The tension between the nonlinearity of hypertext and the research essay's apparent demand for linear progression in the service of an argument or position may actually point to the impossibility (or the inadvisability) of the hypertext research essay. How can an author produce an explicit argument that enables the user to enter it at any point and navigate it in any number of ways? One approach to the hypertext essay that attempts to steer a course between the linear and nonlinear is a multilinear approach to writing hypertext.

Adrian Miles's hypertext essays generally attempt a multilinear approach to the essay in which, "the argument, in contrast to its more usual explication in linear writing, often exists via the links and the relations they establish" ("Realism").

For example, Miles's "Hypertext Syngagmas," provides a central organizational structure suggesting (but not enforcing) a linear progression. Once inside the essay, however, the user has considerable latitude to determine just how to proceed through the essay. In fact, it is easy to get lost in "Hypertext Syntagmas."

And while Miles's hypertext is densely packed with important insights, the user has some difficulty grasping the contribution the insights make to the overall argument. David Kolb sees an approach like Miles's as a bit thin on the kind of complex interdependencies that arguments in hypertext would make possible. Perhaps Miles goes too far in suggesting that the relations links establish between elements of a hypertext become the argument in a hypertext essay ("Realism").

An alternative multilinear approach might afford the user more control over initial navigation through a less suggestive organizational structure, while imposing greater control over the user's options once a node is selected. Reinhardt's "Britney: Camouflaged Corruption" begins to follow this model, although as hypertext it remains almost entirely self-contained. The argument is both textual and visual, making it something of a new media multilinear research essay and a good example of Davis and Shadle's "multi-writing" (434).

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