Acknowledging the changing nature of writing in the 21st century,
particularly the increasing significance of visual characteristics in
written texts, this paper explores the implications of multimodality
for the pedagogy of writing. It considers the potential disjunction
between children’s life experiences of written texts and the
demands of the writing curriculum, particularly in the secondary
phase, and whilst arguing for greater recognition of the role of the
visual, the paper also notes the importance of ensuring all children
also have access to powerful verbal texts. Drawing on two
separate research studies, the paper demonstrates how visual
characteristics of written texts influence readers’ responses to texts,
but also how writers are aware of some of the choices they make
in shaping verbal texts. The paper argues for a
reconceptualisation of the writing process as a design process, and
for a pedagogy of writing which encourages, supports and enables
writers to become confident and effective designers of texts
