For students and researchers, the most inviting feature of the Internet is its immediacy. Ways to search for information are similarly fast and readily available, and they usually provide direct links to sources for immediate display on your computer screen. We have coined the term invisible revisability to capture these features of Internet publication. First, let's separate the reliability of the information people deliver over the Internet from the reliability of finding a document again. If you know how to identify trustworthy Internet sources, you can use them in your writing with as much faith as you place in other published materials.
Many researchers also keep a printed copy of at least the first page of each useful Internet source.
The printing capabilities of most Web browsers make it easy to record the URL and the access date automatically. Reporting where a document was located on a certain date does not guarantee that the document will not be revised or moved, but it does lend credibility to the work of the writer citing the document. For more help, see the FAQ entries for Chapter 4. As you encounter useful-looking information on the Internet, ask yourself who the author is and how credible the information is likely to be. Page numbers are generally meaningless for Web documents because the size of a document's display or printout depends on your browser's settings.