The use of reporting guidelines is an established yet still-evolving practice in the field of biomedicine. These documents are often linked to common methodologies (e.g., randomized clinical trials); they include multiple textual artifacts (e.g., checklists, flow diagrams) and have a history that is coextensive with the emergence and ongoing development of evidence-based medicine (e.g., as an epistemological orientation to research and decision making). Drawing on the concept of metagenre, this article examines how practitioners use reporting guidelines to define and regulate the boundaries of biomedical research and writing activity. The analysis, focusing on one prominent set of guidelines, shows how practitioners use the genre–metagenre dynamic to promote strategic intervention while upholding traditional principles and standards for evidence-based research and communication.

With significantly higher rates of comorbidities and limited access to health care, some Appalachian rural communities face magnified health challenges due to COVID-19. This article looks at one example of how data visualizations might draw attention to health care realities in rural communities and yet render invisible the realities of the most vulnerable community members. The authors urge technical and professional communicators to contextualize data-driven accounts of public health crises in order to call attention to the needs of rural communities and support community members who are multiply marginalized and thus especially vulnerable.

This study examines the effects of inductively versus deductively organized product descriptions on Chinese and Western readers. It uses a 2 × 3 experimental design with text structure (inductive versus deductive) and cultural background (Chinese living in China, Chinese living in the Netherlands, and Westerners) as independent variables and recall, reading time, and readers’ opinions as dependent variables. Participants read a product description that explained two refrigerator types and then recommended which one to purchase. The results showed that Chinese readers rated readability and persuasiveness higher when the text was structured inductively whereas Western readers rated these aspects equally high for the inductively and deductively structured text. The results suggest that culturally preferred organizing principles do not affect readers’ ability to read and understand texts but that these principles might affect their opinions about the texts.

The marketing success of green products has spawned the phenomenon of greenwashing, but studies on the effects of greenwashing on consumers are still limited. Using a 4 × 2 randomized experimental design, this study examines such effects by determining whether consumers respond differently to greenwashing, silent brown, vocal green, and silent green organizations selling hedonic products (perfume) or utilitarian products (detergent). The results show that consumers recognized the green claims in the greenwashing condition, which led to an environmental performance impression in between green and brown organizations but also to more negative judgments about the integrity of communication. Regarding purchase interest, greenwashing organizations performed similarly as silent brown organizations, with significantly lower scores than those of vocal green and silent green organizations. No significant effects of product type and no interaction effects were found. Overall, greenwashing has only limited benefits (perceived environmental performance), poses a major threat (perceived integrity), and has no true competitive advantage (purchase interest).

White papers are commonly produced by for-profit organizations to market high-tech products and services and are often created by technical writers. But writers of this genre have little evidence-based research to guide them. To fill this void, the authors tested a rhetorical move structure with a sample of 20 top-rated marketing white papers and found that, despite the lack of industry standards for white papers, those written for marketing purposes display similar rhetorical moves: introducing the business problem, occupying the business solution niche, prompting action, establishing credibility, and providing disclaimers or legal considerations. Based on the results of this study, the authors advance guidelines for writers of this genre and suggest areas for future research.

This case study investigates how a group of novice technical communicators used appeals to support their design decisions during group meetings. The results of this ethnographic study suggest that although these technical communicators were well acquainted with user-centered design (UCD) concepts and claimed to actively practice UCD, their appeals often did not reference data collected within user-centered research and instead referenced designer-centric appeals to support their claims. This group’s overall use of appeals to support their design decisions suggests that more empirical study into UCD theory and practice as well as students’ argumentation skills is warranted.

How should we teach international business communication? What role can multiculturalism play in the business communication classroom? Can we identify a set of business communication requirements that are valid across different cultures? This article enters this discussion by presenting a small empirical study of the business communication needs expressed by postgraduate students in a North Cyprus university and comparing it to similar studies conducted in the United States and Singapore. The findings reveal some interesting correspondences between the needs expressed by students in these different countries. In addition, the multicultural environment of the North Cyprus university studied suggests that multicultural interaction increases students' sensitivity to the need for a nonethnocentric approach to international communication. The findings also indicate that respondents in multicultural settings may be more inclined to engage in groupthink because of their heightened awareness of cultural differences and their wish to avoid conflict.

This commentary reflects on Mumby and Stohl's essay “Disciplining Organizational Communication Studies.” The author argues that Mumby and Stohl's desire to create a “birth” story for the discipline caused them to overlook two important trends among its scholars that may work to undermine the discipline's relevance: overvaluing theory relative to the empirical study of communication behavior and resisting technology both as a subject and a tool. Organizational communication scholars should work against tendencies to maintain the currency of their research enterprise.

This article argues for the long-term value of client-based group projects in an introductory technical communication course. Survey results are presented from 73 former technical communication students with two to seven years of workplace experience. Lasting five to six weeks, these projects are a compromise between a briefer conventional case method and a more lengthy individualized internship or cooperative education experience. The projects reinforce research, analysis, and reporting skills, such as interviewing specialists and conducting survey research, that graduates continue to value highly even after years of workplace writing. When framed as such, client-based projects also encourage students to define and debate public policy issues.

This study uses qualitative content analysis to discuss current perspectives in technical communication pedagogy. It examines the 1990-94 issues of five major scholarly journals—a collection of 563 articles—to identify 98 articles mentioning teaching in undergraduate technical communication courses. Influenced by differing theoretical and practical approaches, the 98 articles were classified according to four pedagogical perspectives: (1) the functional perspective, based on empirical research and workplace experience; (2) the rhetorical perspective, based on scholarship in the humanities and influenced by rhetorical theory; (3) the ideological perspective, also based on scholarship in the humanities but influenced by critical theory; and (4) the intercultural and feminist perspective, a bridging perspective based on both empirical research and critical theory. This article discusses the four perspectives in terms of the educational goals of communicative competence (the ability to use language to succeed in the workplace) and social critique (the ability to question existing social structures and to envision cultural change).

Visual design has played an important role in the historical development of professional communication. The technology of laser printing has reestablished the importance of visual language in functional communication, transforming contemporary document design and redefining its relation to the traditions of handwritten, typewritten, and printed text. During this period of transition, three factors will shape the new visual language: (a) the development of a visual rhetoric that represents design as an integral part of the message rather than merely as external “dress,” (b) the rediscovery of aesthetics as a legitimate factor in text design, and (c) the use of empirical research—particularly context-specific research—to guide the document design process.

Rhetorical categories can and should be developed by scholars of professional writing to identify how values held within professions constrain the ways discourse is interpreted in organizational settings. Empirical research (conducted by the author and others), discourse theory, and pedagogical practice in professional writing strongly suggest that at least three categories of professional writing exist: engineering, administrative, and technical/professional writing. The author demonstrates this claim and distinguishes the characteristics of these three categories. Engineering writing is shown to respond to professional values of scientific objectivity and professional judgment as well as to corporate interests. Administrative writing reflects the locus of decision-making authority and promotes institutional identity. Technical/professional writing aims to accommodate audience needs through complying with professional readability standards. Future research should focus on defining the characteristics of these varieties more precisely. Articulated definitions of these three varieties of professional writing can help scholars and practitioners better understand how discourse is framed and interpreted in organizational settings.