Composing in XML markup as compared to a general word processor definitely gave a different writing experience than I was used to. Overall, I felt that using the XML format gave nice guidelines for me to write the annotated bibliography. Having one specific form that each source and annotation should be in helped since we had to write five annotations in the same form for five different sources. I feel as though I was writing to the schema versus writing to the prompt at times, however. I didn’t find myself looking at the prompt much at all during the writing while in a general setting I was referring to the prompt often to ensure that I encapsulated everything from the prompt. If the schema is set up well, though, this shouldn’t matter as much as all elements of the prompt should have been included in the schema. It seemed like at times I was writing three different sections for each annotation rather than one complete paragraph. I believe that this is how XML writing is supposed to make you write, it just felt a little odd because I was not used to writing in this manor. I think now that I completed the bibliography I would have liked to make sure that each section flowed together nicely despite being written in the schema format of background, summary, and relevance. One way that I kind of felt restricted in the annotated bibliography form was that there was not much room to describe how the source could actually apply to the problem. The short nature of the annotation allowed for just a short sentence or two describing the application.
It seems like the “social action” of an annotated bibliography is to identify a problem and explain how other people’s ideas and research can be applied to that problem. It is a gathering of sources in a manor that the reader can infer how an the different sources will piece together and provide a solution.
Overall, I feel pretty comfortable writing in Oxygen. It gives a nice rigid format that allows the writer to stick to predefined guidelines and write for the specific genre that they are creating.
