This article describes the influence that Extensible Markup Language (XML) will have on the software documentation process and subsequently on the curricula of advanced undergraduate and master's programs in technical communication. XML, an evolving set of standards for storing and displaying information, uses nine components that make up the XML development process. Grouped into content, formatting, and language specifications, these components enhance organizations' ability to manage information more efficiently and accurately. As the XML development process is adopted, the software documentation process will evolve from a self-contained procedure into a more flexible, interactive process in which software documenters must work closely with a wide range of specialists. The changes that XML will have on the software documentation process will likewise have implications for programs in technical communication in the need to address new kinds of job descriptions, skill sets, and career paths of future technical communicators. The article recommends adaptations to existing courses, as well as new elective and required courses.

Based on an analysis of 63 fundraising packages representing 46 nonprofit organizations, as well as research in trade journals and other secondary sources, this study discusses a variety of persuasive techniques used in fundraising messages to accomplish their missions. The fundraising package consists of the carrier envelope, the fundraising letter, the reply form, the reply envelope, and optional enclosures such as brochures, small gifts for the reader, and surveys to complete. These parts work together to perform the following tasks: 1) persuade recipients to open the envelope and read the letter; 2) convince readers a serious but not unsolvable problem exists; 3) make readers want to help solve the problem; 4) convince readers they can help by giving to the appealing organization; 5) tell readers what the organization needs them to do; and 6) make it easy to comply.

Communicating plans to subordinates is not an easy task. It requires that the writer be adept in accurately using the language of his/her discipline and takes care in considering the unique characteristics of the document's audience and how they are likely to interpret the message. When writers fail in these areas, the consequences can be very serious as demonstrated by General Ambrose Burnside's orders for the Battle of Fredericksburg during the Civil War.

This article claims that two social values in science—falsifiability of science and cooperation among scientists—determine use of passives in scientific communication. Scientists do not always develop valid theories, so scientific experiments must be amenable to being repeated and found invalid. This requires that the experiments must not be discrete events. Science is also a cooperative enterprise. As an integral part of science, scientific writing employs more passives than actives to focus on materials, methods, figures, processes, tables, concepts, etc. Use of passives to focus on the physical world helps de-emphasize discreteness of scientific experiments. Besides, it also helps remove personal qualifications of observing experimental results. Finally, it enhances cooperation among working scientists by providing a common knowledge base of scientific work—things and objects. Looked at in this way, the passive voice in scientific writing represents professional practices of science instead of personal stylistic choices of individual scientists.

This article uses Chaim Perelman's theories of argumentation to examine a recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, Promoting Health: Intervention Strategies from Social and Behavioral Research (2000). The IOM's text explores social and behavioral research to devise multipronged intervention strategies; it focuses on social, economic, behavioral, and political health as a means of assuring population health—and thereby expands the conventional boundaries of public health. Since Chaim Perelman's rhetoric is seldom applied in the field of health communication, employing his ideas to consider the role of style, arrangement, and argument in such a cutting-edge document can illuminate public health writing, as well as shed new light on Perelmanian rhetoric.

XML is a recent Web design language that will enable technical communicators to produce documentation that can reuse information and present it across multiple types of media for diverse audiences. However, little is understood about how XML will impact technical communication in terms of theory, academic research, and pedagogy. In this article, I argue that XML requires more interdisciplinary approaches toward the teaching and research of technical communication, particularly with respect to the integration of technical and rhetorical knowledge.

Budget and time constraints often force technical communicators to produce manuals that are less than affective. One reason is the time they take to analyze their document's users. Normally, user analysis involves demographic, or organizational, or psychological approaches or combinations. Rarely will they evaluate the culture of the user and determine what that means for developing the document. Typically, localization will edit the document for cultural elements, but that is an expensive and time-consuming process. This article discusses the cultural elements in developing a document and shows, through a comparison of two mythical cultures, how the document will differ when organized for those two cultures.

The connection between language and empiricism is a central issue in technical writing and communication, more so than in other fields. Our field deals with technical and scientific knowledge which is oftentimes very definite and objective, yet there has been increasing recognition over the past few decades that this knowledge is socially constructed and rhetorically negotiated. Debates have ensued over the rhetoricity of technical communication in contrast to its empirical and instrumental aspects. W. V Quine, one of the most influential American philosophers of the twentieth century, however, rejected the distinction between empirical knowledge and knowledge stemming from language and social negotiation. Understanding technical writing and communication through the lens of Quine's theory ameliorates the tension between instrumental and rhetorical/humanistic views of technical discourse by recognizing the validity of both views and integrating the two. This understanding in turn will facilitate our pedagogical interactions with technical and scientific majors.

If you wish to start an undergraduate professional and technical writing program at a small liberal arts college, you will find good arguments for your project in the educational writings of Sir Francis Bacon. Unlike other Renaissance Humanists, Bacon located the New Learning (what we now call the humanities) within the related contexts of scientific discovery and invention and professional training and development. His treatise, The Advancement of Learning, proposes to draw knowledge from and apply knowledge to the natural and social world. Bacon's curricular ideas can benefit emerging PTW programs in the humanities in three ways: They make a convincing apologia for most English departments and writing programs, wed humanistic education to public service, and provide a rich but practical theoretical framework for program development and administration.

This article begins with an overview of cognitive psychology research on the effects of aging on literacy and suggests the additional complications facing older adults who consume and produce text within the frame of technology, particularly on-line usage. From an overview, the text moves to patterns corporations are using to target older adults, namely as consumers and as producers. The text then explores the use of philanthropy in the corporate literacy initiatives and suggests that there are complicated issues at hand in attempting to integrate the knowledge of aging and corporate strategies into our technical writing classrooms because we enter this discussion concerned about non-traditional students, older adults who are challenged to participate in contemporary literacy initiatives, and ourselves as aging participants as well. The article ends with suggestions of possible ways of addressing concerns regarding aging.

This article begins by arguing that the infinitive phrase has not been taken seriously in writing because writers have been too concerned with Bishop Robert Lowth's proscription against the split infinitive. However, careful examination of three types of technical prose (instructions, annual reports, and “junk mail”) reveals that more than one sentence in four contains an infinitive phrase. The article then argues that two linguistic theories do not adequately explain the overwhelming presence of infinitives in the three types of prose. The reason for the presence of infinitives seems to be that they fulfill several rhetorical purposes, including vigor, symmetry, emphasis, variety, economy, and depersonalization. Implications for writing and teaching are also discussed.

This article compares the response rates for obtaining journal reprints from colleagues when the requests are made using postcards with or without a self-addressed return label. Higher response rates were obtained from the cards with the self-addressed return labels, and more women responded than did men, but these differences were not statistically significant.

Few concepts in the social sciences have wielded more discriminatory power over the status of knowledge claims than that of statistical significance. Currently operationalized as a = 0.05, statistical significance frequently separates publishable from nonpublishable research, renewable from nonrenewable grants, and, in the eyes of many, experimental success from failure. If literacy is envisioned as a sort of competence in a set of social and intellectual practices, then scientific literacy must encompass the realization that this cardinal arbiter of social scientific knowledge was not born out of an immanent logic of mathematics but socially constructed and reconstructed in response to sociohistoric conditions.

On-line publication alters the relationship between editor and writer, creating a potentially more collaborative and fluid text. This article explores implications of increased publication options and examines conceptual distinctions among Fixed-Format, Electronic, and Meta-media Editors. We propose a keyboard editing/commenting technique that will work across platforms and software programs and in every mode of electronic communication including simple e-mail. This ASCII based system uses only four symbols in various combinations to convey all of the print editor's marks and also allows the editor or reader to insert comments in the immediate context. The result is increased efficiency and flexibility for writer and editor or teacher and student.

For too long, journal articles and textbooks on scientific and technical discourse have adopted a positivistic approach to visuals. Unfortunately, this approach is problematic. It ignores that visuals are constructions that are products of a writer's interpretation with its own power-laden agenda. For example, in representing a tamed and dominated nature, visuals become instruments of patriarchy. Reading them responsibly requires that we uncover some of the values attached to the strategies of creating visuals and to the objects created. This article reviews the current approach taken by composition scholars, surveys richer interdisciplinary work on visuals, and—by using visuals connected with the Human Genome Project—models an analysis of visuals as rhetoric.

The commonsense principles of modern document design are direct descendants of the principles used in the Books of Hours, a hybridized religious instruction manual created in the commercial scriptoria of the 13th century. This article analyzes the design of Books of Hours and discusses how these medieval documents fit within the four design criteria (supertextual, extra-textual, intratextual, and intertextual) put forth by Kostelnick and Roberts [1]. The analysis reveals the early user of good document design features as the medieval scriptoria worked to address the audience and task requirements of the Books of Hours.

A strategic planning and measurement planning project was undertaken by an 800-employee Maintenance department of a major Canadian gas transmission company to establish a stable direction and performance guide. Employee morale was so diminished from six years of constant reorganization and downsizing that the newly appointed vice-president was skeptical that the department would be able to meet its new goals unless a highly participative process was used. The project therefore was designed to use an input-reaction process between employees and managers to create a shared vision, strategic plan, and measurement system. Past projects of this nature had involved management personnel only and often goals were not achieved because few employees felt motivated by the “top-down” directives. This process produced a motivating vision, a highly doable performance plan, and a well-accepted measurement system within the allotted project schedule.

Elderly people seem to encounter more problems than people from other age groups do, when using consumer electronics products and their accompanying manuals. This may be due to the absence of some kinds of information. In this study the effects of the absence of different information types in instructions on action performance were explored for different age groups. Younger (aged 20–30 y.) and elderly (aged 60–70 y.) participants installed a VCR with the help of the manual, while working aloud. The absence of goal information, consequence information and identification information in the instructions proved to have a negative effect on task performance, especially for the elderly participants. When one of these information types was missing in the instructions, the elderly performed more actions incorrectly than when the information was stated explicitly.

To determine the metaphor that represents cloning, a contemporary scientific revolution, this study examines articles published in Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Science, and Time that describe the cloning of the sheep Dolly. A plethora of figurative language may be garnered from these articles, and this study describes a number of them: metaphor (dead, natural, and technical), simile, hyperbole, personification, irony, cliché, paronomasia, antithesis, metonymy, anthimera, oxymoron, the rhetorical question, and analogy. The significance and relationship to cloning are explicated. The article concludes that the figures do not support a central metaphor. Further research is suggested to determine if the lack of a metaphor is a fluke or a trend in the development of scientific research and what the difference may be between scientific and technical metaphor.

Rhetoric of science reveals the role of rhetoric in the complex social enterprise that is standard science. Rhetoric plays a role in non-standard science too. The recent elucidation of the human genetic code calls to mind an earlier, tragic episode in the history of genetics, Lysenkoism in Stalinist Russia. It involved the repudiation of standard science in favor of an insular, intuitive, and anti-intellectual “science” called agrobiology which supposedly could shape agricultural productivity to political will. The tragedy is that careers were ruined and millions suffered starvation as the new “science” failed to bear its predicted fruit. Whether seen as a debased rhetoric of science or as a rhetoric of debased science, it assumed that language is plastic and can support a plastically reconceived “science” that reflected the plasticity of nature itself. This plastic rhetoric is strikingly similar to Plato's view of sophism, which of course differs considerably from contemporary views of sophism.

What is the influence of demographic variables such as gender and educational level on the reader feedback collected under the plus-minus method? To answer this question, an analysis was made of the problems detected in four public information brochures. The average amount of feedback per participant did not vary among the four brochures, but the severity of the problems did. Male participants mentioned more problems than female participants, but the problems detected by female participants were on average more severe. Highly educated participants detected more problems than participants with a lower level of education. No differences in problem types mentioned were found between male and female participants, and only one difference was found between the two educational levels: Highly educated participants focused more strongly on the structuring of information. In general, brochure characteristics had more effect on the types of feedback collected than the two demographic participant characteristics.

In their macroscopic approach to analogy, rhetorical studies project the latent assumption that sound analogical reasoning is a universal property of human consciousness rather than a socioculturally inherited practice that varies over time and place. After drawing briefly from landmark work in the social sciences to show notable cases of cultural variation in analogical reasoning, I present Lev Vygotsky's concept of internalization and Dedre Gentner's structure mapping theory of analogy as fruitful theoretical and methodological avenues through which to detect sociocultural variation in analogical reasoning practices in science.

The constant emphasis on specialization produces university graduates who do not or cannot look at problems broadly. As a result, engineers, scientists and executives—indeed graduates in all fields—including the supposedly broad-based humanities—often cannot solve problems that require knowledge outside of their specializations. Or their narrowness causes them to commit embarrassing blunders that could be avoided if they took a broader view. The case of the British Westland Lysander P12 Ground Strafer aircraft illustrates the problem of narrow thinking. Very little direct information is available on this ingenious but obscure prototype airplane, but by examining many peripheral matters we can determine not only why the P12 was built but also how it was built. Further, we can also determine why it failed. Had the initial designers approached the problem in a broad way, and using information that was then available, they would have seen in advance that the project would fail. The case is instructive as an industrial problem, but it also demonstrates the value of global thinking methodology.

A survey of CEOs, corporate spokespersons, and media representatives suggests that the evolving roles and responsibilities of corporate spokespersons may result in greater opportunities for technical communicators in corporate public relations. However, these opportunities require communication principles and skills that have not traditionally played a strong role in technical communication education. This essay discusses these requisite considerations so they can be more explicitly addressed in the contemporary technical communication curriculum.

E-mail has significantly impacted the way we communicate in business, possibly going so far as to affect the social structure of organizations. One under-explored affect of e-mail is how it impacts communication in smaller organizations. Given the ability of regular “face-to-face” interaction, is e-mail necessary to boost communication? A report of employee attitudes in one small business did provide an opportunity to observe the impact of e-mail on communications and employee attitudes. As a result, it is suspected that interoffice e-mail may serve to link formal and informal communication channels, particularly in terms of including managers to the informal communications network.

Committees within international standards organizations write standards. Prior to approval, these standards must pass through several reviews for technical accuracy and stylistic appropriateness. The style considerations are based on documents published by both the umbrella organization (International Organization for Standarization, or ISO) and the various committees and subcommittees within it. Because authors and editors who use these documents frequently do not have English as a first language, the documents must explain unambiguously just how committees should prepare their documents. This study looks at a sample of those instructional documents using Restricted and Elaborated Code and metadiscourse analysis to determine how easily users can read and understand the material. The findings suggest that the documents do not send a clear message to authors and editors and can be stylistically hard to understand. Consequently, the approved standards themselves are hard to read and interpret.

Teachers and researchers in the field of Technical English have always been concerned with the nature of this subject, its major characteristics, and its chief uses in Science and Technology. Obviously, less time and efforts have been spent on how technical English is learned, particularly in situations where foreign students have to relate their limited linguistic knowledge to meaningful realizations of the language system in technical texts of immediate concern to their specialist studies. This research is an early effort to show how technical English is learned and, more specifically, what relevant factors are involved in the overall learning process.

This article examines the concept of the efficiency with which text is entered into a word processor—from the perspective of effective use of keyboard shortcuts (sometimes called “hot keys” or “accelerator keys”). The article makes reference to the Autotext facility which is available in Microsoft Word. The article illustrates how the possibility for productiveness offered by shortcuts, available through the use of features such as Autotext, are often under-utilized by many word processor users, academics being no exception. The method involves constructing a word list from a corpus of one's own writing. This word list can then be taken as the basis for a personalized set of shortcuts of the most frequent words in an individual's writing.

This article compares the historical and contemporary clothing industry with the current microelectronics industry. It argues that the development of paper patterns, along with the perfection of the sewing machine as a technology in the 1870s, “democratized fashion” for lower and middle class women just as the development of the World Wide Web and Web-making software has democratized publishing for authors before unable to gain access to an audience for their writing. Comparing the businesses of three groups of women using the World Wide Web, this article finally problematizes these historical and contemporary democratizing technologies—the sewing machine and the computer—by pointing out both obvious and more subtle socioeconomic realities which undercut some utopian promises of publishing in Cyberspace. Women are … without class because the cut and fall of the skirt and good leather shoes can take you across the river and to the other side: the fairytales tell you that goose-girls may marry kings [1, pp. 15–16].

This article identifies and assesses the effectiveness of communicating expectations, listening, delegating, and providing feedback in relation to the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership model. It reviews the correlation between task versus relationship behavior that forms the basis of the Situational Leadership model. Then the article summarizes information found in literature on effective techniques for the four skills stated above. As these techniques are identified, they are discussed in relation to their effective use in the Situational Leadership model. To understand the application of the model in businesses and its impact on managers' communication effectiveness, we conducted a study of an operational department of a Fortune 500 financial services company. The results and content analysis of a survey we administered by random selection of the managers in this department indicate that successful use of the Situational Leadership model relies on effectiveness in four communication components: communicating expectations, listening, delegating, and providing feedback. Finally, we recommend areas of future research such as comparison analysis of surveys, interviews, and focus groups with subordinates of managers who have been trained on the Situational Leadership model and those who have not.

The profession of technical communication is in transition. While a few might argue that we are in danger of being swallowed up by large, institutional realignments, it seems more likely that the future workplace (as characterized by Senge, among others) will put communication, culture, and collaboration at the center of work. However, in order for the profession to exploit these opportunities, we must understand the impact of integrated information technology (IT) on organizations. I summarize the interaction of corporate culture, leadership/management, human resources, and advanced networking and web-based applications (more commonly called an Intranet) for the successful integration of new IT products into an established and well-defined organization. Background research for this paper was conducted as part of an Army Summer Faculty Research and Engineering grant.

Although rhetoricians have studied the discourse practices of engineers, little is known about the production workers who must assemble engineering knowledge into functional products. This case study examines what happens when a production worker tried to improve manufacturing documentation, and how her success depended upon both her craft knowledge and the rhetorical skills she attributes to a Writing Across the Curriculum program she experienced in college. … although the goal of engineering may be to produce useful objects, engineers do not construct such objects themselves. Rather, they aim to generate knowledge that will allow such objects to be built [1, p. 5].

This paper is a critique of current approaches to the development of computer graphing and graph visualization programs. Developers of these programs model the user as an individual problem solver who is reliant on perceptual skills to create and interpret graphed information. Such a model of graphing is ill-suited to meet the complex needs of real users, a supposition that is supported by work in two major areas of graphing theory and research: the sociology of science and the educational research of mathematics and scientific students. These areas have not been traditionally cited when planning computer graphing or visualization programs or when assessing their usability. A review of the literature in these fields reveals that an over-reliance on a user's perceptual skills is unlikely to result in successful graph practices.

Traditional models of usability assume that usability is a quality that can be designed into a particular artifact. Yet constructivist theory implies that usability cannot be located in a single artifact; rather, it must be conceived as a quality of the entire activity in which the artifact is used. This article describes a distributed approach to usability, based on activity theory and genre theory. It then illustrates the approach with a four-decade examination of a traffic accident location and analysis system (ALAS). Using the theoretical framework of genre ecologies, the article demonstrates how usability is distributed across the many official and unofficial (ad hoc) genres employed by ALAS users.