While the field of report writing has assumed an increasingly sophisticated status in recent years (reflected even in textbook titles), the “old verities” continue to be an important center of attention for those who write or edit material in the field. In addition to keeping uppermost in mind the age-old, sound principles of rhetoric and composition, we need, today, to ask ourselves relevant questions regarding problem areas created by technological advances and linguistic developments. If we can strive always to be lucid, accurate, and succinctly informative, human communication will continue to keep pace with technology.

Education in the discipline of literacy has not provided individuals with the basic quality of mind and knowledge with which to meaningfully control and order perceptual experience. Visual literacy is based on the discipline, the knowledge, of visual codes. A sophisticated literacy is necessary today in order to understand visual analogies and to avoid the consequences of visual illiteracy, random perception, and escapism through self-deception. The thesis of the present article is that a disciplined knowledge of visual analogies and to avoid the consequences of visual illiteracy: random perception and escapism through self-deception. The concern of communicators in all fields.

The revival of interest in rhetoric raises the question of the relevance of the discipline to the modern student, particularly the engineering student. In general, rhetoric can be defined as the study of language emphasizing its practical rather than its aesthetic qualities. As a theory of composition, classical rhetoric stresses writing as communication rather than self-expression, and provides a systematic method for dealing with problems of achieving cooperation among men. As a “systems approach” to composition, rhetoric is suited to the mental style of the engineering student. Moreover, engineers and scientists skilled in rhetoric would be equipped to deal with the problem of alienation between the scientific community and society at large.