Agile methodologies often do not explicitly include the process of creating user documentation, consistent with the idea that documentation should be minimal to create efficient processes. While Agile provides several advantages for technical communicators, these processes also raise challenges that technical communicators creating user documentation need to address, including collaborating with development teams and evaluating the usability of user documentation. Building on existing research, this qualitative study aimed to understand both the advantages and challenges of Agile and illuminate how technical communicators and their colleagues address the challenges. We interviewed 14 practicing technical communicators and their colleagues over 3 months in the fall of 2022. Participants worked in six software development organizations across the United States, with one working in Europe. We analyzed results qualitatively to discern findings focused on three topics—general advantages and challenges of creating user documentation in Agile contexts, the dynamics of technical communicators interacting with Agile development teams, and the effects of Agile on assessing the usability of user documentation. We offer suggestions for practitioners and educators as they consider how Agile affects the creation of user documentation, leveraging the benefits of Agile, and addressing challenges in innovative ways as demonstrated by participants in this study. Future research will provide even richer perspectives.

This study investigated the extent to which lexical repetition in English passages developed in a content management system appeared to affect reading comprehension. Participants were 65 graduate students at a Midwestern public university, all of whom were native English readers. Instruments were two passages adjusted to maximize or minimize internal lexical repetition. Readers rated repetitive texts as significantly more cohesive than nonrepetitive texts, although repetition did not significantly affect the accuracy of task-based responses. Participants named lexical cues that had been repeated but also named nonrepeated, memorable cues, suggesting possible future research into managed content, lexical memorableness, and reader comprehension.

In technical and professional communication, the social justice turn calls on us to interrogate sites of positionality, privilege, and power to help foreground strategies that can empower marginalized groups. I propose that mainstream media coverage of the opioid epidemic represents such a site because addiction to these drugs, which initially primarily affected White people, has been positioned as a public health issue rather than a criminal justice problem. I explore the strategies that were used to create this positioning by investigating themes in the visual rhetoric as conveyed through data visualizations and in the text of the articles in which these graphics were published. My results align with two previous studies that confirmed this public health framing. I also observed an emphasis on mortality, which contributes to our understanding of rhetorical strategies that can be used to engender support rather than condemnation for those suffering from drug addiction.

This article engages with recent discussions in the field of technical communication that call for climate change research that moves beyond the believer/denier dichotomy. For this study, our research team coded 900 tweets about climate change and global warming for different emotions in order to understand how Twitter users rely on affect rhetorically. Our findings use quantitative content analysis to challenge current assumptions about writing and affect on social media, and our results indicate a number of arenas for future research on affect, global warming, and rhetoric.

Deploying a grounded theory approach, this case study examines 9 years of a nonrenewable energy company’s responses to a voluntary environmental disclosure questionnaire to discover how industrial discourse about climate change is used by industry writers. Through using the rhetorical strategies of emotions, affect, and mythic narrative within theory, balancing norm, and dominion frames, the company communicates climate change does not impact their secure economic future due to their proactive approach toward regulatory compliance with technological innovation and attentive internal and external policy oversight.

This article examines a targeted drought awareness campaign by the city of Cape Town in South Africa to prevent a looming water crisis dubbed Day Zero. Using rhetorical criticism and commonplaces, the article analyzes the design and (rhetorical)circulation of artifacts that heightened public awareness of the crisis, helped shape the public mindset, and galvanized collective action to prevent Day Zero. For one city in Africa to avert a water crisis through a rhetorically orchestrated set of technological, scientific, and civic interventions is significant for (among others) technical communicators who need to know not simply that it was done, but how rhetoric helped avert Day Zero.

Over the last 2 decades, the nations that once comprised the Soviet Union have begun to play an increasingly important role in the global economy. As a result, today's technical and professional communicators could find themselves interacting with co-workers, colleagues, and clients in these nations. Being successful in such contexts, however, requires an understanding of the cultural, historic, educational, and economic factors that have affected and continue to shape technical and professional communication practices in these countries. This article provides an overview of the literature that has been published on technical and professional communication practices in the former USSR as well as reviews educational factors that have contributed to such practices. Through such an examination, the article provides readers with a foundation they can use to engage in future research relating to technical and professional communication practices in post-Soviet states.

This article examines communication management issues of emergency aid following natural disasters. Ten aid workers involved in the 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake relief were interviewed and surveyed while they were still “in the field” to determine their understanding of the role of communication in the relief effort. The analysis was framed using the three-stage process (pre-disaster, response, post-disaster). Analysis of their responses showed that there are still chronic problems in each of the stages. The importance of enhancing communication elements in the pre-disaster phase was a strong finding. In the response stage, the differential role of various media, including old technologies in poor regions, emerged as an issue. Organizational factors such as high staff turnover were also seen as negatively affecting communication efficacy. An important finding about the post-disaster stage is the importance of debriefing.

Several government agencies are seeking quality improvement in environmental policy documents by asking for the implementation of Plain Language (PL) guidelines. Our mixed-methods research examines whether the application of certain PL guidelines affects the comprehension and perceptions of readers of environmental policy documents. Results show that the presence of pronouns affects inferential comprehension of environmental impact statement summaries (EIS summaries), but that the effect varies with the reader's education level. Further, headings in question phrasing affect a reader's perception of familiarity and reliability of EIS summaries. A reader's perceptions of EIS summaries and attitudes toward the organizations creating the documents are also affected by overall design features. PL guidelines on the use of pronouns and question headings are not fully supported by our research and need further validation with regard to comprehension. This article ends with a call for further research.

Writing is common skill for many whose job requires them to communicate through business documents. But there are many professionals who seemingly have difficulty with writing. Many engineers are required to write proposals and reports yet have received little formal writing instruction. The purpose of this study was to determine if writing apprehension, their composition process, or the presence of deadlines affects the production of documents. The hypothesis was that engineers have high writing apprehension, generally use a product-based approach, and tight deadlines negatively affect the end quality. The researcher conducted in-depth interviews with civil engineers to gauge their level of apprehension, learn their personal composition process and determine how deadlines affect their writing. While the hypothesis was not conclusively supported, the study revealed six key themes into how engineers structure their writing tasks and found that the writing environment of engineers significantly impacts the composition process.

While scholars have begun to write a history of reports and instructions, little scholarship exists on the history of proposals. To fill this gap, I analyze proposals written by Dorothy Wordsworth and Anne Macvicar Grant, ca. 1800. My analysis uses contemporary rhetorical theory to determine how they structured their writing and incorporated rhetorical appeals to achieve their goals. My findings show that their texts should be placed on a continuum of the history and development of the proposal genre. Further findings suggest that their use of contemporary rhetorical theories authorized Wordsworth's and Grant's discourse to successfully affect change.

Although much has been written about the use of rhetoric in technical communication, the framing of technical documents often is overlooked. Framing differs from rhetoric chiefly in that it involves the use of content selection and structure to place information in a particular context. In this article, I will analyze the techniques used to frame a technical report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's “Summary for Policymakers,” and compare them to the techniques used to frame corporate news releases and newspaper articles written about the report. This framing analysis shows that writers of technical documents, news releases, and news articles frame their documents chiefly by choosing which facts to include or exclude, and by the positioning of information within the document.

A recent British national intelligence-based Assessment (2002) illustrates how one government agency communicated science to serve its policy goals. This article analyzes some of the values that drive science, public policy, and national intelligence, and traces how those values affected the Assessment writers' goals and communication strategies. Through close reading of the Assessment's foreword and first section, this study shows how the writers shaped scientific and technical information to satisfy their disciplines' values and to naturalize their “proper perspective” on the policy case. Further analysis of similar documents will extend current research on scientific rhetoric, multidisciplinary collaborative writing, and public communication.

This article describes a study that examined the tables and figures in articles from a basic research journal, The Journal of Cell Biology, and compared them to tables and figures from an applied medical journal, The New England Journal of Medicine. Comparison of graphics between the two journals shows sharp differences in terms of range of graphics types, visual consistency within and between articles, or use of color. As the articles take into account what is needed by different audiences, the graphics help to build the credibility of the journal. The study also addresses the question of how scientific visuals contribute to the persuasiveness of a writer, looking at how the graphics within an article affect the credibility or ethos of the writer.

This study investigates the link between the linguistic principles of implicature and pragmatics and software documentation. When implicatures are created in conversation or text, the listener or reader is required to fill in missing information not overtly stated. This information is usually filled in on the basis of previous knowledge or context. Pragmatics, the study of language use in context, is concerned with the situational aspects of language use that, among other things, directly affect implicatures required of the reader. I investigate how two manuals for the same software product can be analyzed on the basis of implicature and pragmatics. One is an original copy of the documentation that came with the product, the other an after-market manual. Results show that the aftermarket manual requires far fewer implicatures of the reader and does a better job of providing pragmatically helpful information for the user.

The aim of this article is to show that a better awareness of the relationship between written and spoken communication can help the writer to improve his/her effectiveness. The focus will be on written texts that precede (formal and informal) discussions. The analysis will start with a description of the differences between orality and literacy. We shall deal with the functions of orality-based texts for the readers. Then we shall move to the writing process and explain how orality can find a place in this process, how it can be linked to creativity, and how it affects the way we plan the writing process. An oral way of writing is related to an important feature of speaking, namely fluency; but it also means a specific receiver orientation, dynamic rather than static and social rather than individual. Computer mediated communication could influence a more oral approach to written texts.

In this article, I present findings from a discourse analysis of an often-overlooked genre of technical communication, regulatory writing. The study focuses on post-bellum regulations that disproportionately affected African Americans and the historical contexts in which the regulations were written. Historically, African Americans of all socioeconomic backgrounds have maintained an implicit mistrust of government regulations and the government officials who write them. The justification for this mistrust is deeply rooted in the fact that for decades regulations were not written to protect the rights of African Americans nor was their input considered in regulatory writing. In Communicating Across Cultures, Stella Ting-Toomey argues, “if conflict parties do not trust each other, they tend to move away (cognitively, affectively and physically) from each other rather than struggle side by side in negotiation” [1, p. 222]. This study reveals rhetorical strategies used in historical regulatory writing that may still impact the ethos of regulatory writers.

Electronic mail (email) has rapidly become one of the most prominent communication media, and a substantial amount of information is processed by it in the contemporary workplace. It is well known that digital technology produces a “digital divide.” In addition, it is well examined that the digital divide produces cognitive differences (e.g., knowledge gaps) among users. Yet, little is known about affective disparities. In addition, few studies on the digital divide were undertaken in organizational setting. This study considers the human side of the digital divide in an organizational setting and investigates if the digital divide exists in the workplace by examining multiple dimensions of communication satisfaction. The data from 303 university employees indicates that email experience differentiates communication satisfaction with amount of email and email use for equivocal tasks.

The growth of international online access has given rise to a new production method—international outsourcing—that has important implications for technical communication practices. Successful interactions within international outsourcing require individuals to understand how cultural factors could affect online interactions. Today's technical communication students therefore need to understand how factors of culture and media could affect the success with which they operate in international outsourcing activities. This article provides technical communication instructors with a series of Web-based exercises they can use to familiarize students with different aspects that can affect intercultural online interactions. It also provides a series of online resources students can use to enhance their understanding of cross-cultural communication in cyberspace.

My article traces the development, chronicles the impact, and explains the essence of Herbert Spencer's “The Philosophy of Style” (1852). Spencer's essay has had a significant influence on stylistics, especially in scientific and technical communication. Although in our generation Spencer's contribution to stylistics is not widely remembered, it ought to be. His single essay on this subject was seminal to modern theories about effective communication, not because it introduced new knowledge but because it was such a rhetorically astute synthesis of stylistic lore, designed to connect traditional rhetorical theory with 19th-century ideas about science, technology, and evolution. It was also influential because it was part of Spencer's grand “synthetic philosophy,” a prodigious body of books and essays that made him one of the most prominent thinkers of his time. Spencer's “Philosophy of Style” carried the day, and many following decades, with its description of the human mind as a symbol-processing machine, with its description of cognitive and affective dimensions of communication, and with its scientifically considered distillation of the fundamental components of effective style. We should read Spencer's essay and understand its impact not so much because we expect it to teach us new things about good style, but precisely because: 1) it's at the root of some very important concepts now familiar to us; 2) it synthesizes these concepts so impressively; 3) we can use it heuristically as we continue thinking about style; and 4) it provides a compact, accessible touchstone for exploring—with students, clients, and colleagues—the techniques of effective style for scientific and technical communication.

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.

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.

Structured abstracts contain more information, are of higher quality, and are easier to search and read than are traditional abstracts. However, there is a bewildering variety of ways in which structured abstracts can be printed and little is known about how the typography of structured abstracts can affect their clarity. The aim of this article is to delineate some of these major typographic variables and to comment on their effects upon the layouts of structured abstracts.

This study attempts to show how the purpose of three types of business and technical documents (instructions, annual reports, and sales promotional letters) affects the syntactical and rhetorical choices authors make in writing these documents. While the results of the examination rendered some predictable results, there were some surprises in the absence of many rhetorical schemes in sales promotional letters. Another value of this study is that it provides partial syntactical and rhetorical “fingerprints” of three important documents in business and technical writing to offer students norms they can go by in constructing such documents.

The law has long been shaped by the technical aspects of compiling, writing, storing, and accessing textual verbiage. Text media technology affects all areas of the law, from its intellectual basis to its promulgation, dissemination and enforcement. From America's Colonial period, the operative state of the art of printing has accordingly shaped the development of the law in America, and has caused it to grow in a different direction from the law of England. Since the Colonial period, the state of the art of text media technology has made quantum evolutionary leaps forward, impacting American law in the process. Artifacts of these text media technologies are to be found in the statutes, legislative histories, judicial decisions, and other legal materials. Modern technology has accelerated the pace of text media technology development, and has impacted the law accordingly. Current developments continue to impact the law on an ongoing basis, and future developments in text media technology can be expected to leave their impact upon the law.

One function of language is to communicate substantive information, but that is not its only function—sometimes not even its primary function. The criminal and drug class adopt an argot unintelligible to law abiding citizens, and that cipher function is one of the purposes of that language. Teenagers of any era adopt a vocabulary that shows that they are hip or hep or with it or cool. Such languages are often rich in metaphor and at their root poetic. It is fascinating to investigate these elusive and protean sub-languages, because they demonstrate with modern instances how language has evolved and how it continues to evolve. Our present focus, with technical sub-languages reveals sociological functions of language that transcend mere transfer of substantive information. Technical language would seem to be at the opposite pole from criminals' argot or teenagers' cool slang. We might expect it to exhibit that so-called purer function of transferring information, little affected by sociological factors. Nonetheless, we find one sociological feature, the shibboleth, acting widely throughout technical fields. This is our current topic.

In 1994, the Chicago Tribune announced in a blaring page-one story that fraud had been discovered in an important nine-year-old medical study which compared two treatments for early-stage breast cancer. The study had assured women that lumpectomy plus radiation was as safe as the more invasive mastectomy procedure for early-stage breast cancer; however, the revelation of fraud called these results into question. We examine the reactions of two professional medical journals to demonstrate how negotiations for upholding ethical norms in science took place within the pages of these publications. Then, we analyze the public discourse surrounding the fraud and show that much of the coverage was devoted to scandal. Both forums missed opportunities: professional journals ignored a chance to explore the blurry boundary between “writing up” and “making up” results that all scientists must negotiate in interpreting and publicizing data, while public discourse neglected women affected by the fraud.

When people read silently, they unconsciously translate what they read into a speech-like code that facilitates word identification and the creation of meaning, especially when they read scientific and technical texts. Many studies have explored how this “silent speech” affects the reading process. As a follow-up to a previous article about applying a phonological reading model to technical communication, this article proposes that educators and practitioners of technical communication would benefit greatly from a thorough understanding of the speech instinct. Therefore, the author explores the speech instinct, how humans developed it, and how it has been and still is fostered by reading behavior and pedagogy.

Metaphors and analogies can be helpful for people when they have to learn or learn to use something. Some empirical studies into the effect of metaphors in software manuals showed a positive influence on computer task performance, although this influence proved to be a conditional one. A necessary condition must be that readers understand the metaphor used; readers must have knowledge about its source domain. The most understandable concept for all humans seems to be a human being; the metaphor with human beings as a source domain is called personification or anthropomorphism. Up to now, no coherent theory has been available about linguistic expressions that can be labeled as anthropomorphism, and no empirical data have been gathered about expressions in software manuals that are perceived as such by readers. Therefore, an explorative experiment with real manual material was carried out. Expressions suggesting that computers or programs have feelings or an affective relationship to the user, that they are able to perform non-routine (mental) activities and communicate their intentions through human language use, appear to be perceived as anthropomorphistic. Such expressions might help readers to use a computer (program) more easily.

Recent studies identify gendered differences in communication and collaboration styles which suggest consequences for professional writing classrooms. If, indeed, men tend to stereotype women as clerks, prefer hierarchical collaboration, and value product over process, and, too, if gendered differences tend to increase counterproductive dissent, then the gender balance of writing groups might affect their dominant styles in those respects. However, when I analyzed the behaviors of over sixty student groups in my professional writing classes, I did not find gender balancing to have such effects. Instead, however, I observed other gender-related effects on collaboration: tendencies to stereotype men as technical experts and to self-segregate into gendered working teams. These findings suggest new perspectives on the role of gender for collaborative groups in professional writing classrooms.

To study the affective states of technical communicators, we administered a survey to examine three areas: first, the traditional facets or aspects of job satisfaction; second, any possible differences between male and female technical communicators in job satisfaction; and third, any influences on job satisfaction such as job stress that might be unique to the technical communication profession. To ensure the reliability and validity of the measures, the survey included the Job Descriptive Index (JDI), the most widely used measure of job satisfaction in the world. The sample from the Society for Technical Communication's (STC's) membership list yielded 323 usable responses. Our analyses included: a comparison of our subjects' responses to national norms for all occupations, an examination of male and female differences on satisfaction measures, and the use of various appropriate statistical procedures to select only the most significant results for discussion. The results indicate that technical communicators are satisfied with their compensation and opportunities for promotion, but they are dissatisfied with the work itself, their supervision, and their co-workers. No significant gender differences occurred. Implications are discussed.

Recent advances in graphing software and output devices have given new tools to graphic artists and have enabled writers and technicians to compose graphs that rival those of professional artists. The products of both professionals and novices suggest, however, that the users of such software either intend to distort data and manipulate their readers or that they do so out of ignorance. This article describes and illustrates seven types of distortion in graphs, explains the mechanisms of distortion, and recommends methods for the avoidance of distortion. The seven types include manipulations of scale ratios, of the second dimension, of the third dimension, of color, of composition, of symbolism, and of affect.

This study examines the way side effects information is presented in patient information leaflets about drugs. In a field experiment, we tested the effects of two attempts to improve a side effects paragraph in a leaflet about a nonsteroid anti-inflammatory drug. First, a short introductory passage on the nature of side effects was added. Second and more importantly, we changed the frequency descriptors (FDs) for the side effects. A preliminary study had shown that the frequencies associated with common Dutch FDs are much higher than the writers of patient information leaflets and package inserts mean to convey. In our experiment we replaced the original FDs by lower-assessed FDs. For instance, soms (sometimes) was replaced by zelden (seldomly). Replacing FDs led to lower recall for the side effects mentioned in the leaflet. It also decreased the number of side effects experienced. Contrary to our expectations, lower FDs did not significantly increase the confidence in the safety and effectiveness of the drug, nor did they increase therapy compliance; incompliance was extremely rare in our sample of patients. Adding an introductory passage on the nature of side effects lowered FD interpretations. It did not significantly affect any of the other dependent variables.

Today many students learn how to use desktop programs such as PageMaker and Ventura in technical communication courses; however, few of those students are also learning the principles of graphic design underlying the production of mechanicals. The ability to use a desktop publishing program does not necessarily guarantee the ability to produce well-designed and effective documents. In fact, the growing use of desktop publishing software has led to a proliferation of documents that violate all the rules of good design. This article describes a technical publications course in which students gain a better understanding of the principles of design and layout by using mechanical paste up techniques. When required to use mechanical paste up in addition to desktop publishing software, students acquired a more thorough understanding of grids and white space as well as a greater confidence in their abilities to do page design.

This article explores the assumptions about science and technology held by the engineers who attempted to delay the launch of the Challenger space shuttle. These assumptions, it is argued, affected the ways in which the engineers framed the arguments used to persuade managers not to launch. Examining the decision making processes prior to the tragedy reveals three dominant conceptions of science and technology which guided the engineers' persuasive efforts, and which appear to account for why the engineers did not succeed in their attempt to influence the managers.

Desktop publishing is a meta-technology that allows professional writing students access to the production phase of publishing—which is crucial to readers' perception of the writer's text, yet is almost never controlled by the writer. Desktop publishing offers the most convenient means of giving students hands-on practice in preparing text for printing and in learning how that preparation affects the visual meaning of documents.

Labor-management negotiations present a complex situation for mediators and negotiators. To a considerable extent, the complexities stem from the fact that at least four different types of negotiations are occurring simultaneously: distributive bargaining; integrative bargaining; intra-organizational bargaining; and attitude structuring. If the negotiations are in a public employment situation, the political environment may be a factor causing additional complexities. Mediators in such situations must fill a number of roles, all of which are related to the communication process. The authors will show how the cited factors complicate labor-management negotiations and, concomitantly, affect the mediation process. This article concentrates on the role of the mediator as a communicator in the labor-management context.

This article surveys and critiques the literature on using style checkers and the text-editing capabilities of the computer to assist in revising technical writing. The literature on text-editing capabilities is inconclusive because it is largely anecdotal and methodologically flawed. The literature on style checkers is similarly inconclusive. To better assess the value of the computer, we need to examine the basic premise of the research on revising and word processing: that more revising leads to higher-quality writing. We need to be sure that our evaluative techniques for measuring writing improvement are valid; to focus our attention not only on computer novices but also on computer-experienced writers; to examine other factors that affect how writers use word processing and that in turn might affect writing quality; and to examine more carefully the differences among word processors and among the different style checkers to determine their effects on writing behavior and writing quality.

This article reviews previous research on the effects of certain structural cues, called signals, that affect a reader's comprehension of expository prose. It concludes that the inconsistent results of many studies may be due to inadequate methodologies that have failed to control for confounding variables, such as text length and difficulty, reader familiarity with the topic, and timing of comprehension tests. Further, accepted signal types (headings, logical connectives, and previews) have not been sufficiently examined for their individual effects, perhaps creating unidentified disordinal interactions that could preclude the possibility of researchers identifying significant effects. This article concludes with recommendations for more valid research methodology to be used in prose assessment studies. The next issue of this journal will present Part II of this article, which details a new study of signaling effects for readers of expository prose, a study that is based on the refined methodology suggested in this article.

Most research on writing has focussed on the work of single authors working by hand on prose texts. However, much professional work is collaborative, computer-based, not exclusively prose, and not well studied. Some preliminary research suggests that the use of computers will affect the cognitive activities of individual authors in several domains of immediate relevance to composition and technical communication practitioners: planning activities, editing activities, the writing of novice computer users or poor typists, and writing for electronic mail and other electronic communication. Research reported here suggests that the rapidly increasing capability of computer-based writing systems will force communication researchers to 1) broaden their basic conception of and methods of studying “author” to include authoring teams, 2) broaden the type of material studied from that which is purely or largely textual to that which much more frequently includes other types of information, and 3) track changes in “genre conventions” resulting from the increased capabilities of computer-based systems—in short, to assess the impacts of the medium on the message.

This study examines three dimensions of paragraph topic sentence use in a corpus of scientific writing made up of research articles in biochemistry, geology, psychology, and sociology: 1. frequency of topic sentence use; 2. variation of topic sentence frequency in five rhetorical divisions; 3. variation of topic sentence types in these rhetorical divisions. Although the scientific writers used topic sentences in 55 percent of their paragraphs, differences existed among rhetorical divisions as to topic sentence frequency: writers used topic sentences quite often in results, results/discussion, and discussion, but quite seldom in methodology. Furthermore, topic sentence types differed across the divisions. In methodology, the topic announcement predominated; in discussion and introduction, the propositional occurred most often; in results and results/discussion, there was a balance of the two types. All these variations are thought to be related to differences in function (reporting facts versus interpreting) and texture (attributive versus logical text) across the rhetorical divisions. These variations may also affect ways of teaching paragraph skills in scientific writing.

American business is now responsible for training an entire generation of poorly skilled writers. While brief writing seminars may help, the real cure begins with training managers on how to manage the writing process. They need to see the link between good writing and good leadership. Simply sending reports back to employees with a sarcastic note to “get it right” does little to build writing skill and confidence. Managers also need strategies for working with employees. These strategies extend from simple revising techniques to the use of sophisticated computer programs.

As a concept of rhetoric in technical writing, relevance involves an awareness of time. The report deals with the past; the manual, with the present; the proposal, with the future. To be considered relevant, however, all the modes of technical writing must relate to the present reality of the audience. Writers must recognize this need not only as it influences grammar and style but also as it affects larger concerns of organization and tone. Realizing that the temporal classification of modem reports, manuals, and proposals correlates with Aristotle's designation of forensic, epideictic, and deliberative discourse, technical writers can discover a body of rhetorical theory on which to base choices about selection, arrangement, and presentation of subject matter.

Complicated documents often affect readers the way computer programs affect computers; technical writers are prone to many of the same serious errors that plague programmers. Among the many principles that writers can learn from programming are: 1) Models save money: it is far more economical to develop detailed outlines and mockups than to improvise from a vague outline. 2) Quality demands maintainability: every complicated document will need frequent revision, and only documents designed for ease of change will be kept current. 3) The trouble is in the interfaces: the procedures and tasks in a manual are not as error-prone as the rules for moving from part to part of the book itself. 4) Readers are subject to the laws of physics: many publication economies produce documents that defy the physical powers of the reader. 5) Communication is control: readers must be prevented from getting lost.

Despite the fact that technical writers try to maintain an objective outlook, they cannot ignore the psychological states of consciousness that influence their writing. Arthur J. Deikman's theory of bimodal consciousness outlines two psychological states: active and emotive (or receptive). Writers must maintain a balance between the receptive state and the active, striving state to prevent writer's block and to enhance creativity, just as scientists balance mathematical (i.e., lexical or verbal) thinking with physics-related thinking. This article describes Deikman's model and shows its application in the technical writing classroom.

Recent psycholinguistic research has challenged the view that English speakers interpret the male pronouns and the generic man as words that refer to both males and females. The suggested ambiguity of these terms is of concern to technical communicators because it can affect the accuracy of their messages. Since guidelines for avoiding sex ambiguity in language are not generally available in technical writing or speech manuals, this article offers simple devices for eliminating the generic use of male pronouns and man. It also provides alternate terms for common sex-biased expressions.

Procedure manuals, narrowly conceived, implement institutional policy as it affects more than one department. Such writing requires detailed procedural auditing, composing job instructions, coordinating paperflow and forms use, as well as general operational, financial, and information-processing systems analysis. Resulting procedures serve as a form of company “legislation” settling interactions between departments, in an ongoing process of updating and managerial decision-making which creates a promising career possibility for the technical writer.

To determine how certain cohesion elements - the given-new contract, pronouns, synonyms, and topic sentences – affect the readability of technical paragraphs, six alternative paragraphs were composed, two “models” and four others carefully varied to feature the four factors under consideration. Then each passage was tested for its readability when subjects were administered a cloze procedure and a recall exercise for each paragraph. The results show that violations of the given-new contract make technical paragraphs more difficult to read; that changing repeated words to pronouns makes passages more difficult to follow; that using synonyms (instead of repetitions) makes prose harder to read; and that deleting a topic sentence may impede a reader's comprehension. Writing teachers, then, might consider these results when they direct students in the production of connected discourse. And researchers might use this methodology to investigate other influences on the readability of connected discourse.

Current research in the plain language movement has failed to establish definitive criteria for document comprehensibility. Analysis of conventional approaches to comprehensibility assessment reveals a dichotomy of values, one objective, the other subjective. Because these two approaches have fallen short of providing any cohesive frame of reference, the author proposes that future research efforts be directed into a potentially supplementary one: document legibility analysis. Legibility is integrally related to the concept of comprehensibility. Because legibility analysis provides a point of synthesis for the objective and subjective modes of traditional research, it may also provide new insight into the delineation of factors affecting document comprehensibility.

This article is a sample of science and technology stories about the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, drawn principally from popular magazines which reported nuclear news in the 1940s and 1950s. It shows that many of the accounts were widely optimistic and sensational in their claims about the potential uses of nuclear power, and suggests the reasons for the sensationalism and overconfidence in science and technology. The concluding section discusses the general implications for the present and future popularization of science and technology journalism and communication.