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).

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.

One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions. —Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (qtd. in Sheehan, 2010) Nineteenth-century freshman composition instruction at Madras University, based on a classical paradigm, prepared students for writing in professional discourses. Examining this pedagogy from today's perspective raises, for the field of postcolonial theory, questions of whether the British, who offered Indians a curriculum comparable to those at important British universities, viewed Indians as inferior beings or those needing help to become modern.

Abstract This article reports the results of a case study of two maps, produced by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and their involvement in a federal court case over the deployment of the Navy's low-frequency active sonar. Borrowing from Kress and van Leeuwen's (1996) Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. 1996. Reading images: The grammar of visual design, New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar] approach to visual analysis, Turnbull's (1989) Turnbull, D. 1989. Maps are territories, science is an atlas: A portfolio of exhibits, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar] understanding of the map, and Latour's (1990) Latour, B. 1990. “Drawing things together.”. In Representation in scientific practice, Edited by: Lynch, M. and Woolgar, S. 19–68. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Google Scholar] understanding of how visuals work in social contexts, the article offers an analytical approach to studying maps as powerful visual, rhetorical objects.

Abstract This article reports the results of a case study of two maps, produced by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and their involvement in a federal court case over the deployment of the Navy's low-frequency active sonar. Borrowing from Kress and van Leeuwen's (1996) Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. 1996. Reading images: The grammar of visual design, New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar] approach to visual analysis, Turnbull's (1989) Turnbull, D. 1989. Maps are territories, science is an atlas: A portfolio of exhibits, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar] understanding of the map, and Latour's (1990) Latour, B. 1990. “Drawing things together.”. In Representation in scientific practice, Edited by: Lynch, M. and Woolgar, S. 19–68. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Google Scholar] understanding of how visuals work in social contexts, the article offers an analytical approach to studying maps as powerful visual, rhetorical objects.

This article discusses collaborative design in the context of developing a Toolbook hypertext intended to introduce graduate students to the fields of rhetoric and professional communication. It examines the new grammar and rhetoric of hypertext, discusses the importance of document planning within an emergent design, and argues for a functional aesthetic.