ABSTRACTThis project investigates how the goals of microenterprise entrepreneurs affect their use of communication genres. Although slide-based business pitches are key for traditional entrepreneurs, microenterprise entrepreneurs have little interest in investment. Therefore, acquiring customers through short elevator pitches takes this central position. This article also explores the social justice dimensions of microenterprise acceleration, finding that such organizations can provide important services in combating inequality. This project uses writing, activity, and genre research as a theoretical framework, and the research site is a microenterprise accelerator in Tacoma, Washington called Spaceworks Tacoma, which supports both lower-income and Black owners of small businesses.KEYWORDS: Workplace studiesprofessional practice, social justiceethicsentrepreneurshipWriting, activity, and genre research (WAGR)microenterprises AcknowledgementsFirst, I would like to thank the entrepreneurs and the director of Spaceworks who very graciously gave me their time to talk about their organizations. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee, Richard Johnson-Sheehan, Jennifer Bay, Bradley Dilger, and Clay Spinuzzi who provided guidance on both the research process and the writing and revising of the manuscript. And finally, I would like to thank Rebecca Walton and this article's anonymous reviewers, who helped me to strengthen and sharpen the article.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis project was not supported by any funding.Notes on contributorsMason T. PellegriniMason Pellegrini is an assistant professor in technical communication and rhetoric at Texas Tech University. His main research areas are entrepreneurial communication, workplace writing, academic publishing, and qualitative research methods. In 2022, Mason received a Fulbright Open Research Grant to Chile, which he used to study entrepreneurship communication at the famous Chilean business accelerator Start-Up Chile.

ABSTRACTAs immersive technology grows in popularity, universities are developing academic innovation labs (AIL) that often introduce students to virtual reality (VR) and other emerging cross reality applications. Although these labs help educate students on emerging technology, a more critical eye is needed to examine user experience (UX). This article reports on a qualitative, multimethod study that employed a talk-aloud UX protocol to gather data on VR users' experience at the University of Connecticut's OPIM Research Lab. To fully define and contrast this data, we juxtapose these individual narratives with rhetorical analysis of marketing discourse, as presented by VR platform HTC Vive, Google's VR application Tilt Brush, and the Research Lab's promotional material. Based on our findings, we assert that sociotechnical imaginaries as constructed by promotional material often reduce the complexities of immersion in user experience. Such marketing rhetoric creates "top-down" imaginaries that contrast with "bottom-up" imaginaries generated in user experience, reinforcing the complex and fluid definitions of immersion. The resulting study has practical implications for stakeholders across higher education, especially in the context of innovation labs, as well as for technical and professional communication educators and practitioners.KEYWORDS: Immersive technologyinnovation labsvirtual realityimmersionuser experienceemerging technologyfuture imaginariessociotechnical imaginaries Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsBrent LuciaBrent Lucia is an Assistant Professor In-Residence at the University of Connecticut School of Business. He has a PhD in Composition and Applied Linguistics from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His current research explores the rhetorics of technology and its relationship to the production of space. His recent scholarship can be found in Rhetoric Review, Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, and Enculturation.Matthew A. VetterMatthew A. Vetter is an Associate Professor of English and affiliate faculty in the Composition and Applied Linguistics PhD program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His research, which asks questions related to technology, rhetoric, and writing, has been published widely in venues such as Social Media and Society, Rhetoric Review, Studies in Higher Education, and Computers and Composition. His co-authored book, Wikipedia and the Representation of Reality, was published by Routledge in 2021.David A. SolbergDavid A. Solberg is a teaching assistant at the Holy Family Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his MA degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His master's thesis was entitled The Use of Parallelism in Poetry Writing for the Acquisition of English Grammar (available from ProQuest).

ABSTRACTThis study examines technological research in higher education as a social justice issue. Focusing on technologies developed for war, surveillance, and policing at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), we compare institutional and activist discourses about these projects, uncovering significant differences in accommodation strategies and values-based arguments. We conclude that locally situated controversies such as this one might value not only for social justice research, but also in providing pedagogical and theoretical scaffolding toward real local change.KEYWORDS: Social justice / ethicsscience communication / environmental communicationdigital technologies / emerging technologiestextual analysis / linguistic analysis AcknowledgmentsThe authors would like to thank Alex Helberg and Laxman Singanamala, who each provided helpful feedback on drafts of this work. They are also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and to editors Rebecca Walton and Tracy Bridgeford for their useful comments and suggestions. In addition, they wish to thank their former colleagues and comrades at Carnegie Mellon University, who inspired many aspects of this project: particularly the members of CMU Against ICE who authored the Dis-Orientation Guide. Finally, they give special thanks to Alaina Foust and Gunjan, Manish, Siddhant, and Daksh Bhardwaj for their advice and support.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsCalvin PollakCalvin Pollak is a postdoctoral teaching fellow in Technical Communication & Rhetoric at Utah State University, where he teaches courses on research methods and professional editing. His scholarly interests include institutional rhetoric, language accessibility, and social justice. He is also co-founder, co-producer, and co-host of re:verb, a podcast about language in action.Sanvi BhardwajSanvi Bhardwaj is a junior at Cornell University studying Health Care Policy and Inequality Studies. Her scholarly interests include social justice, health disparities among marginalized groups, and community-based healthcare interventions. She is also involved in local activism as a member of Cornell Progressives.

ABSTRACTWe asked 15 editors about their perceptions of five sentences using singular they in different contexts and about the style guides that inform their work. Editors appreciated the inclusivity of indefinite and definite singular they and recognized APA for its leading-edge stance. Our findings indicate the need for editors to develop a heuristic for determining when to deviate from style guide advice and to develop their own system for mitigating ambiguity in relation to they.KEYWORDS: Editingsocial justice / ethics Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1. We explained to editors that, in each sentence, the capitalized pronoun referred to the capitalized noun phrase.2. When we refer to a "comprehensive style guide," we mean a manual that provides standards for writing, editing, and publishing texts. A comprehensive style guide may be written by a publisher or discourse community but adopted widely. For example, University of Chicago Press's Chicago Manual of Style is used by other publishers and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is used in disciplines outside of psychology.Companies may create their own style guides for internal use. Such guides may or may not be as detailed or complete as comprehensive style guides and may, in fact, be based on or direct users to a comprehensive style guide for any gaps in content. For example, ACES: The Society for Editing "Style Guide and Proofreading Checklist" (Filippini, Citation2021) is for ACES communications and based on the AP Stylebook.Some editors in this study referred to style sheets. A copyeditor creates and uses a style sheet to note a running list of grammar and usage that are specific to a manuscript and which may be different from house style or a comprehensive style guide (CMOS, Section 2.55).Despite attempting to define these terms, we recognize there are overlaps among the categories and across fields. For example, the Microsoft Writing Style Guide began as an in-house style guide and is now used by other software companies. Further, there exist other contexts of the terms "style guide" and "style sheet," such as brand style guides, programming style guides, and web design style sheets.3. Of the remaining two editors, one said that they would revise the sentence to avoid using singular they, and the other said that they would use the name Pat again instead of a pronoun.4. Only three editors (4%) said they would edit the sentence.5. The two remaining editors differed in their responses. One said that they would avoid using singular they by revising the sentence; the other said that they would change the pronoun to her.6. Ten editors said that they would edit this sentence.7. As of August 16, 2022, AP Stylebook Online advice under "accent marks" reads: "Use accent marks or other diacritical marks with names of people who request them or are widely known to use them, or if quoting directly in a language that uses them: An officer spotted him and asked a question: "Cómo estás?" How are you? Otherwise, do not use these marks in English-language stories. Note: Many AP customers' computer systems ingest via the ANPA standard and will not receive diacritical marks published by the AP."Additional informationNotes on contributorsJo MackiewiczJo Mackiewicz is a professor of rhetoric and professional communication at Iowa State University. She studies the communication of pedagogical and workplace interactions. Her book, Welding Technical Communication: Teaching and Learning Embodied Knowledge was published by SUNY Press in 2022.Shaya KrautShaya Kraut is a PhD student in the Rhetoric and Professional Communication program at Iowa State University, where she teaches first-year writing. She has also worked as an ESL teacher, a writing center tutor, and a teacher/tutor for adult basic education. Her research interests include composition pedagogy and critical literacy.Allison DurazziAllison Durazzi is a communication professional with experience in industry settings including law, the arts, and freelance editing. She is a Ph.D. student in Rhetoric and Professional Communication at Iowa State University where she researches and teaches technical editing and teaches business, technical, and speech communication courses.

This special issue questions current notions and practices of "professionalism" in TPC. Professionalism – whether an identity, a status, or a set of behaviors or conventions – continues to be constructed in white supremacist, ableist, heteronormative, and classist frameworks. The authors in this issue work to reimagine what professionalism means in our classrooms, workplaces, and communities by critiquing the professional practices that uphold oppressive and exploitative structures, inspiring just action and new futures.

ABSTRACTProblem-solving is central to technical and professional communication (TPC), but problem-solving's economic roots may not align with social justice. This article introduces socially just creativity: the ability to generate new or unique and effective ideas in conjunction with other members of a community to challenge unjust status quos and tackle wicked social justice problems. The article uses a case study to illustrate that conception. It concludes with recommendations for TPC practitioners to enact social justice creativity.KEYWORDS: Creativityproblem-solvingsocial justicetechnical and professional communication AcknowledgementsThank you to Sylvi for deploying creativity toward social justice and for sharing your story with me. Thank you to Dr. Erin Brock Carlson, Dr. Lynne Stahl, and Dr. Heather Noel Turner for prompting me to think more deeply about the relationship between problem-solving and efficiency (Erin), Uber's complex application of creativity (Lynne), and the relationship between DEI initiatives and social justice (Heather).Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Additional informationNotes on contributorsKrista Speicher SarrafKrista Speicher Sarraf is an Assistant Professor of Technical and Professional Communication at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, where she directs the Technical and Professional Communication Program. Her research draws on the interdisciplinary field of creativity studies to explore how technical and professional communicator use creative thinking to address wicked problems.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsChristopher MaggioChristopher Maggio is an Assistant Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, where he teaches first-year and technical writing. His research interests include storytelling and antenarrative theory and their applications to community-based writing. He recently co-authored an article for a special issue of 'Communication Design Quarterly' on community-engaged research.

ABSTRACTThis article engages with TPC scholarship that calls for increased attention to agency as distributed and interdependent. This study analyzes 320 postings in one online health forum to better understand how patients come together to collaborate with one another, distribute information, and make health decisions. I argue that viewing crowdsourced forums as agentive assemblages may help researchers explain both the agency of individual actors as well as the collective agency of groups over time.KEYWORDS: Agencyassemblagescommunityembodimentempowermentonline health AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank Katherine Fredlund, Alexandra Russell, Elizabeth Lane, Bess Myers, William Duffy, Edward Maclin, Kimberly Hensley Owens, and Julie Homchick Crowe, as well as the two anonymous reviewers and the editorial staff at TCQ, for their kind and valuable suggestions on early drafts of this article.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Additional informationNotes on contributorsShanna CameronShanna Cameron is a Ph.D. candidate in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication program at the University of Memphis. Her research interests include feminist theories and practices, digital rhetorics, and the rhetoric of health and medicine. Her work has also appeared in the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication.

This special issue amplifies the contributions of technical communicators working on climate justice initiatives across the Majority World. By Majority World, we refer not to a specific geography but to the conditions in which most of humanity lives: lacking economic, social, and/or political agency, and absent adequate institutional access to critical infrastructures. The articles in this issue make explicit the need for TPC scholars to rethink, update, and engage in spaces of environmental injustice.

ABSTRACTThis article argues that game design can be used to teach design thinking within a pedagogy of making. It analyzes qualitative survey responses from 12 writing teachers who asked students to design social justice games and argues that games not only give students practice in design thinking but that, as multimodal, embodied systems, games can enact social theories and, as such, be a way for students to empathize with and design for wicked social problems.KEYWORDS: Computer-based learningcritical theorypedagogical theoryrhetoric of technologysocial theoryusability studies Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsRebekah Shultz ColbyRebekah Shultz Colby is a Teaching Professor at the University of Denver. She has co-edited The Ethics of Playing, Researching, and Teaching Games in the Writing Classroom and Rhetoric/Composition/Play through Video Games. She has published articles on using games to theorize and teach rhetoric and technical writing in Computers and Composition and Communication Design Quarterly.

ABSTRACTThis article builds four composite characters from the international Zika response to demonstrate each role’s position relative to inclusive health communication. I argue that a lack of jurisdictional stasis is at play in decision-making practices about transnational risk communication approaches. During emergency health responses, this lack of jurisdictional stasis functions to maintain the status quo in order for stakeholders to leverage their power in prioritizing local deliberations in transnational public health discourse and decision making.KEYWORDS: Transnationalstasishealth communicationcommunity engagement Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. In keeping with norms of global health discourse and of the context of this study, I preserve the gendered language used by the organizations throughout this manuscript that refers to women and girls. Terms such as “women of reproductive age” are consistent with the WHO and were used nearly exclusively to refer to people with uteruses who could be affected by Zika in utero or by giving birth to a child with congenital Zika syndrome. This term also reflects the history of gender-based violence that has predominantly affected people assigned female at birth. That said, the author acknowledges that this language can be harmful and reductive, particularly because transgender and non-binary people with uteruses are reproductive agents and that people who identify as women of reproductive age may not be able or choose to reproduce.2. More recently, the global health discourse community has dropped “communication” from the disciplinary title to account for the various way that behavior change interventions can be broader than what’s traditionally considered “communication.”3. Often, in my experience, these issues were tabled for pandemic preparedness discussions or for “lessons learned” documents meant to support future outbreak responses.4. All names of individuals and organizations in the narrative composites are fictional.5. Here, I reference Galison’s (Citation1997) trading zone, referred to by Wilson and Herndl (Citation2007) in their argument that a knowledge map created a boundary object to facilitate understanding of how knowledge from different areas within the interdisciplinary group that they were working with created a zone through which knowledge important to disparate parties about a shared area of concern could pass.6. For more on empowerment, refer to chapter 4 of Dingo’s (Citation2012) Networking ArgumentsAdditional informationNotes on contributorsJulie GerdesJulie Gerdes is an assistant professor of technical and professional writing and rhetoric at Virginia Tech. She works at the intersection of technical communication and global public health. Her interdisciplinary research examines methodologies for understanding and implementing inclusive risk communication, particularly during public health emergencies.

ABSTRACTThis article examines how 14 Black professional communicators publicly share their stories about their career change into software development and other positions in the tech industry. Findings suggest that Black readers looking to shift into the tech field benefit from emotional experiences with professional development resources as they make their strategic career pivots. Black technical joy describes this rhetorical practice to find comfort in and celebration of the strategic ways Black people approach technical communication.KEYWORDS: Computer science / programmingracial studies / ethnic studies / cultural studiesblack technical joyblack rhetoricqualitative methodsworkplace studies / professional practice AcknowledgmentsMany thanks to Christopher Castillo and Jason Tham for their comments on the first draft of my proposal to this special issue. Your disciplinary perspectives from literacy studies and technical and professional communication helped me understand how to ground my research within the expectations of Technical Communication Quarterly readers. Thank you anonymous peer reviewers for your sharp observations on how this article could strengthen its argument and highlight the most salient themes in my analysis. And thanks to the wonderful editors of this special issue for their mentorship and guiding revision.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. Black professionals in this article represent the United States, the United Kingdom, Nigeria, and Kenya. I use Black to encompass these nationalities.2. Annamma, Jackson, and Morrison (Citation2016) argue that "color-blind racism" points out the problem of refusing to acknowledge race while associating disability with ignorance and passivity. They suggest that color-evasiveness "allows for both comprehensively situating the conceptualization and critique of color-blindness as well as thoughtfully considering how to move the underlying ideology forward expansively" (p. 158).3. For this study, I referred to McKee and Porter (Citation2008) and Quinton and Reynolds (Citation2018) for advice on the ethics of doing my Internet research study. Rather than determining if online content is private or public, "we need to think about the sensitivity of the subject we might be researching as well as the vulnerability of the research participants" (Quinton & Reynolds, Citation2018, p. 159) to decide if informed consent is required. University institutional review boards (IRB) may not have clear guidance on how to assess the ethics and harm of Internet research (My university determined my study was exempt from further review because I was not speaking directly to the authors.). In response to limited guidance or policy from IRB, scholars should make an empathetic, humanizing "probable judgment" (McKee & Porter, Citation2008, p. 725) and reflect if "it's reasonable to assume that [the authors] desire their content to be disseminated and also commented upon, which includes the analysis of their content as a data resource for research" (Quinton & Reynolds, Citation2018, p. 159).4. Agile is an incremental and iterative collaborative approach to project management that emphasizes teams' quickly delivering versions of a product or service to clients in a two-week sprint to receive feedback. Teams can then implement desired changes to the product or service in another two-week sprint. This process of iterative discovery helps teams reduce risks and ensure the product adapts to new requirements. Agile was first developed in software development in 2001 and has since been implemented in other industries.Additional informationNotes on contributorsAntonio ByrdAntonio Byrd is an assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he teaches courses in professional and technical communication, multimodal composition, and Black/African American literacy. He uses qualitative research and critical race studies to understand how Black adults learn and use computer programming to address racial inequality in their communities. Byrd's work has previously appeared in College Composition and Communication and Literacy in Composition Studies. He is the recipient of the 2021 Richard Braddock Award for Best Research Article in the College Composition and Communication journal.

This special issue of Technical Communication Quarterly engages comics, graphic storytelling, and creative methods of research and production in technical communication. The guest editors briefly overview intersections between comics and technical communication, then introduce the special issue’s contents and contributions to ongoing conversations in the field.

With the goal of increasing interdisciplinary dialogue, the authors engage Dr. O’Connell’s response to “Terminal node problems: ANT 2.0 and prescription drug labels.” Specifically, the authors aim to address the questions and concerns raised by Dr. O’Connell as well as offer suggestions for future research that builds on the insights that emerge from this interdisciplinary dialectic.

There is no shortage of calls for innovation in higher education. In response to some catastrophic outside influence, whether it be budget cuts, an impending enrollment collapse, or the rapid expan...

I explore the role of categories as rhetorical barriers in organizations responding to crisis (Veil, 2011 Veil, S. R. (2011). Mindful learning in crisis management. Journal of Business Communication, 48(2), 116–147. doi:10.1177/0021943610382294[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). I analyze some problematic categories of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the categories’ impact on the organizations’ response to Hurricane Katrina. My analysis shows that unintended and perverse consequences (Giddens, 1984 Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. [Google Scholar], 1987 Giddens, A. (1987). Social theory and modern sociology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. [Google Scholar]) reversed the power of a key legitimated category (Orlikowski, 1995 Orlikowski, W. J. (1995). Categories: Concept, content, and context. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 3, 73–78.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Giddens, 1984 Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. [Google Scholar]) and exposed a set of reified categories (Giddens, 1984 Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. [Google Scholar]).

AbstractPeople use software in service of complex tasks that are distributed over sprawling and idiosyncratically constructed technological and social networks. The aims and means of carrying out those tasks are not only complex but uncertain, which creates problems for providing help if the tasks, starting points, and endpoints cannot be assumed. Uncertain problems are characteristic of networks, and software forums stand out as effective public spaces in which help can be pursued in a network fashion that differs from traditional help documentation. This article describes the results of a quantitative descriptive study of such practices in four software forums.Keywords: documentationforumsinstruction setsnetworks NotesThis study received an exemption approval from North Carolina State University IRB on November 24, 2010. IRB approval #1774. A condition of approval is that all quoted material is kept anonymous to the extent possible.Additional informationNotes on contributorsJason SwartsJason Swarts is a professor of English at North Carolina State University. His research and teaching centers on mobile communication, coordinative work practices, and emerging genres of technical communication.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsDavida CharneyDavida Charney is a professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. Her latest project is a book, Persuading God: Rhetorical Studies of First Person Psalms, to be published by Sheffield Press.NotesSummer Smith Taylor's research career was too brief, cut short by her death from illness at age 39 in 2011.

Abstract This article examines tutorials from the Web site, Instructables.com, to highlight the rhetorical possibilities of including personal narratives in instructions. The narratives in these tutorials offer detailed accounts of their authors' experiences when constructing their projects, thereby functioning as accounts of the authors' craft knowledge. Pitched to amateur hobbyists, rather than the professional audiences of many forms of conventional technical communication, these tutorials offer new ways of teaching craft knowledge and techniques. Keywords: amateurcraftinstructionsmotivationnarrative Additional informationNotes on contributorsDerek Van Ittersum Derek Van Ittersum is an assistant professor of English at Kent State University, where he teaches in the Literacy, Rhetoric, and Social Practice graduate program. His research examines new writing technologies and innovative writing practices.

Abstract The authors argue that technical communication instructors are in a particularly apt position to teach social media as key to students’ lives as technical communicators and future professionals. Drawing on the concepts of reach and crowd sourcing as heuristics to rearticulate dominant cultural narratives of social media as deleterious to students’ careers, the authors offer a case study of an introductory professional and technical communication pedagogy that helped to disrupt uncritical deployments of social media. Keywords: crowd sourcingpedagogyreachsocial media ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors give many thanks to Dr. David J. Reamer and the students enrolled in his technical writing course at the University of Tampa for their feedback and comments on the student documentation published on Instructables. The authors also appreciate thoughtful and engaged reviewer comments that helped us to develop this article. Notes Students are not misguided in their concerns about social media use and its connection to employment, and perhaps even university admissions practices. As of May 13, Citation2013, the National Conferences of State Legislatures reports that social-media privacy protection laws are being introduced or are pending in 36 states. These states are seeking to stop the practice of employers and universities from requesting logins and passwords of employees or students to their social media sites. According to the conference, four states already have such protections, including Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah (para 1). These same laws are under debate as both industry and regulatory finances groups argue for the veracity of having access to social media outlets in order to monitor employee discussions of sensitive financial information (Eaglesham & Rothfeld, Citation2013, para 1). In the particular semester discussed, students all used Instructables to ensure they were working with the same interface and design features and to allow for more robust user-testing. We understand that some students in professional and technical writing courses might be eager to learn about and use social media for their professional development, but we see this position as equally capable of reinforcing the binary of good/bad that is worthy of complication. Neither position affords human agency because technology is the determinant factor in either a student's success or failure. Additional informationNotes on contributorsElise Verzosa Hurley Elise Verzosa Hurley is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Composition, and Technical Communication at Illinois State University. Her research interests include technical and professional communication pedagogy, visual rhetoric, and multimodal composition. Her work has appeared in Kairos. Amy C. Kimme Hea Amy C. Kimme Hea is Writing Program Director and Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English at the University of Arizona, and author of Going Wireless: A Critical Exploration of Wireless and Mobile Technologies for Composition Teachers and Researchers.

This special issue addresses social media and their effects on the field of technical communication. Through various methodologies and distinct sites of inquiry—from research into ways knowledge workers use specific social media sites, to collaborations by scholars across the globe using social media and other technologies, to classroom practices that investigate social media—contributors consider the imbricated nature of social media in public life and its significance to our work as researchers and teachers.

Abstract This article explores the boundaries of technical communication as knowledge work in the emerging era of social media. Analyzing the results of an annual survey offered each year from 2008 until 2011, the study reports on how knowledge workers use publicly available online services to support their work. The study proposes a distinction between sites and services when studying social media in knowledge work and concludes with an exploration of implications for technical communication pedagogy. Keywords: genreknowledge workonline servicessocial media Notes Note. Data from Divine, Ferro, and Zachry (Citation2011). Note. Empty cells represent questions not asked in the indicated year. Note. Bold values represent the highest percentage of participants reporting a single site in a given year. Note. Bold represents sites that were reported by 15% or more of all participants in 2011. Note. Data from Ferro and Zachry (p. 949). Additional informationNotes on contributorsToni Ferro Toni Ferro is a PhD candidate in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. She received her MS in human-centered design engineering at the University of Washington and her BS in general engineering at the University of Redlands. Mark Zachry Mark Zachry is a professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. His research areas include the communicative practices of organizations and the design of systems to support collaboration.

Abstract We justify and describe our development of the Service Learning Opportunities in Technical Communication (SLOT-C) Database. The database broadens the range of organizations that instructors and students have for client-based communication projects. We argue in support of incorporating service learning into classes and facilitating partnerships among university instructors, their students, and nonprofits. We report strategies we learned for working with student interns and IT experts and strategies we developed as we worked with usability-test participants. Keywords: client-based communication projectsiterative designservice learning opportunitiestechnical communicationuser-centered design ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We sincerely thank the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication for awarding us a research grant in 2009 to build this database. We greatly appreciate Sam Singer, whose expertise in databases and Web development made the concept become a reality. We would also like to thank Stewart Whittemore, who contributed ideas in the early planning stage. Notes Waterfall design involves creating a design to which you are firmly committed early in development and letting all design decisions flow from the initial plan. Iterative design is more flexible, allowing the plan to change as needed in response to feedback. Additional informationNotes on contributorsSusan A. Youngblood Susan A. Youngblood teaches technical and professional communication at Auburn University, and many of her classes feature service learning. Her research addresses vulnerability, accessibility, and competing needs in communication, particularly in online environments. Jo Mackiewicz Jo Mackiewicz teaches editing at Auburn University. Her research applies linguistics to technical communication and focuses on politeness and credibility in evaluative texts such as tutoring interactions, editing sessions, and online reviews.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Space does not permit us to express adequate thanks to those who contributed essays for this special issue, nor to the more than 30 other scholars whose proposed essays we could not include. We hope that many of them will publish the work they proposed in this or other journals. Thanks also to the TCQ editors who helped and encouraged us throughout the development of the issue: Scott Mogull, Ken Baake, Ryan Hoover, Brent Henze, and the patient and kind Amy Koerber. Our humble thanks finally to the wise and generous scholars who served as reviewers of proposals and manuscripts: Michael Bokor, Daniel Ding, Sam Dragga, Richard Hunsinger, Robert Johnson, Kyle Mattson, Mya A. Poe, Jingfang Ren, Julie Stagger, and Huatong Sun. Additional informationNotes on contributorsHuiling Ding Huiling Ding is an assistant professor of professional communication at North Carolina State University. She has published in Technical Communication Quarterly; Rhetoric, Globalization, and Professional Communication; Written Communication; China Media Research; Business Communication Quarterly; Rhetoric Review; and English for Specific Purposes. Gerald Savage Gerald Savage is a professor emeritus from Illinois State University. He has published in numerous journals and essay collections and has coedited several books, including Negotiating Cultural Encounters: Narrating Intercultural Engineering and Technical Communication, coedited with Han Yu and forthcoming from Wiley-IEEE.

Abstract Information and communication technology for development (ICTD) involves using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the well-being of people in resource-constrained environments. Because ICTD projects involve crafting technical information and the ICTs that convey it, ICTD involves challenges familiar to technical communicators, such as balancing stakeholder interests and building credibility necessary to influence stakeholders. This article presents how trust and credibility affect ICTD projects, describing implications for development contexts and for distributed work environments. Keywords: credibilitydistributed workinformation and communication technologyresource-constrained environmentstrust ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank the project stakeholders who participated in this research, as well as the Microsoft Research Technology for Emerging Markets research group, M. Haselkorn, B. Kolko, C. Lee, and K. Toyama for their support of this work. Additional informationNotes on contributorsRebecca Walton Rebecca Walton is an assistant professor at Utah State University. Her research explores how human and contextual factors affect the design and use of information and communication technologies in resource-constrained environments.

Abstract Since the 1950s, technical communicators have been trying to predict future developments in technology, economics, pedagogy, and workplace roles. Prognosticators have included founders of the profession, academics, business leaders, and practitioners. This article examines their predictions to determine what they reveal about technical communication as a discipline. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors would like to thank the following people for their assistance: Xiaoyan Huang, Jie Chen, Prasad Patankar, and the interlibrary loan staff at Missouri S&T. These people assisted by requesting, downloading, and photocopying articles and (in a few cases) correcting citations. The authors would also like to thank the journal's editors and copy editors for their contributions. Notes Full citations for in-text source references are either within the text as part of the annotated bibliographies (divided by publication years: 1952–1990, 1991–2000, or 2001–2010) or within the end-of-text list titled "Additional References." Additional informationNotes on contributorsDavid Wright David Wright has a PhD in Technical Communication from Oklahoma State University. He is currently Assistant Professor of Technical Communication in the Department of English and Technical Communication at Missouri S&T. Edward A. Malone Edward A. Malone is Associate Professor of Technical Communication and Director of Online Graduate Programs in the Department of English and Technical Communication at Missouri S&T. Gowri G. Saraf Gowri G. Saraf has a BE in Instrumentation Technology from R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore, India, and an MS in Technical Communication from Missouri S&T. Tessa B. Long Tessa B. Long has a BA in Spanish from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and an MS in Technical Communication from Missouri S&T. Irangi K. Egodapitiya Irangi K. Egodapitiya has a BA with majors in English, sociology, and management from the University of Peradeniya, near Kandy, Sri Lanka, and an MS in Technical Communication from Missouri S&T. Elizabeth M. Roberson Elizabeth M. Roberson has an AS in Business Administration, a BS in English, and a BS in Writing from Drury University in Springfield, Missouri, and an MS in Technical Communication from Missouri S&T.

Text-based interviews that compared the teacher's intention for a given comment on an engineering student's paper with the student's understanding of the comment were used to examine the extent to which students understand the comments they receive and to determine the characteristics of comments that are well understood and those that are not. The teachers' comments analyzed in this study were fully understood only about half the time. Inclusion of a reason or explicit instructions helped students understand the comments.

Abstract Relatively little is known about the politeness strategies used by technical communicators and designers in group settings, particularly in the decision-making, collaborative meetings of a real-world, naturally occurring group. This study explores the degree to which members of a well-established group linguistically express concern for their fellow collaborators and how that concern may be affected by the type and imminence of their deadlines. Notes In actuality, Brown and Levinson give a fifth strategy of not speaking the request at all. Henceforth, all discussions of "substrategies" will include the bald, on- record strategy as well. Additional informationNotes on contributorsErin Friess Erin Friess is an assistant professor of technical communication at the University of North Texas. Her research explores discursive strategies and user-centered design processes in workplace settings.

This special issue features articles that address legal issues as they relate to technical communication research, pedagogy, and practice. The articles will assist instructors who wish to engage classes in activities that allow students to understand, analyze, and respond to legal dilemmas related to workplace activities. The articles will also highlight contemporary subjects for research inquiry in technical communication, including the relationship between technical communication and civic engagement, which often depends on the study of legal processes. It is our hope that this special issue will generate interest in the intersection of technical communication and the law and that it will provide readers of TCQ with a valuable and unique foundation for teaching and research in this area.

Programs in technical and professional communication are continually challenged by issues of location and dislocation. Historic changes and interdisciplinary initiatives are in progress at colleges and universities worldwide. The five articles of this special issue will offer a portrait of the multiple ways that technical communication programs are positioning themselves to do innovative teaching and research.

Abstract Early scholarly inquiries into online health information focused primarily on questions of accuracy and credibility. In recent research, however, we are seeing an expansion in this initial focus, to include issues such as the usability, design, and ethics of online health information. This special issue contains five articles that contribute to scholarly inquiry in these emerging areas of interest.

While content management systems (CMSs) might be a new concept to many.people in our field, content management as a practice within our discipline is not; our field has been studying it and practicing it for years, though under different headings: single sourcing, knowledge management, and course management (such as in the form of WebCT and Blackboard). We started our work on this special issue with a rather ambitious mission-to bring together some diverse perspectives on content management and CMSs, to both theorize and operationalize the content management practice, and to rationalize our participation in the broad domain of content management discourse. Grounded on the premise that technical communication requires information and knowledge management, this special issue is one of the first systematic and deliberate attempts to extend our perspectives, both theoretical and practical, about technical communication from the relatively static sphere of document design to the more dynamic horizon of content (information/knowledge) management.

In this introduction, I review the topic of the special issue, distributed work: coordinative, polycontextual, cross-disciplinary work that splices together divergent work activities (separated by time, space, organizations, and objectives) and that enables the transformations of information and texts that characterize such work. After reviewing the literature on distributed work, I introduce the articles in this special issue.

Abstract Abstract This article reports on classroom research designed to answer questions about authority—how institutions and disciplines, broadly conceived, influence teachers' ability to abnegate authority and how students' experiences influence their perceptions of authority in a business writing and a first-year composition class. The theoretical framework is derived from research about institutional and disciplinary influences on these two areas of study. This framework and our results lead us to speculate about the ways in which our students' experience of the institution and expectations of the classes and their intentions for using the material taught in the classes may have thwarted our attempt to share authority in our classrooms. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We gratefully acknowledge the help of our undergraduate and graduate associates, MO and JB. They not only attended every one of our classes but also conducted our interviews. This particular study would not have been possible without them. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJean LutzJean Lutz, also an associate professor of English, directs two technical communication programs at Miami University. She is coeditor of The Practice of Technical and Scientific Communication. She has published in collections and journals, including College English and Research in the Teaching of English.Mary FullerMary Fuller, associate professor of English and Director of the Ohio Writing Project, has coauthored Literature: Options for Reading and Writing and published essays in collections and journals, including National Middle School Journal, Writing Program Administrator, and National Writing Project Quarterly.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsBeth L. HewettBeth Hewett is Coeditor of the online journal Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy and a consultant with the NCTE Professional Development Consultant Network. She recently coedited Technology and English Studies: Innovative Professional Paths with James A. Inman. Her current research includes online writing instruction, instant messaging, and the rhetoric of the eulogy.Christa Ehmann PowersChrista Ehmann Powers is Vice President of Education for Smarthinking, Inc., an online learning company. She recently coauthored Preparing Educators for Online Writing Instruction: Principles and Processes with Beth L. Hewett. Christa's current research focuses on online teaching and learning, empirical research methods for online settings, and distance management strategies.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsBeth L. HewettBeth Hewett is Coeditor of the online journal Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy and a consultant with the NCTE Professional Development Consultant Network. She recently coedited Technology and English Studies: Innovative Professional Paths with James A. Inman. Her current research includes online writing instruction, instant messaging, and the rhetoric of the eulogy.Christa Ehmann PowersChrista Ehmann Powers is Vice President of Education for Smarthinking, Inc., an online learning company. She recently coauthored Preparing Educators for Online Writing Instruction: Principles and Processes with Beth L. Hewett. Christa's current research focuses on online teaching and learning, empirical research methods for online settings, and distance management strategies.