Talking Points
- School counseling standard-aligned curriculum units
- Goal Worksheets
- Video reinforcement modules (quarterly / 4x)
- Posters (PDF)
- Parent education
To learn more about our program, scheduling, costs or other questions you may have, contact Mike at [email protected] or (484) 347-3993 or simply fill out the form below:


On This Day: August 15, 1914 — Panama Canal Inaugurated
The Panama Canal was the most ambitious American engineering project of its time.
Approximately 240 million cubic yards of dirt and “spoil” were excavated and removed!
The Panama Canal was the most expensive American public works project of its time in 1914 with an estimated cost of $302 million.
The Panama Canal has been designated as one of the “Seven Wonders of the Modern World.”
The Panama Canal is still a present-day monument to human engineering!
Information & Facts:
Various attempts have been made to quantify and visualize the amount of “dirt” which was removed over the approximately 50-mile route across the isthmus of Panama to make the canal.
“The earth and rubble removed between Colon and Balboa was enough to bury Manhattan to a depth of 12 feet.” — http://cms.uflib.ufl.edu/pcm/facts.aspx
“Nine miles long, with an average depth of 120 feet, with a bottom width of 300 feet, and with a top width which reaches at places to a third of a mile, this marvelous canyon presents at once an inspiring and awesome aspect, revealing both man’s audacity and nature’s grim resistance to his efforts.” – http://czbrats.com/Builders/Bennett/culebra1.htm
In David McCullough’s book of over 500 pages — “Path Between the Seas” — McCullough spends quite an amount of words and pages to describe the excavation! He goes at it from different angles in order to help the reader visualize it.
“For anyone to picture, the volume of earth that had to be removed to build the Panama Canal was an all but hopeless proposition. Statistics were broadcast — 15,700,000 cubic yards in 1907, and incredible 37,000,000 cubic yards in 1908 — but such figures were really beyond comprehension . . . . The illustrative analogies offered by editors and writers were of little help, since they were seldom any less fantastic. The spoil from the canal prism, it was said, would be enough to build a Great Wall of Chian from San Francisco to New York. If the United States were perfectly flat, and amount of digging required for a canal ten feet deep by fifty-five feet wide from coast to coast would no greater than what was required at Panama within fifty miles. A train of dirt cars carrying the total excavation at Panama would circle the world four times at the equator. The spoil would be enough to build sixty-three pyramids the size of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. (To help its readers imagine what this might look like, Scientific American commissioned an artist to draw Manhattan with giant pyramids lining the length of Broadway from Battery to Harlem.)
The material taken from Culebra Cut alone, exclaimed one writer toward the completion of the work, would make a pyramid topping the Woolworth Building by 100 feet, at 792 feet, was then the world’s tallest building, which the total spoil excavated in the Canal Zone would form a pyramid 4,200 feet high, or more than seven times the height of the Washington Monument.” – Mc Cullough – pgs 529-521
“In any one day there were fifty to sixty steam shovels at work in the Cut, and with the dirt trains running in and out virtually without pause, the efficiency of each shovel was more than double what it had been. Along the entire line of about five hundred trainloads a day were being hauled to the dumps.” — Mc Cullough – pgs 529-521
After Goethals took over the Panama operation, upon Steven’s resignation, some changes were made to the plans . . . .
“The bottom width of the channel through Culebra Cut was to be made half again wider, from two hundred to three hundred feet. Thus it was to be more than four times as broad as the French canal would have been at that point.” – McCullough – pg 539
“For seven years Culebra Cut was never silent, not even or an hour Labor trains carrying some six thousand men began rolling in shortly after dawn every morning except Sunday . . . . during the midday break and again after five o’clock that the dynamite crews took over and began blasting. At night came the repair crews, men by the hundreds to tend the shovels, which were not being worked to the limit and taking a heavy beating.” — McCullough – pg 544
“The peak was in March 1909, when sixty-eight shovels, the largest number ever used at one time int he Cur, removed more than 2,000,000 cubic yards, ten times the volume achieved by the French in their best month . . . . The volume removed from the Cut was 96,000,000 cubic yards . . . . No machines had ever been subjected to such a test, and their record was a tribute to the men who designed and built them.”– McCullough – pg 547
At the end of all his descriptions — and that of other — I still cannot get my head around the amount of dirt and spoil which was excavated! What does it mean to excavate, remove, transport, and/or blow up 240 million cubic yards of dirt, rock, and/or spoil?
That question has the potential to result in and lead to an interesting biblical illustration!
There are a good number of articles and books written which attempt to teach how to make large numbers understandable. Infographics are one such attempt. Or you can go to the USA Today newspaper, and they typically have a graphic which attempts to help the reader visualize an idea.
Trying to grasp large amounts of money proses the same difficulty. What is one billion dollars? If you were offered a billion dollars, as long as you counted out every dollar bill, at one a second, 24 hours a day — you would be 31 1/2 years old before you finished counting the money! — no sleeping allowed or you get much older faster!
You could use any other similar large excavation projects* which have such large numbers that it becomes hard to fathom!
However, the Panama Canal is the largest engineering excavation project which has ever been attempted in the world!
I one sense, the only way to come close to grasping the vastness of the excavation is by a picture!
The Culebra Cut
The Gaillard Cut
That leads us to the value of using the Panama Canal as our illustration . . . .
“What does infinite love, mercy, kindness, holiness, faithfulness, etc. look like? How can we come close to understanding God?
Isaiah 64:4 — For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.
I Corinthians 2:9 — But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
Key Illustrative Thoughts:
• understanding the Lord
• beyond our comprehension
• what is man that thou are mindful of him
• it will take eternity
• life is but vapor
• who hath known the mind of Christ
• “count” on it
• language can’t communicate it
• it’s beyond us
• use the greatest limits of your imagination, and you are still not there
• imagine this
• I can only imagine
• We can’t even imagine
Other Interesting Facts about the Panama Canal**
First ground broken by French January 1, 1880
Active work started by the French January 20, 1882
Excavation by French (cubic yards) 78,146,906
Excavation by French useful to present Canal (cubic yards) 29,908,000
Amount of money spent by the French $260,000,000
Number of lives lost during French control 20,000
Amount United States paid French for their rights and property $40,000,000
Canal Zone acquired by U.S. from Panama by treaty February 23, 1904
Amount United States paid Panama for Canal Zone $10,000,000
Rental paid by U.S. to Panama beginning in 1913 per annum $250,000
Work began by the United States May 4, 1904
First ship through the Canal September 26, 1913
Date of official opening August 15, 1914
Name of first official ship to transit canal S.S. Ancon
Canal Zone in square miles 436
Length of Canal from Atlantic to Pacific 51 miles
Width of the Canal Zone 10 miles
Time to transit Canal 8-10 hours
Number of ships crossing daily 40
Number of ships crossing each year 12-15 thousand
Time of passage through locks 3 hours
Maximum bottom width of the channel 1000 feet
Minimum bottom width of the channel at Culebra Cut 300 feet
Number of locks in pairs 12
Locks, usable length 1000 feet
Locks, usable width 164 square miles
Amount of water filling each lock 52 million gallons
Gatun Lake (area) 164 square miles
Gatun Lake is at a nominal 85 feet above the Pacific Level
The draft of vessels using the canal is limited to 40 feet when the lake is at 85 feet.
The channels are maintained to a depth greater than 40 feet to a nominal 45 foot depth.
Some areas in Gatun Lake where the old Chagres River channel ran are considerably deeper than 45 feet.
During periods of heavy rainfall and there is a surplus of was, Gatun Lake is maintained at a level of not greater than 87 feet.
Gatun Lake level is controlled at the Gatun Dam both through a hydropower generating plant and over spillways at the dam.
During periods of sparse rainfall, Gatun Lake is maintained to the 85 foot by releasing water through Madden Dam flowing down the Chagres River to where it meets the lake at Gamboa.
There have been occasions of extremely dry weather (low rainfall) where it has become impossible to maintain the 85 foot level. During those relatively rare occasions, it has been necessary to limit the draft of transiting vessels.
In the case of bulk carriers operating at maximum drafts, the canal gives two weeks notice of any draft restrictions, thereby allowing the ships to compensate for the draft limitation.
Gatun Lake (normal surface level above sea level) 85 feet
Culebra Cut (channel depth) 45 feet
Amount of excavation by Americans in cubic yards 232,353,000
Total concrete for canal in cubic yards 5,000,000
Weight of 1 cubic yard of concrete 1.5 tons
Estimated cost of the Panama Canal built by U.S. $375,000,000
Number of lives lost during United States control 5,609
Toll charge for Disney Magic cruise ship in 2008 $313,200
First Panama Railroad completed 1855
Length of Panama Railroad 47.11 miles
Panama Railroad costs $8,984,922
Amount of carloads of dirt removed daily by railroad 200
Tide on the Pacific side 20 feet
Tide on the Atlantic side 2.5 feet
Average rainfall on Atlantic side 130 inches
Average rainfall on Pacific side 70 inches
Size: 1000’ x 110’ x 42’
Gatun Locks – 3 steps and 6 chambers
Pedro Miguel – 1 step and 2 chambers
Miraflores – 2 steps, 4 chambers
Water Flow: By gravity, down and across chambers
Panamax Ship: 965’ x 106’ x 39 ½’
Maximum Cargo: 4400 TEUs – container ship
Gates: 4 or more miter gates swing per chamber
Water: 52 million gallons lost to sea per transit
The New Enlarged Panama Expansion Project — Excavation
“Like the channel that opened in 1914, the enlarged Panama Canal is a feat of engineering, albeit one that ran over budget and two years behind schedule. The contractors dredged enough material to fill the Egyptian Great Pyramid at Giza, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, 25 times over. The amount of steel used could have erected 29 new Eiffel Towers.”
Other Information & Links:
“The first section of the New York City subway opened in 1904. . . . in 1904 when the very first lines were opened, 3.5 million cubic yards of earth and rock had been removed.”
“The Big Dig is officially named the Central Artery/Tunnel Project in Boston. It’s a 3.5 mile tunnel to route vehicle traffic underneath the city. Construction began in 1991 and sections of the tunnel were opened between 2003 and 2006. The initial cost of the project was estimated to be $2.8 billion, but the final cost was close to $15 billion. Charges of corruption, inadequate materials, and a fatal collapse accompanied the project. The completed tunnel saw the excavation of 16 million cubic yards of earth.”
“Culebra Cut was the “special wonder” of the canal. Here, men and machines labored to conquer the 8.75-mile stretch extending through the Continental Divide from Gamboa on the Chagres River at the north to Pedro Miguel on the south. The lowest point in the saddle between Gold Hill on the east and Contractors Hill on the west was at elevation 333.5 feet above sea level.
Holes were drilled, filled with explosives and detonated to loosen the rock and rock-hard clay. Steam shovels then excavated the spoil, placing it on railroad cars to be hauled to dump sites. Excavation equipment, in addition to the railroad itself, included steam shovels, unloaders, spreaders and track-shifters. Of this equipment, only the steam shovel had been known to the French, and then in a much less powerful form. The Lidgerwood unloader, manufactured by the Lidgerwood Manufacturing Company of New York City, was another indispensable piece of equipment. Wooden flatcars with a rated canal capacity of 19 cubic yards hauled most of the spoil, pulled in long trains by full-sized, American built locomotives. Built with only one side, they had steel aprons bridging the spaces between cars. Dirt was piled high against one side. At the dump site, the unloader, a three-ton plow, was hitched to the last car by a long cable to a huge winch-like device mounted on a flatcar at the head of the train. Taking its power from the locomotive, the winch pulled the plow rapidly forward, unloading the whole twenty-car train in a single, 10-minute sweep. One of these machines once set an 8-hour record by unloading 18 trains, about 3 ½ miles of cars containing about 7,560 cubic yards of material. Engineers estimated that 20 of these unloaders operated by 120 laborers did the work of 5,666 men unloading by hand.
The dirt-spreader was another American innovation. A car operated by compressed air, it had steel “wings” on each side that could be raised and lowered. When lowered, they sloped 11.5 feet backward from the rails. Moving forward, the dirt-spreader spread and leveled the material left along the track by the unloader. Like the unloader, the spreader did the work of some 5,000 to 6,000 men working by hand
Another machine, the track-shifter, was invented by American William G. Bierd, general manager of the Panama Railroad from September 1905 to October 1907. The huge crane-like machine would hoist a whole section of track – rails and ties – and swing it in either direction, to relocate it as much as 9 feet at a time. With the tracks at the dumps needing constant shifting to keep pace with the arriving loads of spoil, the track-shifter was extremely useful. It took less than a dozen men operating on the shifter one day to move a mile of track, a task requiring not less than 600 men.
A large number of 17-cubic-yard capacity, 4-sided Western and Oliver dump cars (27 cars comprising a train) was also used. As it was hard to unload the dirt from these cars because the heavy clay would stick to the steel sides, they were used almost exclusively for hauling rock from the Cut to Gatun Dam. Their 4-sided design made them impossible for use with the unloader. More than a hundred million cubic yards of spoil had to be hauled away from the excavation site and dumped. Part of this spoil was used to join a series of four small islands in Panama Bay (Naos, Perico, Culebra and Flamenco) to create a breakwater. This breakwater is topped by a roadway, making it a causeway that extends three and a quarter miles out into the Pacific. The stretch between the mainland and Naos Island was a very troublesome dumping area because of a soft bottom into which tons of rock would settle and virtually disappear. Track and trestle used to haul the spoil to the dumping area would disappear overnight into the ocean and have to be replaced. In the end, to reach Naos Island took ten times the estimated spoil.
Spoil was also used to claim nearly 500 acres of Pacific Ocean to create the Balboa townsite and the Fort Amador military reservation. Millions of cubic yards of material also had to be hauled out to big waste dumps in the jungle. In the largest of these, Tabernilla, 17,000,000 cubic yards of material were deposited. Balboa was the biggest dumpsite. Other big dumps were Gatun Dam, and Miraflores.” — http://www.pancanal.com/eng/history/history/culebra.html
See other illustrations – links


Americans are disgusted with watching politicians screaming and yelling at one another on television. But does all the noise really make a difference? Drawing on numerous studies, Professor Diana Mutz in her compelling new book In-Your-Face Politics: The Consequences of Uncivil Media (Princeton University Press, April 2015) provides the first comprehensive look at the consequences of in-your-face politics. Her book contradicts the conventional wisdom by documenting both the benefits and the drawbacks of in-your-face media.
“In-your-face” politics refers to both the level of incivility and the up-close and personal way that we experience political conflict on television. Just as actual physical closeness intensifies people’s emotional reactions to others, the appearance of closeness on a video screen has similar effects. We tend to keep our distance from those with whom we disagree. Modern media, however, puts those we dislike in our faces in a way that intensifies our negative reactions. Mutz finds that incivility is particularly detrimental to facilitating respect for oppositional political viewpoints and to citizens’ levels of trust in politicians and the political process. On the positive side, incivility and close-up camera perspectives contribute to making politics more physiologically arousing and entertaining to viewers. This encourages more attention to political programs, stimulates recall of the content, and encourages people to relay content to others.
In the end, In-Your-Face Politics demonstrates why political incivility is not easily dismissed as a disservice to democracy—it may even be a necessity in an age with so much competition for citizens’ attention.