5.4 Effective Displays Of Index Cards

To think – to write – is to act on your world.

5.4.1 Effective Displays

Some authors display their work’s progress to aid writing. Tracey Kidder and his editor Richard Todd spread Kidder’s book manuscripts across Todd’s office floor. “Spreading the pages across the floor in itself lent the illusion of distance and control as we walked among the piles like a pair of Gullivers” (Kidder & Todd, 2013, p. 158). Annie Dillard uses a large conference table. “You lay your pages along the table’s edge and pace out the work. You walk along the rows; you weed bits, move bits, and dig out bits, bent over the rows with full hands like a gardener” (Dillard, 1989, p. 46). To provide a useful scaffold, you must consider how you will display and act upon your index cards.

The medium for displaying index cards also offers you affordances. You need a two-dimensional display so you can organize your index cards spatially. You need a large enough display to hold the cards you need to use. For group projects, you need a display visible to all group members who work together with the cards.

When I use a Chapter 2 scaffold, I employ various display surfaces. At home, depending on how many cards I need to work with, I will lay my cards out on a lap desk, on a coffee table, or on the kitchen table. All my tables permit me to inspect cards on display and to rearrange them. As I don’t live alone, I must clean up my cards as soon as possible.

Corkboards provide another, more permanent, display. I use push pins to attach my cards to a corkboard; I can easily position and reposition my cards as an outline’s scaffold develops. I tend to use 20” by 30” corkboards, big enough to lay out many cards, but small enough to hide (with card positions intact) if a workspace needs tidying. I also have a larger corkboard mounted on a cart which I can move around during group work or lab meetings.

My lab has an extremely large magnetic whiteboard. I use magnets to place index cards on the whiteboard. I recognize the whiteboard displays index cards publicly; I use the whiteboard to display index cards related to my lab’s most important project. The whiteboard offers additional affordances not offered by coffee tables or corkboards. I can use dry erase markers to add lines or labels to help further organize my index cards.

The affordances offered by index cards and displays place requirements on the space in which you write. Your space must offer room for creating index cards, for their display and manipulation, and for storing cards for later use. You must structure your writing space to provide all the affordances you need.

5.4.2 Why Not Use A Computer?

I began my graduate career in the early 1980s. As a master’s student I did not have a personal computer. Instead, I used a mainframe computer which I never saw. I would go to a punch card room in the Social Sciences Centre at the University of Western Ontario to type out data and a program to analyze the data on blank punch cards. The punch card machine would print readable type at a card’s top and punch holes in the card to make the information readable for the computer. When finished, I would take my cards down to the building’s basement. I would hand my cards to an operator, who would feed them into a card reading machine, sending my information to the mainframe. Then the attendant handed my cards back to me. I would head back upstairs, returning hours later to pick up a printout of my results.

Later, a room containing terminals replaced the punch card room; the terminals connected me remotely to the mainframe. Once, half-jokingly, my Master’s supervisor told me he missed the days of punch card data. He felt when he carried his punch cards his data felt real; his data seemed less real when submitted via the terminal.

Section 5.3 focused on physical scaffolds for writing, emphasizing index cards and media for displaying them. Perhaps my interest in such material objects reflects my own old-fashioned longing for punch cards. Perhaps my preference for index cards reflects my inability to adapt to modern technology.

Remember, the Chapter 2 scaffold produces a rich outline which resides within a word processor. Why use index cards at all? Why not use a computer to develop the outline from the outset? After all, as Paul Simon wrote in The boy in the bubble, “These are the days of miracle and wonder/This is the long distance call” (Simon, 1986). Perhaps the days of miracle and wonder demand me to use modern technology to outline and develop my writing projects.

Certainly, many programs exist for developing outlines. Microsoft Word provides an outline view for generating a multi-level document outline. Similarly, many different apps can create and process virtual index cards on a tablet. Why not use a computer to scaffold your outline?

The physicality of index cards offers different affordances than those offered by programs for creating virtual cards. I have tried out various ‘index card programs’ and have always felt limited in how I can act upon virtual cards. For instance, index card software limits how I can arrange cards, because most apps assume users desire neat, nonoverlapping card displays. By offering different affordances, programs for virtual index cards alter my ability to think about my writing.

Always consider your affordances! The scaffold described in Chapter 2 views thinking as physically manipulating index cards. The physical cards and their physical display permit me to think in a particular way. If I change the affordances -- as moving from real cards to virtual cards demands -- I change how I think.

For me the affordances offered by physical index cards beautifully support my thinking and writing. You should use other media, like virtual index cards, when different media offer useful affordances. However, virtual index cards and other electronic outliners do not work for me because I miss my preferred affordances.

Nowadays computers offer extremely tempting aids for writing. Large language models like ChatGPT will do the writing for you when you provide ChatGPT a prompt. Table 5-1 provides one example of ChatGPT’s writing abilities – and lets ChatGPT suggest why you should avoid using it as a writing tool.

ChatGPT’s response in Table 5-1 illustrates one seductive reason for using it: ChatGPT can create a sensible series of paragraphs. With the right prompt, ChatGPT could create a solid first draft for you, sidestepping all the scaffolding discussed in earlier chapters. Why should you avoid such temptation?

You should avoid modern scaffolds like ChatGPT because using large language models to write confuses why academics write in the first place. You might turn to ChatGPT if you believe writing’s purpose is to create a manuscript. However, writing has a very different purpose – you write to understand (Howard & Barton, 1986; Zinsser, 1988). Writing is a form of thinking. Furthermore, your ability to write about a topic reflects how much you understand about it. If I have trouble writing about something, I realize I need to step away from writing and return to thinking about the topic to understand more about it.

The scaffolds provided in earlier chapters reflect the need to think or understand before you write. By being inspired by embodied cognition, the scaffolds bring ‘thinking’ to life as the manipulation of physical objects. The scaffolds are designed to support your thinking about your paper – before you start to write it.

ChatGPT offers writing without requiring you to perform much thinking or understanding; I find this very concerning. One recent study highlights the danger offered by large language models (Gerlich, 2025). Gerlich, studying nearly 700 participants, found greater amounts of AI tool usage was associated with poorer critical thinking abilities. If a major goal of writing is to understand, then you should avoid turning to tools like ChatGPT to create your first draft.