The feminist approaches to technical communication that have emerged recently are largely liberal feminist or radical feminist in orientation. Liberal feminism arises out of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and emphasizes equality and rights. It sees that women's opportunities to develop their intellects and talents and participate freely in the world of men have been thwarted by discriminatory practices. Radical feminism, in contrast, emphasizes differences between women and men, the limitations of patriarchal culture, and the characteristics of women's ways of communicating and knowing. The essays included in this issue, while multidimensional, primarily exhibit characteristics of both liberal and radical feminism.

The essays published in this special issue of TCQ are contextualited within historiographical traditions of inquiry in the western history of science and technology.

This article focuses on the botanical publications of two eighteenthcentury English women writers: Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal (l737-1739) and Priscilla Bell Wakefield's An Introduction to Botany (1796). A brief rhetorical description and analysis of these books indicates that they contribute several new perspectives and techniques to the historical tradition of botanical writing and illustrating, as well as exhibit many of today's techniques for effective technical communication. Several suggestions are offered for further research directions to establish the significance of these writers within the conceptual framework of the feminine "green" tradition.

In creating complex interactive documents, some technical communicators use software products that emphasize format and style in displaying pages. This approach limits the communicator's ability to repackage the information presented in electronic versions and increase its interactive use, which is a key benefit of the structure-based approach offered by using Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). In a number of projects that render mathematical, scientific, and engineering texts electronically, using SGML allows the technical communicator to make equations interactive and to automate links to references. The author sketches out problems associated with page description approaches to displaying electronic pages and discusses the comparative benefits of SGML.

To improve the structure of complex information when it is to be presented electronically, technical communicators may turn to ideas taken from object-oriented programming to clarify and revive the structure of the material in existing documents before mounting them on-line. When an organization starts moving information onto the Web, technical communicators may go through a phase transition: as the publishing system becomes much more complex, it exhibits emergent behaviors, and it demands new attitudes, concepts, and work from the technical communicator.

Technical communicators today must document complex applications used in complex environments. Information about users and use models is important under these conditions, especially if documentation will be presented on-line. Customer partnering, a method of information gathering that supplements surveys, contextual inquiries, usability testing, and interviews, provides one way of involving the users of complex applications in the design of information delivery systems. We used this method to help a client gather important information about user and use models and design a new information library for complex server computer systems.

In developing new ways to publish vast amounts of information, many technical communication teams face problems that go far beyond the challenges of one book, a series of books, or even a series of CD-ROMs. Technical communicators begin to face a constellation of problems that are more like those that have plagued software development since it became a distinct profession in the 1960s. At first a project seems promising. Then, as the work begins and progresses, we become enmeshed in interlocking problems of management, purchasing, staffing, training, installation, integration, and vision. This article summarizes the lessons learned from a major effort to use the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) to pull together into a single, accessible, electronic "publication" large amounts of very complicated information.

Complex scientific graphics that reproduce well on paper may be difficult to display on computer because of the limited size and resolution of standard desktop monitors. This paper describes several methods for computer display of such large, dense graphics that preserve the usability of the graphics and support the ways users need to interact with the figures. Building on a simple structure of base panels and overlays joined by hypertext links, these methods provide ways of reorganizing figures into smaller graphical units that can be displayed easily, yet communicate all the information the original figure was designed to convey.

This article argues for the long-term value of client-based group projects in an introductory technical communication course. Survey results are presented from 73 former technical communication students with two to seven years of workplace experience. Lasting five to six weeks, these projects are a compromise between a briefer conventional case method and a more lengthy individualized internship or cooperative education experience. The projects reinforce research, analysis, and reporting skills, such as interviewing specialists and conducting survey research, that graduates continue to value highly even after years of workplace writing. When framed as such, client-based projects also encourage students to define and debate public policy issues.

Carolyn Miller's “A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing” serves as an example of text that has influenced the knowledge-making activities within technical communication. The 68 references, or intertextual connections, to “Humanistic Rationale” between 1979 and 1995 demonstrate its influence and show the evolution of technical communication and the issues important to technical communication professionals. The authors respond to questions of the purpose of technical communication, the influence of the canons of rhetoric, the importance of audience, and the impact of social constructionism on technical communication. This analysis of the academic prose surrounding “Humanistic Rationale” reveals part of the discipline's discussions and the “communal rationality” (617) that shapes the activities of its members.

Theories of ethics typically emphasize either good character (asking "Who will I be?") or right behavior (asking "What will I do?"). Studies of ethics in technical communication have typically focused on the analysis of behavior, offering heuristics for deciding ethical dilemmas. Interviews with 48 technical communicators, however, reveal little exercise of such analytical processes. In making moral choices on the job, the majority look to feelings, intuition, and conscience. Ethics might be more effectively taught through a narrative perspective, especially by identifying models of moral courage and integrity.

As multimedia communication continues to grow, online technologies have dramatically changed the ways we use and present information-so much so, that we need new theories and models for understanding how technology and content are related in the new communication environment. The paper presents a theory of digital architecture, explains how SGML, HTML, and information architectures are related in the creation of a new online literacy and rhetoric, and discusses concepts, skills, and resources needed for educating tomorrow's technical communicators.

A post hoc analysis of data collected from a usability test on the Fluke ScopeMeter 97 (a diagnostic instrument for analyzing electrical signals) revealed that, in doing tasks, subjects were making use of their own internal metaphors (user generated) that were unsupported by the design of the ScopeMeter keys. We investigated the interaction of the user generated metaphors and designer generated metaphors. By examining the effects that the subjects' skill levels and their backgrounds had on employing such metaphors, we began to outline certain characteristics of user generated metaphors. We found that user generated metaphors demonstrate unyielding persistence in the minds of ScopeMeter users, particularly in the higher skilled subjects.

The study of ethics is important for technical communication students and professionals because as workers and as citizens they confront ethical dilemmas and must act. The article describes and contrasts several foundational and nonfoundational ethical approaches. Analyzing two well known ethics cases from the perspective of the different approaches, it is argued that although foundational approaches are limited, they provide better insights than do nonfoundational approaches. Finally, the article describes a problem solving technique, based on foundational approaches and communicative ethics, that can be used by technical communication students and professionals to analyze ethical dilemmas.

The ISTE approach offers a new method of concurrent testing that is less time-consuming than usual. In addition, it helps catch the user in the act and the scores show almost immediately whether the user has processed the manual as intended. In the ISTE approach, the main information subtypes in a manual are coupled to their intended and unintended effects on users. Research has shown that the ISTE approach yields reliable and valid findings. In addition, it has been found to be versatile and easy to apply, and it provides valuable insights on the usability of a manual.

Engineers face many technical writing tasks that have many features in common: title, abstract, introduction, problem formulation, methods, results, and conclusions. But it is often very difficult to actually write these segments in the same order they appear in the finished product. Instead of this linear approach, we recommend a modular approach starting with the core sections, the methods and results that researchers know best, and working backward and forward to pick up the beginnings and endings. We show how the beginning and ending sections build on the core sections and offer strategies to improve them.

When people read silently, they unconsciously translate what they read into a speech-like code that facilitates word identification and the creation of meaning. This article examines that phenomenon—known as silent speech—based upon the published research of cognitive psychologists and psycholinguists. The author develops a phonological model of reading based upon published results of experimental investigators to determine the relationship between cognition and silent speech. The author then applies the model to technical communication. The applications include the use of punctuation, pronouns, and abbreviations, as well as introducing new words, writing to satisfy the speech instinct, cultivating a human voice, and revising technical documents.

The only way to judge a product's acceptance in the workplace is through its use. However, before a product is released into the marketplace, its developers would like to predict its acceptability in the target market. One predictor of acceptability is usability test results. Typically, usability testing takes place outside of the user's natural environment in a usability test lab, an artificial environment. This article suggest ways in which ethnographic principles, historically used to describe a culture from the point of view of someone within that culture, can be used along with traditional usability testing to predict a product's acceptability in the marketplace.

Acupuncture is increasingly popular as an alternative medical therapy. Its description presents a challenge for technical communicators. Traditional Chinese medical explanations of acupuncture are unscientific, and scientific explanations of acupuncture are inconclusive. Technical communicators must translate acupuncture theory (traditional and scientific) for not only lay-people, but also for both traditional Chinese and Western health practitioners. Further research is needed.

This article considers on-line documentation's place in a two-year college's technical communication program. Such a course can be successful if instructors (1) emphasize design principles rather than a particular software package; (2) build on rhetorical skills students already possess, while developing the new skills necessary for authoring documents for the computer screen; and (3) acknowledge the need for their own professional development.

This article argues that researchers can benefit as scholars and teachers by conducting studies in the history of business and technical writing within the framework of the new historicism. It discusses the problems and features of the historical studies literature, explains the legitimizing effects of treating studies as the new historicism, and advocates teaching students to conduct new historical analyses of business and technical texts.

Many technical writing programs across the country have their students go out into the community and do writing projects for local businesses, campus organizations, government agencies, or nonprofit organizations. Few, however, take advantage of the increasingly popular pedagogy known as service learning. This article describes how to set up such service-learning courses and how to anticipate certain types of problems. Also discussed are some of the many benefits, both pedagogical and civic/humanitarian, that this truly real-world approach brings to the teaching of technical writing and, potentially, to the teaching of other forms of professional writing.

This article examines contributions of selected theories to technical communication's understanding of environmental discourse and uses a dialogical synthesis to construct a model of stakeholder analysis. The model, with its interactive variables of stakeholder knowledge, attitude, and desired behavior, is applied to a pollution prevention document and calls for an active research emphasis in determining effective communication strategies.

With elderly people becoming an ever larger part of our society, the usability of modern technical products for these people is becoming an ever more important issue. Instructions that optimally fit the needs of this elderly audience could enhance the usability of the products they belong to. The study described in this article is aimed at an investigation of this gerontological research literature to find out what is already known about age deficiencies in cognitive processes which might adversely influence instructional text processing. On the basis of the findings from this research, tentative guidelines could be given on how such manuals could be designed and written. Moreover, we propose several kinds of follow-up research that still have to be carried out to gather more knowledge on the topic of manuals for the elderly.

Using new media in supporting students learning to write is a challenge for technical writing teachers. In this article we describe our effort to convert the paper course material to an on-line advisory system, called Ganesh Helper. Through the logging of students' actions and observations it was possible to assess some aspects of the use of Ganesh Helper (searching, browsing, and switching between writing and reading) while the students were writing part of a report. A questionnaire taught us that a majority of the students found the helpviewer easy to use and useful. But in the case of Ganesh Helper most of the students still preferred the textbook to the helpviewer.

How have Dutch instructive texts changed in the course of the last century? This question is the topic of a research project presented in this article. First, we give some insight into the kind of documents we have collected in our corpus. The oldest instructive texts date from the beginning of the nineteenth century. But for most technical devices, the tradition of adding an instructive text starts about 1925. After that we present a few results of the investigations: the disappearance of persuasive passages and of realistic representations of human beings. Finally, we give a more detailed sketch of the development of the algorithmic style.

This article is about the profession of technical writing in the Netherlands. The data are mainly based on two studies. The first was directed at technical writers who work as freelancers (external writers). It was done with the objective of learning about the characteristics and backgrounds of external technical writers and about their wishes concerning the development of the profession. The second study was directed at technical writers who work inside organizations (internal writers) and focused on questions about text quality and the writing problems that threaten this quality. We will focus on three issues. After the introduction in the first section and the description of the design of our studies in the second section, we will give a global profile of technical writers in the Netherlands. In the fourth section we will give an impression of the writing problems internal technical writers have to deal with. In the fifth section opinions concerning more professionalism in the field of technical writing are discussed. Also attention is paid to current developments in professionalism.

Computer-based instruction (CBI) using multimedia and hypermedia is a new approach to teaching that is becoming increasingly popular in academic and nonacademic settings. Because the technical communication profession has developed a disciplinary culture uniquely suited to evolve along with communication technology, technical communicators experienced in creating instructional materials for technical products are well-positioned to become effective designers of this innovative form of instruction. However, as designers, they must become proficient in the early design stages of audience analysis, goals analysis, and control analysis to master multimedia and hypermedia CBI. In this article, the authors review findings from several fields to help technical communication teachers and practitioners (a) explain the value of audience analysis, goals analysis, and control analysis; (b) accomplish those analyses effectively; (c) use the results of their analyses to create effective multimedia or hypermedia CBI; and (d) set priorities for further related research.

Business and technical communication textbooks take two approaches to intercultural communication: an information-acquisition approach, which provides students with information about practices in other cultures and tips for using this information in communication transactions; and a case-study approach, which encourages students to engage in dialog about problems encountered in intercultural communication. Both models enable students to confront cultural difference, but neither approach provides the means for successfully negotiating this difference. A praxis model provides an alternative strategy which enables students to negotiate cultural borders in actual workplace settings. But this model also exposes students to conflict which inevitably accompanies intercultural communication.

Consulting engineering firms that produce reports for clients benefit from having engineers who can write clear, well-organized, grammatically correct descriptions of the work they perform. Despite the obvious value gained through engineers who can write well, universities and the firms themselves do not as a rule train engineers in business technical writing. A typical program a firm can institute to promote writing skills would include developing a house style guide as well as concise examples of writing engineers should emulate and screening and practice exercises. The ability to first organize material in an outline is critical to efficient composition. Engineers with limited English skills can be instructed in building clear, logical lists that can be efficiently converted into narrative form by an editor.

Can technical writing still be taught credibly by teachers with only academic experience? This article draws a distinction between courses designed for students expecting to be full-time technical communicators and general-purpose service courses designed for students in a variety of fields. The article then argues that teachers of service courses can teach credibly without having worked as writers in nonacademic workplaces if they fulfill these conditions: they should have a critical command of research into nonacademic writing, rhetorical theory, and reading theory; they should define technical writing broadly enough to see themselves as technical writers; they should seek and take advantage of everyday opportunities to practice technical writing and reading; and they should carefully consider the sense in which their courses reflect reality.

Engineering students, faculty, and administration all agree that instruction in writing is an important component of engineering education. And since engineering students will take up technical matters in their careers, it seems only natural that a writing class will require them to write papers about technology, that is, to practice technical writing. While this approach may indeed be of value, the following article presents an alternative to the teaching of technical writing per se. The author suggests that if students learn how to approach an issue they care about, form an arguable idea from this issue, then logically prove it in subsequent paragraphs, that this deep level of writing and thinking comprehension can then be used to enhance any piece of writing, especially the technical document.

Victor W. Pagé was either the first or one of the first to make a living primarily as a technical communicator in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. His 33 automotive and aviation books published by the Norman W. Henley Company were popular with both the public and critics because they contained timely, comprehensive coverage of novel technology; profuse illustrations; occasional analogies; easy-to-access information; well-established expertise; and sophisticated employment of task orientation. Pagé was able to publish many books quickly because he reused manufacturers' and his own material and methods of organization. He was also able to communicate his novel information effectively because he had both extensive firsthand experience with early automobiles and planes and because he was continually involved in teaching. Victor Pagé's early twentieth-century work demonstrates both what have become mainstream techniques in technical communication and a number of unique rhetorical strategies.

Abstract This article analyzes the location of "value" in technical communication contexts, arguing that current models of technical communication embrace an outdated, self-deprecating, industrial approach subordinating information to concrete technological products. By rethinking technical communication in terms of Reich's "symbolic-analytic work," technical communicators and educators can move into a post-industrial model of work that prioritizes information and communication, with benefits to both technical communicators and users.

This study uses a case-study approach to describe and analyze the effects of emphasizing design principles in a technical communication course. A look at student assignments—including a job description, a set of instructions, and a feasibility study—and at student self-evaluative comments about their job descriptions suggests that focusing on design principles can help students improve the organization and design of their documents and achieve a more sophisticated understanding of the role of design in communicating technical information.

As we increasingly recognize the social nature of technical communication, our responsibilities as teachers need to be redefined. Three levels of responsibility are suggested: at the theoretical level, we should study technical communication as a historically emergent social practice; at the pedagogical level, we need to incorporate social and historical perspectives into technical communication courses and curricula; at the level of social action, we should participate in defining and creating new sites of practice for technical communicators. Several suggestions are offered for helping students locate or develop alternative sites of technical communication practice.

When faced with the need to seek employment, technical communicators with expertise in proposal writing may want to extend their job-seeking horizons beyond the for-profit world and also consider nonprofit organizations as potential employers. The skills required of proposal writers and the situations in which they work are similar whether the writer is employed by a for-profit corporation or a nonprofit organization such as a private college or social service charity. In developing proposals, writers employed in either setting use similar proposal formats, rely on good interpersonal skills while working under deadline pressures, and work with teams of experts from a variety of fields. The article concludes with information on careers with nonprofit organizations, including typical salaries, benefits, and job titles.

Promotional writing for industrial and high-tech products, or technical copywriting, is gaining more and more attention in the profession of technical communication. In contrast, higher education has largely neglected to prepare students for this major form of written communication. One reason for this neglect may be that some academics do not well understand the role and importance of technical copywriting. Another reason may be the stigma of unethical writing associated with copywriting for consumer products. This article testifies to the significance of technical copywriting and suggests that dialogical audience analysis and an emphasis on the rational appeal will contribute to ethical writing performance. Also, resources are cited of common interest to instructors, beginning practitioners, and researchers. Last, these groups receive recommendations appropriate for their individual activities.

The textbook is the main teaching tool for instructors. Typically, teachers select a text based on how well it supports their views of and approach to the subject. Looking at texts suggests how the subject has been taught over the years and what assumptions are made about students. This informal look at pre-1970 textbooks characterizes the early teaching of technical writing by examining such features as author's background, contents, assumed reader, and focus.

How has technical communication changed over the past twenty-five years in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe? As a task, it has not changed at all; as a professional occupation, it has evolved slowly; as a procedure, it has changed dramatically.

Because of our increasingly litigious workplace, it is theoretically, educationally, and pragmatically imperative that business and technical communicators become familiar with and informed about the legal issues surrounding products liability. This article explains the products liability theories of negligence, breach of warranty, and strict liability in relation to the publication of defective product information. It also examines the legal implications of printed media and written communications (such as safety, instructional, and promotional information) as integral parts of marketed products. Finally, it cautions all professional communicators concerning their personal legal responsibility for the accuracy and effectiveness of product documentation from the perspective of the ordinary, uninformed consumer, and it offers several guidelines for writing and organizing to avoid products liability lawsuits.

As environmental communicators partcipating in public meetings and interviews, engineers and scientists must sometimes walk a thin line between representing the best interests of their organizations and responding to the public's need to know. Unfortunately, published guidance designed to aid technical communicators in such situations is not clearly based on theory or actual behavior. This study analyzes actual responses to hostile questions by drawing upon speech act theory to demonstrate that spokespersons use five strategies for composing indirect answers to questions perceived as hostile.

Five academic veterinary scientists were interviewed to learn about their professional writing experiences and relate them to technical writing pedagogy. The interviews probed the genres in which they write, their composing methods, their professional attitudes toward writing, and the sources of training in writing. The data suggest that while writing is an integral part of their research, teaching, and professional advancement and is used in conducting business, the academic scientific curriculum does not specifically address this important element in their careers.

Businesses need not do much that is expensive, radical, or new to improve their documentation, and a product oriented approach is much more likely to be used in the workplace instead of the writing as a process approach. These are the two findings that emerged from our study of the revision of manuals as described by practising technical communicators. We conducted in depth interviews with 20 technical communicators from six different types of industries to explore and understand their concept and use of the revision process. The study describes the understanding technical communicators have of revision in their corporate cultures and then discusses the need for an improved understanding of product based writing among educators of technical communicators.

In a national random sample of electrical engineers, respondents answered questions relating to the adequacy of communication preparation at their undergraduate institutions, and they provided recommendations for curricular change to better prepare students for common communication tasks in the work place. The results of this survey are compared to observations made by engineers during in depth interviews (see ibid., March 1995). In both studies, engineers report that communication is a central activity that consumes fully half of the working day. Based on both the survey and interview data, the authors recommend adjusting curricula to include the practice of cooperative problem-solving, to make evaluation of communication competence a component of grades, and to require students to take both a technical writing and public presentation course.