The online work environment brings with it factors that can create problems in crosscultural interactions. Technical communicators, therefore, need to understand how cultural communication expectations can affect discourse in IVOs. This article overviews one area-contact-in which cultural differences could cause online communication problems. The article also uses the theory of symbolic interactionism to examine these problems and to posit strategies for avoiding them.

This paper describes a five-year research project aimed at developing a corpus-based language support tool able to respond to the English writing needs of Japanese software engineers who do not speak English natively. Our research was based on recent developments in corpus and text linguistics. Since foreign readers often complain that English text produced by Japanese authors is difficult to understand because it is poorly organized and incoherent, we focused on the possibility of designing a writing tool that would provide discourse-level as well as sentence-level assistance. We collected a total of 539 sample English abstracts from four well-known technical journals and tagged them with linguistic and rhetorical information. Using this tagged corpus, an initial prototype was developed on a Unix-based workstation and a second one on the Web. The Web-based prototype was then evaluated in terms of its usability by engineers in Ricoh's Software Research and Development Group. They evaluated the final product positively. However, they expressed uncertainty about its ability to address their weaknesses in using transition words effectively as cohesive devices. In spite of unexpected difficulties, product improvement continues.

This study explored strengths and limitations of table formatting choices by engaging twenty-eight participants in information searches in online tables, presented on a small-screen interface (Palm IIIc). Table length across conditions was held constant at three screens long (24 rows total) but varied from one to three screens wide (approximately 35, 70, and 105 characters per line). Target information was positioned in either the upper left, lower left, upper right, or lower right quadrants. Data collected were time on task, error rate, and level of participants' confidence in their answers. Experimenters found that increased horizontal scrolling imposed the heaviest burden on information search. This study supports restricting table widths to one screen on handheld computers. If necessary, however, tables can go to two screens wide without critical detriment to usability. While ruled line formatting is slightly better than interface character in providing visual support for the burden of horizontal scrolling, neither formatting option adequately compensates for the added burden.

Information and communication technology (ICT) studies have a wide scope of application, particularly in their attention to the communicative interaction among human beings above and beyond man–machine interaction. The topic of human communication and culture for ICT is a timely one. While studies to date have focused largely on the technical communication aspects of ICT, this special issue proposes to innovate in its emphasis on the impact of the interaction of professional culture, rather than national or corporate, and new media on communication, with particular attention to economic ICT.

This article presents an overview of how the Internet has changed the way employers advertise vacancies and the way technical communicators search and apply for these openings. First, I explore the evolution of how employers have used the internet as a tool for identifying the best candidate for the job. Next, I review seven specific online recruiting strategies used by employers today. Finally, I describe major mistakes made by online job seekers and offer advice on how best to avoid or minimize these blunders. Included is a list of useful job search resources for technical communicators.

The role of the technical communication practitioner stems from the need for members from two distinct professions to connect; for example, engineers have created some new technology, and users who are (assumedly) unfamiliar with the technology want or need to understand that technology. The article presents an interface between the two professions which proposes a reconceptualization of the relationship between technicians/engineers and users. This reconceptualization can and should be provided by technical communicators who create a culture which encompasses both the technician and the user. In addition, this reconceptualization parallels the means originally proposed by C. P. Snow (1959) to mend the rift between the sciences and the humanities.

The article provides a framework for organizing and structuring the research of historical researchers who analyze technical and scientific publications. Because historical research spans both decades and centuries, an effective research methodology is essential. The framework consists of a multifaceted 10-step method for studying the written discourse of scientific and technical communication, specifically for interpreting historical data obtained from articles published in technical and scientific journals. The method is a reliable means for making sense of the enormous body of data that awaits historical researchers in the volumes of scientific and technical discourse already published.

Using a qualitative approach to data collection and analysis, the article discusses some of the findings from a larger study on collaboration and the role of gender. We profile three student engineering teams as they participate in processes leading to the submission of a report for a team-based technical communication course. While some theorists suggest that gender can play a significant role in achieving a successful team dynamic, our study only partially supports that claim. A synopsis of two women from two predominantly male teams reveals glimpses of what the literature describes as traditional gender-linked behaviors by both men and women, but the all-female team does not conform to stereotypical patterns and their behaviors call into question the existence of these interactional styles. We suggest that factors other than gender and independent of a team's gender composition exert a greater impact on collaboration. Nevertheless, the study does caution against assigning women to predominantly male teams, since when a team's social structure is mostly male, traditional gender-linked interactional behaviors as well as manifestations of the culture of engineering are more likely to emerge. Overall, the study underlines the importance of examining specific face-to-face interactions to see how behavior is situationally produced in order to more fully understand the interactional strategies open to individuals.

We develop a conceptual framework for exploring significant differences in how people from diverse cultural backgrounds and with diverse individual characteristics might perceive and use Web documents. This is the first stage of a large multistage empirical study of user satisfaction and effectiveness of various Web designs based on cultural and individual factors. We identify six cultural factors and six individual factors that could impact the effectiveness of Web documents. The six cultural factors include: power distance, individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, anxiety avoidance, long-term versus short-term orientation, and polychronic versus monochronic time orientation. The six individual factors include: demographics (age and gender), professional knowledge, information technology knowledge, flexibility, information processing abilities, and cultural knowledge. Based on the conceptual model proposed, we develop a number of testable, specific propositions on how Web document effectiveness could be impacted by the cultural and individual factors in various Web designs. In order to measure document effectiveness of each design, we identify components of Web document effectiveness as perceived usability, reliability, clarity, and comprehension that, in turn, influence readers' overall satisfaction with Web documents. Using the propositions presented, one can measure and analyze how cultural and individual factors influence users' satisfaction, which will assist researchers, educators, and communicators working with various Web designs.

Explanation is the bread-and-butter activity of any technical communicator. We explain things for a living, but how well can any of us explain the nature of explanation itself? What makes technical explanation different from persuasion or narration? Web-based instructional systems have pushed us away from traditional kinds of paper-bound explanation. In these new realms, anything better than hit-and-miss success requires a clear sense of basic principles. With that in mind, I discuss the basic logic of explanation first proposed by the philosopher C.S. Peirce in the 1870s, and more recently extended by J. Hintikka (1998).

The study used quantitative and qualitative measures to determine differences in learning outcomes between two sections of an advanced technical writing course taught by the same instructor. The instructor used traditional textbook methods in one and technology-enhanced methods in the other. The findings upheld those of previous studies in that students in the experimental group rated both the course and their learning higher than that of their counterparts in the control group. Although fewer significant differences than expected resulted from the many measures taken, substantive positive differences in the writing submitted by students in the experimental group did occur. In order for such changes in performance to emerge as statistically significant differences, evaluation criteria for technical communication students may need to change.

In this qualitative content analysis, I examined 55 articles with keywords relating to collaboration published in the 1990-1999 issues of five major technical communication journals. I considered the frequency, types of research, and themes in the 55-article collection. My analysis reveals differences in the authors' discussions of collaboration depending on whether the collaboration occurred in the classroom or the workplace. I also found that most of the 55 articles were more concerned with collaborative practice than with theoretical discussions of collaboration. Suggestions for future research include investigating how experienced workplace collaborators and experienced teachers of collaborative skills in technical communication courses solve the nonroutine problems that occur when practice becomes difficult. From these investigations, researchers might determine what constitutes expertise in collaboration.

At first glance, there seems to be very little in common between professional communication and a nineteenth-century detective story. However, there is a strong link between Poe's "The Purloined Letter" (E.A. Poe, 1975) and the successful practices of today's professional communicators, particularly technical writers and editors. In the story, Poe's writing methodology and his main character's investigative advice both offer useful guidelines for successful professional communication. "The Purloined Letter" is a formulaic detective story about Dupin, a witty detective who solves the case of a stolen letter, a case previously unsolved by the French police. Dupin uses intimate knowledge of human logic and reasoning to find the stolen letter. His method is contrasted with that of the French police who had spent months unsuccessfully searching for it. Dupin's means of finding the letter is a series of significant courses of action that can be applied to effective professional communication strategies. The article summarizes Dupin's advice and how it can be applied to effective technical communication today.

Janet Rochester is a Senior Member of the Engineering Staff at Lockheed Martin in Moorestown, New Jersey. She is one of twelve engineer writers in the Engineering Documentation Department. Janet is one of the first four graduates from Drexel University's Masters program in Science and Technical Communication. She also has an MBA from Monmouth College as well as a degree in Botany from the University of London, England. The interview with Ms Rochester covers her work and professional duties.

Within the classic information technology (IT) engineering disciplines (software and hardware engineering), there is sometimes skepticism about the status of technical writing. How can the manipulation of words and images compare with the rigors of producing efficient code or densely populated boards? Many technical writers don't have a degree with "science" in the title. To outsiders, their world seems an odd one, where trivial matters like the location of hyphens are intensely debated. The author addresses the question of whether technical writing is an engineering discipline by examining an authoritative set of criteria used to define systems engineering. This examination will take the form of worked examples from systems engineering and technical writing to see how each discipline matches these criteria. The conclusion is that technical writing, done correctly, meets the strict definition of an engineering discipline. Technical writing is not consistently accepted as such because of cultural differences, most specifically noted in the relative weight of academic qualifications.

This study examines how students enrolled in two Web-based sections of a technical writing class performed compared to students enrolled in a conventional version of the class. Although no significant difference in student performance was found between the two learning conditions, our data reveal intriguing relationships between students' prior knowledge, attitudes, and learning styles and our Web-based writing environment. One finding that we focus on is that reflective, global learners performed significantly better online than active, sequential learners, whereas there was no difference between them in the conventional class. Our study highlights the complexity of effective teaching and the difficulty of making comparisons between the online and the classroom environments. In particular, we maintain that the transfer of active learning strategies to the Web is not straightforward and that interactivity as a goal of instructional Web site design requires significant elaboration.

The article describes how the role of an information architect increased in value and how that increased value changed the job description. It goes on to examine how blending knowledge occurs through shifts in terminology, imitation of another field, and selling new concepts.

We are pleased to bring you this joint issue of Technical communication and IEEE transactions on professional communication on communication in cross-functional teams. This special issue is a result of a collaborative effort between two leading organizations in the field of technical communication—the Society for Technical Communication and the IEEE Professional Communication Society. The topic of the special issue seems particularly appropriate given the nature of this joint venture.

Focuses on less formal approaches to implementing cross-functional teams in software development environments. The authors show that technical communicators are ideal candidates for initiating cross-functional approaches in their organizations.

Focuses on communication channels (or media) that technical writers uses to obtain and verify information and their reasons for selecting them. The author analyzes data from a survey of 30 technical communicators who responded to an e-mail questionnaire.

Vivian Cook, University of Essex, advises his fellow EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers to view their students as multicompetent language users rather than as deficient native speakers. The same advice can readily be given to technical writers and editors who may occasionally struggle to adapt the writing of nonnative speaking (NNS) engineers, researchers, and programmers to style book norms. This approach certainly applies to those of us who work with or manage NNS colleagues. Although addressed to language teachers, the author considers how Cook's observations have validity for many workplace interactions in the growing international community.

The aim of the study is to analyze the process of document design in a multilingual setting. In order to evaluate translation quality, a theoretical perspective is formulated as a basis for criteria for a good translation. In this perspective, the target text is considered an autonomous document. Two sets of criteria are distinguished: correctness errors and functional errors. The tools that were used to assess translation quality were expert analysis and reader focused evaluation. For both tools, a multilingual evaluation team was formed with the highest possible expertise in the target languages, in linguistics, and in usability. In this case study, the process of evaluation and the results are described.

Techniques for observing selection and reading behavior in professional documents, such as the thinking-aloud and the click-and-read methods, may affect the reading process to be observed. Such so-called reactivity problems complicate the use of these instruments in experimental research and usability testing. If their influence is unknown, any experimental results obtained with these instruments may be caused by the testing method. One way to detect reactivity effects is to compare different instruments in a series of experimental studies. In this initial study, we compared the thinking-aloud method, the click-and-read method, a combination of these two methods and a silent reading condition. Subjects read and judged a 53-page policy document in one of these conditions. We investigated whether or not different observation instruments caused specific differences in information selection, judgment and knowledge. Thinking aloud did not cause any differences in the selection of information. Both the thinking-aloud method and the click-and-read method affected the judgment task outcome. Thinking aloud led to many positive and few negative judgments, whereas silent reading led to many negative and few positive judgments. The results for the click-and-read method showed a tendency toward the same effect. Neither method affected the knowledge test results.

Thinking-aloud protocols may be the most widely used method in usability testing, but the descriptions of this practice in the usability literature and the work habits of practitioners do not conform to the theoretical basis most often cited for it: K.A. Ericsson and H.A. Simon's (1984) seminal work. After reviewing Ericsson and Simon's theoretical basis for thinking aloud, we review the ways in which actual usability practice diverges from this model. We then explore the concept of speech genre as an alternative theoretical framework. We first consider uses of this new framework that are consistent with Ericsson and Simon's goal of eliciting a verbal report that is as undirected, undisturbed and constant as possible. We then go on to consider how the proposed new approach might handle problems that arise in usability testing that appear to require interventions not supported in the older model.

To test the theories that drive technical communication research, investigators may statistically analyze data gathered for descriptive or experimental studies. In such analyses, investigators often set a very small statistical risk of rejecting a true null hypothesis of no relationship between variables to avoid subsequently incorrectly accepting an alternative hypothesis that there is a relationship. By this normal procedure, investigators may unwittingly lower the statistical power to reject a false null hypothesis of no relationship, and, thereafter, they may incorrectly fail to accept the statistically alternative hypothesis that there is a relationship. Our purpose is to demonstrate how to use a statistical table for planning ahead to gain acceptable power and how to report the power fully in the results. Even after an experiment has been completed, investigators can still estimate and report the power. Careful attention to power contributes to more meaningful tests of theories, and good reporting gives readers a clearer picture of the meaning of the tests.

When students are also corporate employees, unique ethical and legal problems can arise in a technical communication classroom. To help instructors and employed students understand their situation, I review in this article several major approaches to normative ethics and define various legal terms. Next, I analyze two classroom incidents from the ethical and legal points of view. Finally, I provide guidelines that may help instructors address or forestall the potential consequences of classroom activities involving employed students.

Uses a qualitative methodology to examine how discourse norms and socialization processes affect the development of technical requirements. Our exploratory investigation of how government personnel develop and review technical requirements indicates that discourse norms and academic technical writing socialization processes affect the technical writing process. Technical writers perceived that requirements in work statements became less precise as more requirements were coordinated in team-based designs. In essence, we found that, in team-based designs, interpretation conflict and technical diffusion were important dimensions when writing and coordinating technical requirements. Our findings suggest that collaborative technical writing is a complex and difficult process in team-based designs where integration and persuasion skills dominate.

In the usability testing of Web sites, thinking aloud is a frequently-used method. A fundamental discussion, however, about the relation between the use of different variants of thinking aloud and the evaluation goals for this specific medium is still lacking. To lay a foundation for this discussion, I analyzed the results of three usability studies in which different thinking-aloud tasks were used: a simple searching task, an application task and a prediction task. In the task setting, the profile of the Web surfer, the communication goal of the Web site and other quality aspects are taken into account. The qualitative analysis of these studies shows that the task variation has some influence on the results of usability testing and that, consequently, tasks should be matched with the evaluation goals put forward.

Traditionally, many American technical communicators have tended to view translation as a "one-way" system in which they create English-language source text that is converted into another language. This singular perspective of translation can be seen in professional communication literature that tends to focus on how to better "write for translation" rather than exploring other ways in which technical communicators might be able to make use of translators or the translation process. While English is a key language used in international technical and scientific discourse, it is not the only language being used. Speakers of languages other than English are increasingly contributing to various scientific and technical fields. As a result of this factor, technical communicators should begin rethinking ways in which they view and use translation if they wish to remain effective communicators in the new global marketplace.