In my technical writing class, I examine two “meanings” from the Challenger disaster to illustrate the social contingency of meaning even in science and technology. These instances are the “anomalous” charring of the O‐rings and the reconceptualized assumption of flightworthiness the night before the launch. The social contingency of these meanings shows that the “object” of technical communication is not the material object as a pre‐existent isolate but in its social interpretation, significance, and meaning. Ultimately, technical communication is about people communicating about and to the interests of other people.

Structured Document Processors (SDPs) guide and control composing processes for specialized writing, such as procedures and regulations. SDPs integrate word processors and various writing aids in a controlled writing environment that prompts writers for particular kinds of information, automatically formats document design features, and provides context‐sensitive help on how to write within the required document structures. This article describes a range of SDPs now used in industry, and explores their implications for the practice and teaching of technical writing.

Teachers of technical writing typically have limited knowledge of the principles of effective pictorial communication. Goldsmith's rhetorically oriented theory of illustration offers the necessary guidelines. This theory is easily accessed through a practical 12‐question heuristic that directs the technical writer's composition and evaluation of pictorial images.

This article—based on personal observations, a survey, and modified Nominal Group Techniques—reports students' perceptions of learning desktop publishing systems (DTP). Students learned the foundations of DTP in less than 60 hours of hands‐on experience; the incremental introduction of DTP functions and practice sessions before the assignments were more effective than alternative teaching strategies tried; and the use of DTP encouraged non‐artistic students to use artwork to enhance their publications.

This study suggests an approach for expanding and integrating research to produce a history of technical writing. The study defines problems that reside in writing such a history, suggests research premises and questions, and then applies these questions to technical writing as it existed in the English Renaissance, 1475–1640.

Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing, Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1990. 285 pp. Shared Minds: The New Technologies of Collaboration. Michael Schrage. New York: Random House, 1990. 227pp. Collaborative Writing in Industry: Investigations in Theory and Practice. Ed. Mary M. Lay and William M. Karis. Amityville: Baywood, 1991. 284 pp. Cooperative Learning: Theory and Research. Ed. Shlomo Sharan. New York: Praeger, 1990. 314 pp. The Methodical Memory: Invention in Current‐Traditional Rhetoric, Sharon Crowley. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1990. 169 pp. Balancing Acts: Essays on the Teaching of Writing in Honor of William F. Irmscher. Ed. Virginia A. Chappell, Mary Louise Buley‐Meissner, and Chris Anderson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1991. 199 pp. Reclaiming Pedagogy: The Rhetoric of the Classroom. Ed. Patricia Donahue and Ellen Quandahl. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1989. 179 pp. Editing: The Design of Rhetoric, Sam Dragga and Gwendolyn Gong. Amityville: Baywood, 1989. 232 pp. Technical Editing, Carolyn D. Rude. Belmont: Wadsworth, 1991. 430 pp. Interviewing Practices for Technical Writers. Earl E. McDowell. Amityville: Baywood, 1991. 251pp. Internships in Technical Communication: A Guide for Students, Faculty Supervisors, and Internship Sponsors. Ed. Bege K. Bowers and Chuck Nelson. Washington, DC: Society for Technical Communication, 1991. 85 pp.

Classical rhetoric's ability to inform and empower the teaching of technical writing has been for the most part ignored in technical writing textbooks. This absence is curious, given the enormous body of scholarly material affirming classical rhetoric's usefulness for that purpose. While teachers wait for textbooks with explicitly classical roots, three key concepts can provide the basic framework for incorporating classical rhetorical theory into contemporary technical writing studies.

This article discusses John Dewey's transactional epistemology and Louise Rosenblatt's transactional view of reading and writing as they apply to teaching technical writing. A mental merger of the private and public aspects of both knowledge and communication, transaction is a meaning‐making process, variable and unique, although similar situations lead to similar transactions. Because English classrooms do not encourage transaction, they are not the best places to teach technical writing. However, four maxims bring the spirit of transaction to our teaching.

Ideological questions (that is, theoretical questions about the way in which language shapes our perceptions) are often ignored in technical writing classes. This essay explores how conventional classroom approaches to the discussion of the organization and theory of information can be expanded rather easily into full‐scale explorations of the ideology of the language of scientific and technical writing. Technical descriptions from biology, engineering, and physics are used to provide hands‐on examples of this ideological approach.

In analyzing audiences for software manuals, documentation developers need to move past a strictly cognitive vision of users' needs and examine the social and organizational factors that influence task performance and instructional needs. In order to discover the ways in which social and organizational factors affect users' tasks and their acquisition of knowledge and skills, I conducted a survey of 25 people who use databases at work. All survey respondents use database programs as tools for conducting job tasks that involve complex analyses and reporting of data. I examined the relationship between people's technical proficiency and task complexity and their job roles, professional responsibilities, flexibility in work arrangements and modes of workplace learning. Findings show that learning to use databases for complex tasks in work contexts entails more than merely learning concepts and procedures for executing program functions. Users need to learn ways of manipulating a program, integrating and combining its functions in inventive ways to serve the purposes of various types of job tasks and to support professional approaches to these tasks.

Developing alliances with industry may be one of the primary factors in creating a technical communication program that blends sound rhetorical theory and pedagogy with the discourse knowledge of technical communication practitioners. Creating an Advisory Board is one way to forge this alliance. This article describes how such a board was created, the influence it had upon program development, and the insights both industry and academia gained from this alliance. Although industry and academia are not the same, both had overlapping goals: to develop a symbiotic relationship that would provide students and faculty with the technological expertise practicing technical communicators could offer, but, at the same time, to provide a construct true to the missions of a liberal education.

Traditional textbook rationales for the technical writing course locate the essence of technical writing in objectivity, clarity, and neutrality, and the need for teaching it in its usefulness to employers. Such rationales, however, are unable to accommodate a notion of ethics and responsibility: if the writer merely serves the interests that employ her by reporting facts in an objective way, how can she exercise choice when ethical problems arise? An alternative view is to see technical writing as always rhetorical and involved with potentially conflicting agendas and interests, with objectivity, clarity, and neutrality serving merely as stylistic devices in the writer's rhetorical toolbox. Technical writers are rhetoricians who continually make ethical choices in serving diverse interests and negotiating between conflicting demands. The recognition of the fundamental rhetoricity of technical writing is the first step towards accommodating a meaningful notion of ethics into the technical writing curriculum.

This article discusses some of the ethical dilemmas faced by writers who prepare marketing materials in engineering organizations; such writers include traditional technical writers whose documents are influenced by the marketing interests of the company and “boundary spanners” who write both technical and promotional materials. The article describes social, political, economic, and legal changes in the professions during the last 30 years and the growing influence of market‐driven decisions on ethical decision‐making. It briefly surveys the marketing literature that engineering marketers are reading. Finally, it suggests a question that marketing writers should ask themselves in examining rhetorical choices.

Clear and Coherent Prose: A Functional Approach. William Vande Kopple. Boston: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1989. 239 pp. Technical Writing in the Corporate World. Herman A. Estrin and Norbert Elliott. Oakville, Ontario: Crisp Books, 1990. Technical Writing in a Corporate Culture: A Study of the Nature of Information. Christine Barabas. Norwood: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1990. 313 pp. Creating a Computer‐Supported Writing Facility: A Blueprint for Action. Cynthia Selfe. Computers and Composition: Michigan Technological University and Purdue University, 1989. 146 pp. How to Write and Publish Engineering Papers and Reports. Herbert B. Michaelson. 3rd ed. Phoenix: Oryx, 1990. Better Said and Clearly Written: An Annotated Guide to Business Communication Sources, Skills, and Samples. Sandra E. Berlanger. New York: Greenwood P, 1989. 196 pp.