Proponents of computerized text-analysis (CTA) systems like Bell Laboratories' Writer's Workbench contend that the computer's analysis of a text's surface features can help students become better writers and editors. Several colleges and universities have already integrated the new technology into their writing programs, and others will consider doing so in the future. Teachers of technical writing, however, ought to investigate carefully the capabilities and limitations of CTA before applying it to the technical writing classroom. Not even the most sophisticated of today's computers can detect the basic grammar and punctuation errors that bedevil student writers. Moreover, the computer's evaluation of a text's readability and style is untrustworthy and lacks a sound theoretical and pedagogical foundation; indeed, the machine's quantitative-based analysis of writing style might do some students more harm than good. Finally, there is no empirical evidence that CTA helps students become better writers.

The primary hypothesis was that field independent subjects would produce discourse that would be judged more coherent than the discourse of field dependent subjects. A total of 44 subjects in their first term of college composition were selected from a group of 60 volunteers from two universities and a community college. Each subject was administered the Culture Fair Intelligence Test, the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire, and the Group Embedded Figures Test. There were five research conditions: Three evoked oral responses, and one evoked a written response. A group of readers unaware of the nature of the research evaluated each response holistically, rating it in terms of a coherence scale. Coherence scores were then analyzed in relation to cognitive style classification. The primary hypothesis was supported by the data. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated significant cognitive style effect, F(6,25) = 4.82, p <.0001. The correlation between cognitive style and coherence was significant, r(32) = .54, p <.002. The results suggest that cognitive style is a significant variable in explaining differences between good writers and poor ones.

The composition teaching we tend to associate with nineteenth-century schools was exemplified by A. S. Hill's courses at Harvard, which emphasized correctness, clarity, stylistic refinements, and organization. But there was also a “reform tradition” that stressed the importance of the student's interests and experience, and saw the writing task as based on observation, description, speaking, and listening. Inspired partly by romantic educational theories from the continent, this tradition grew out of the social and educational reforms of the 1830s and 1840s and provided the basis for the early progressive teaching of the 1890s.

The new technical editor, especially a journal editor, is faced with an immense task. He can consult a vast collection of reference books to help him master the mechanics of editing, learn the system of publication, and improve his writing skills. However, no reference book tells him the thing he needs most: how to master the art of successful communication and interaction with authors, many of whom he will meet only through letters or telephone calls. The technical editor almost always depends on authors for his livelihood, since they submit the original manuscripts and research reports which he turns into the final product. The interaction between writers and editors often leaves both with bad feelings. To help the new technical editor prevent this, eleven guidelines for developing a good style of communication are presented. The goal of these guidelines is to make the editorial process satisfying and pleasant for all concerned.

Ability to vary one's style is an important skill of mature writing, and it would be useful to have tests of this skill. We developed a cloze test to measure writing flexibility, then asked college students (all good writers) to replace sentences that had been deleted from two short stories. The style of the cloze sentences, for students with experience in creative writing, more closely resembled the original story than the cloze sentences of less experienced students. Style differences, between experienced and inexperienced students, appeared in average sentence lengths, sentence types, and verb-adjective ratios. In another experiment, less experienced students were given explicit instructions to imitate story style; they showed virtually the same adaptability to style as the creative writing group in the first experiment. Thus we have evidence that the cloze test measures style differences between experienced and less experienced writers, and also that responsiveness to style features, distinct from the skill needed to change those features, is a significant component of experienced writing.

Experts on style agree that writers frequently have trouble using the unattended anaphoric this clearly. Few, however, have proposed explicit guidelines for sorting appropriate from inappropriate uses. This article examines the limitations of a recent classification proposed by Moskovit (1983), and then suggests an alternate classification relying on concepts from functional grammar. In particular, Moskovit's distinction between demarcational, syntactic, and semantic reference is found not to predict actual readers' judgments. In its place, the authors suggest a classification based on the functional notions of topic and focus. The unattended this is shown to be English's economical routine for moving the focus of a discourse from nominal topics to clausal predications relating those topics. Before deciding to employ this routine, however, writers are warned to evaluate its consequences on clarity and rhetoric.

Medical and scientific writing have traditionally occasioned debate. The earliest critics of scientific language were harsh because they were promoting a plain style of writing free from rhetorical embellishment, not because they questioned the writing ability of those they censured. Writing and language were central parts of scientific inquiry. Modern critics are likewise frequently harsh and derisive, but they have lost sight of the integrated approach to language and science that their predecessors had. This article examines three texts published within the last ten years that seem to reverse some trends in medical writing. Tapping non-scientific fields from philology to aesthetics to composition theory, these texts suggest ways in which the humanities can be reintegrated with the study of medical and scientific writing.

This study attempted to describe the structural and content characteristics of actual employment rejection letters (following job screening interviews). Their impact on applicants' feelings about themselves (self-concept and self-satisfaction) and about letters (perceptions of letter clarity, “personalness” and appreciative tone) are assessed. Results provide a profile of the “typical” rejection letter and indicate that while few of the letter characteristics affected applicants' feelings about themselves, a number of these attributes were related to applicants' perceptions of the letters.

An examination of the files of a scientific journal demonstrates a deep editorial concern for style and arrangement. Stylistic changes are invariably made either for the sake of clarity, simplicity, concision, or specificity. Changes in arrangement are of two kinds, each with its own purpose: between paragraphs within sections, these changes are made in the interest of sequential clarity; on the other hand, redistributions from section to section are designed clearly to demarcate section content: e.g., results only in Results. Several conclusions are reached: 1) traditional advice, especially on style, does not always reflect best editorial practice; 2) problems of arrangement call for different kinds of solution from those of style: the former having a “best,” the latter only a “better” solution; 3) stylistic changes are tactical choices made within the context of strategic presuppositions about the impersonal and descriptive nature of scientific prose.

This article demonstrates the potential of discourse analysis for exploring cognitive processes that occur during writing. Discourse analytic studies and text comprehension studies are reviewed for their contribution to a cognitive process view of writing. Research is reported which combines discourse analysis with on-line pause data to determine how semantic propositions reflect sentence-level planning patterns. Results indicate that decisions regarding predicate relationships are central to sentence production. Some implications for a process model of writing are suggested.

Traditionally, technical writing has been characterized by impersonal, mechanical, objective prose. However, this attempt to deanthropomorphize reality must ultimately fail because science cannot escape metaphorical language. There is a move in technical writing today toward a personalized, sometimes called “friendly,” writing style which is strikingly evident in many computer textbooks and instructional manuals.

It has long been recognized that one man's problems are another man's opportunities. But, whether one thinks of solving problems or exploiting opportunities, one must still apply skills and competencies in a systematic and clear manner. How to develop student skills and competencies as these relate to thinking systematically as a prerequisite to clarity of self-expression is the topic of this paper. To succeed in this task, departments of business and English must work together to enhance business students' thinking and writing skills. The student studying courses in his major area needs the English professor to guide him through a systematic problem-solving approach to report writing. Here the College of Business and the College of Arts and Science can benefit by requiring business majors to complete a technical professional writing course through the English Department which uses experiential learning as the focal point in report writing. The result is that the student writes in and studies an area of interest, but learns to apply the problem-solving approach to writing as he concentrates on a typical problem in the field of business. Students place a high value on this type of learning, and the two disciplines work well together in accomplishing their goals.

Roman Jakobson's six-factored model of verbal communication provides the schema to generate formal definitions of business writing and technical writing. It also enables us to apply these definitions to communication in the world of work. The six factors—addresser, addressee, context, message, contact, and code—have six parallel functions—emotive, conative, referential, poetic, phatic, and metalingual. Each of these factor/function pairs is present to some degree in all types of writing, from technical writing to poetry. However, in certain types of written communication a few functions dominate the others. For instance, the referential or informational function is primary in technical and scientific writing. An examination of different binary functional relationships yields distinctions among various types of writing. For example, the inspection of the you versus it relationship yields the most substantive theoretical distinction between persuasive business writing and technical writing. From this single theoretical distinction emerge various practical aspects of communication, such as good will, the “you-attitude,” and the techniques of behavior modification applicable in business writing; and objectivity, clarity, and precision of meaning aimed for in technical writing.

A survey of technical communication students at North Carolina State University has revealed information about students' perceptions of their communication skills and abilities, their immediate and long-range career plans, and what should be offered in a technical communication course. This information complements information gathered from surveys of business and industrial employers and of technical graduates on the job. The results of the survey suggest the desirability of increased technical communication course emphasis on oral reports and simulating professional communication activities. The survey also suggests specific areas for emphasis in the teaching of organization, format, and style.

To determine whether there are different technical styles, syntactic structures at three audience levels in the published writing of three disciplines were analyzed. Our analysis discloses that different disciplines rely primarily on different types of subordinate clauses, sentence openers, and sentence types. It also discloses that paragraph length varies with audience level, as do the number of subject sentence openers and the kinds of verb constructions. Next, we compare our findings with standard textbook treatments of style and advocate a more flexible approach to the teaching of technical style, one that accounts for variations in subject matter and audience.

Tables and figures arc an integral part of the medium of communication of science and technology. An analysis of tables and figures, relying heavily on Euclidean terms (point, line and plane) explains something of their power–their ability to display with clarity large amounts of data, complex data relationships, and intricate three-dimensional configurations. Analysis also clarifies the mutual dependence of tables and figures and their accompanying texts. Additionally, analysis makes clear the semantic gap between tables and graphs, on the one hand, and illustrations, on the other. All are equally vital strategies in scientific and technical discourse. However, tables and graphs are paralinguistic extensions of scientific and technical dialects; illustrations, on the other hand, are a nonlinguistic supplement to these dialects. Finally, analysis provides clues for the teaching of proper graphic choice, good graphic ‘grammar,’ and the appropriate contextualization of graphs.

How do you communicate clearly to a reader without boring him? How do you prod his imagination without confusing him? The answer, I suppose, is to be a highly skilled writer and work very hard at your craft. But while there may be no simple and absolute rules for effective communication, there is an art called rhetoric that can help. I offer the following brief passage from Aristotle's words about rhetoric in the hope that some who are unfamiliar with that ancient art may be moved to read further. A good starting point would be Readings in Classical Rhetoric, edited by Thomas W. Benson and Michael H. Prosser (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969). As you read, bear in mind that this is a translation from a Greek text thought by scholars to be lecture notes – perhaps those of Aristotle himself, perhaps those of one of his students. Consider whether notes from any lectures you have given or attended are likely to look this insightful and clear 2300 years hence. Then notice Aristotle's very subtle understanding of how verbal style can shape an audience's awareness of what is being communicated.

The relationship between the technical writer and his or her audience will directly dictate the format, style, and purpose of the information to be communicated. This paper explores the structures of that process and how these structures change as the technical processor's audience changes.

Requirements of accuracy in technical writing overwhelm considerations of stylistic grace. Analysis of the resulting technical style, however, often reveals a discrepancy between technical and verbal accuracy. The object of verbal form is an accommodation between grace and accuracy. Several avenues to achieve this accommodation are presented from Martin Buber's I and Thou to psycholinguist theorists such as George Miller and Walter Kintsch. Linguistic theory and literacy analysis can also provide means of reestablishing grace, not as replacement, but in contention with technical accuracy. The aims of technical discourse, like that of all other discourse, should include the gracefulness of one human being speaking to another.

Having students read selected portions of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography provides unique and effective material for supplementing instruction in style and control of tone. Franklin's writing exemplifies the major style characteristics taught in technical writing: active voice, conciseness, common words, concrete language, sentences structured by clauses rather than phrases. The work clearly shows that good “technical” style is not an isolated type of writing, but a powerful means of controlling tone and meaning. Students can be shown that by skillfully using syntax and diction and by carefully selecting content, Franklin shrewdly and effectively achieved his goal in writing the Autobiography — a precisely drawn image of himself for posterity.

Various style manuals, advice to authors, and textbooks on writing stress that writers should prefer the active voice of the verb and avoid the passive form. The following bibliography brings together references to the passive voice of the verb from linguists, grammarians, and researchers of the use of passive voice verbs; comments from technical writing textbooks; comments from books on language; comments from style manuals; and references from various other sources. The annotations summarize the principal points the article makes about passive voice verbs (abstracts provided by the authors of the articles are marked with an asterisk (*)). Part I covered materials from linguists while Parts II through V list references in technical writing textbooks, style manuals and authors' guides, and various other sources.

Various style manuals, advice to authors, and textbooks on writing stress that writers should prefer the active voice of the verb and avoid the passive form. The following bibliography brings together references to the passive voice of the verb from linguists, grammarians, and researchers of the use of passive voice verbs; comments from technical writing textbooks; comments from books on language; comments from style manuals; and references from various other sources. The annotations summarize the principal points the article makes about passive voice verbs (abstracts provided by the authors of the articles are marked with an asterisk (*)). Part I covers materials from linguists while Part II, to be published in the next issue, lists references in technical writing textbooks, a selection of general books on language, style manuals and author's guides, and various other sources.

All of the elements of quality contribute separately to the overall merit of an engineering manuscript. Inadequate content cannot masquerade under the cloak of fine writing. Nor can outmoded engineering concepts hide behind a facade of logical structure and orderly presentation of ideas. Literary style must be combined with effective organization, and results need to be fortified with the kind of balanced interpretation that identifies a manuscript of quality.

The work of a technical writer must be readable and easy to understand. Indeed, we have methods to teach students how to be readable. But is it reasonable to request creativity in their work? There are differences between the style of a technical writer and of a novelist. But there are also similarities. To be creative in his technical writing, the technical writer must be influenced by the novelist. I advise especially the study and writing of essays and poems.

A survey-experiment at the University of Leeds, England, attempted to resolve two questions: (1) Are some grammatical structures more efficient than others in communicating scientific fact? and (2) Do students pursuing different academic disciplines have correspondingly different value systems with regard to technical writing and technical subject matter? The results of the survey, which sampled 300 students, indicated yes to both questions. Particularly ironic was the finding that the third-person passive voice, so commonly the style of twentieth-century technical English, is disadvantageous from a communication standpoint.

Kinneavy's theory of discourse and Mathes' concept of contextual editing can be effectively applied to teaching classification in technical writing. My procedure, in the nine steps described here, provides students with an understanding of classification as an analytical and generative tool. Its usefulness in analysis is discovered through a structural study of Mumford's “Machines, Utilities, and ‘The Machine‘”; an awareness of Mumford's classificatory structure helps students understand his essay. Students see for themselves, by organizing facts into paragraphs, the generative power of contextual editing applied to classification; the same kind of structuring Mumford uses can be used in their own writing. This generative application simulates the research-to-writing process and dramatically increases the coherence and clarity of much student writing.