Qualitative audience responses to editorial treatment and nontreatment in terms of comprehension and evaluation of message and source were compared. This experiment was conducted in response to the trend in government and industry to cut back on editorial expenses by issuing `quick and dirty' reports. From an examination of lay audiences tested, a strong correlation emerged between editorial treatment and reader comprehension (21.3% improvement from unedited to edited treatment), task completion time (21.5% decline), and message acceptability (20% increase), Results indicate that if editors do not invest editorial time in a manuscript, then each reader must. And, according to acceptability scores, some will not.

A series of team reporting projects is used to teach concepts of audience and communication skills in technical and professional communication courses at the Univ. of Texas at Arlington. Supplemental to conventional reporting assignments, the projects range from short exercises done in a single class period to extended out-of-class projects involving both a literature review and primary research. In each, students work in small, interdisciplinary groups to solve a problem, prepare a team-written report, and deliver an oral presentation. Short exercises are graded by the instructor; the more extensive reporting projects are graded by peers and by the instructor using evaluation checklists.

A scorecard is introduced for evaluation by authors, peers and instructors of technical writing that guides technical professionals to shared standards for good writing. Methods for applying the scorecard to both classroom and industrial situations are described.

Since World War II, proposal writing, especially that which involves government funding, has become one of the most important communicative functions of the industries that employ engineers and technical writers. An immense literature on the subject of how to prepare, write, and submit proposals has grown up in the last 25 years. The 80-item bibliography provided here is designed to help the engineer, the technical writer, and the engineering manager find and use the literature most appropriate and helpful in the overlapping realms of industry and government. The bibliography lists sources of information under the topics of education, evaluation, format and preparation, general, grantsmanship, management, and style and rhetoric. The precis provide a general guide to each of these topics; occasional annotations supplement this information.

Conducting a successful technical seminar requires careful preparation. Pre-seminar planning includes (1) outlining your material, (2) developing much more material than you think you'll need, and (3) arranging comfortable and appropriate facilities. At the beginning of the seminar you should provide a topical outline and announce plans to take a break between topics or at least hourly. After the presentation, time should be allowed not only for questions and answers but also for an evaluation to help you prepare for future seminars.

Nomograms are presented based on Flesch's Reading Ease and Gunning's Fog Index methods of assessing the readability of text. These nomograms provide quick and direct determination of readability scores, eliminating numerical calculation.

Effective user documentation is legible, well illustrated, clearly indexed and written with the user's needs in mind. Evaluating software documentation before buying helps determine the true cost of installation. This evaluation should cover both communicative and technical quality.

Three important steps in the development of a training curriculum are task analysis, identification of trainee needs, and setting program objectives. When client requirements force the elimination or short-changing of these steps, the curriculum writer can lessen potential problems in course development by making an informal needs assessment, identifying skill constants and variables, obtaining feedback for informal evaluation, and educating the client.

A prerequisite to effective writing is logical thinking. Often the act of writing forces the organization of one's thoughts. Effective writing involves consciousness of the purpose of a message, awareness of the reader's needs and interests, evaluation of available information (quantity and quality), and attention to the order of presentation. First drafts should never be accepted; review and revision should be standard procedure.

When interdisciplinary or interorganization teams are assigned, temporarily, to solve a nonfamiliar problem, intragroup communication may be difficult but is critical to the outcome of the task. Most of the problem analysis and solution or action plan are developed in meetings where all participants must come to terms with the different facets of the situation. Among the recommendations of this article for organizing a project team and holding successful meetings of this kind is a meeting agenda that covers (1) recognition of the problem, (2) definition of its scope, (3) identification of related needs and wants, (4) identification of possible solutions, (5) evaluation of solutions, (6) determination of the best solution, and (7) planning for further action.

Last fall, as part of an ongoing evaluation of IEEE publications, a small-sample survey was made of U.S. subscribers to the various Transactions and Journals. Preliminary analysis suggests a small toot of our own horn. In terms of raw data, unadjusted for differences in content, size, and frequency among the publications, one question brought an outstanding response about this Transactions: Two-thirds of the readers read one-third or more of the papers! The overall range of response in this category was nine to 67 percent, with a median at 23 percent.

Slide design is a professional activity and should be done by a professional designer. The suggested ideas and visual material given to the designer are crucial to the design of an effective slide presentation. This description of what the designer does is meant to be helpful to the engineer in structuring and writing a presentation and in preparing visual material for the designer. Preparation and evaluation of slide material, design, typography, production, and slide use are discussed.

The psychology and mechanics of creating and publishing a nonfiction book involve many considerations. Among those discussed here are evaluation of the audience, outlining structure and content, establishing a writing habit, including graphic material, credits and acknowledgments, editorial help, agents and publishers, contracts, galley and page proofs, and indexing.

The decision to create a new journal starts — or should start-with the determination of the need for a new, separate, and continuing forum for the interchange of information within a discipline or field. Critical criteria include the choice of editor and editorial board; estimates of the amount of material to be published; assessment of the total potential audience and of the probable percent capture; direct costs (which vary with the publishing organization); and the subscription price. Other factors include growth potential, society support, page charges, reprint sales, advertising sales, and patience.

Referees often disagree as to whether to accept or reject a manuscript for publication. Recent investigations have often focused on the study of standard rating forms that ask for appraisal of specified attributes of a manuscript. Scott asked reviewers to rate, on seven criteria, manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. There was some agreement on most of the criteria; correlations were often significant but never large. Importance of the problem and adequacy of design and analysis seemed to affect evaluation most strongly. Whether the use of such a rating form will lead to greater reliability of referees' recommendations is an open question. There are many reasons why referees disagree, of course, and research in this area should be broadly based. The decision-making process of the editor is also very complex and should be the focus of empirical investigation.

Twelve years ago it became apparent to the management of the Mack Printing Company that technological improvements had to be made in the craft of composition. Continued reliance on the traditional high-labor-intensive monotype system would not be acceptable when considered in relation to the scientific and technical community. In this paper the evolution of cold-type composition to the present “state of the art” at Mack is traced. How the system functions and interacts with the journal publisher is shown, and the total systems approach outlining the hardware and the software development is explained. Also discussed are the objectives of Mack Pointing Company for future enhancements to the system and the ability of the present system to create a database for the generation of periodic indexes. Comparison and evaluation of this approach as it relates to economy, flexibility, speed, and quality of typesetting can readily be made.

Citation analysis provides a tool for the evaluation of the relative importance of journals as well as papers. A publication, the ISI Journal Citation Reports, is issued primarily to permit users to make such evaluations by answering the basic questions: How often has a journal been cited? What journals have cited it and how frequently? What journals has it cited and how frequently? These data have been conditioned by the inclusion of a `relative impact factor' to give additional weight to the significance of the articles it publishes. The information thus developed is particularly attractive to librarians, journal editors and publishers, individual scientists, and science policy-makers.

The use of emotionally laden words in the scientific literature, especially on controversial topics, tends to undermine objectivity. Readers begin to respond emotionally rather than rationally. To investigate this phenomenon on some systematic basis, we reviewed all the articles and letters published in two major medical journals in 1971 on the subject of commonly used psychoactive drugs, Many of these articles contained words used rhetorically rather than scientifically, which undoubtedly altered opinions or reinforced prejudices among many readers, words such as “alarming,” “abuse,” “addiction,” and “epidemic.” We believe that such rhetoric has no place in the scientific literature. It involves value judgments and not scientific evaluation, and as such concerns social and not scientific issues. We conclude, then, that authors must avoid language that persuades rather than explains. Moreover, editors must accept a special responsibility to prevent semantic abuses from creeping into their journals.

A historical approach to the study of the development of style manuals for book publishers and writers is undertaken. Guides of the ancient world are discussed and compared with the most widely used of today's manuals. Included is an evaluation of the changes that have occurred during this century. A shift from the publisher-oriented style manual to those with a greater concern for the needs and guidance of the author is seen. Today's spirit of cooperation appears to dominate the manuals that are now being published. The value of style manuals as a factor in helping to limit the ever-increasing costs in publishing is discussed and suggestions for improvement of format are presented.

In interviews, 161 polymer scientists gave detailed accounts of their most recent experiences with each of nine different kinds of encounters with scientific information. One of these kinds was information obtained “accidentally.” Half of the messages described in the accounts were obtained while the scientist was pursuing some other information; about one-quarter were told him by a colleague with whom he was in contact for another purpose; about one-tenth were brought to his attention by a colleague who deliberately sought him out for this purpose. The circumstances that led to these information transactions will be examined together with the scientist's own assessment of the impact of the message on his work. Attention will be called to implications for current-awareness activities and services.