IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication Dec 2007

Historical Studies of Technical Communication in the United States and England: A Fifteen-Year Retrospection and Guide to Resources

Edward A. Malone Missouri University of Science and Technology

Abstract

Not only have historical studies of technical communication increased in quantity and quality over the last 15 years, but they have also entered the mainstream of technical communication research. These studies have focused on practitioners, artifacts, genres, movements, techniques, events, and the profession, as well as relevant methodology and pedagogy. There are still many opportunities for historical research in our discipline, particularly in the areas of chirographic, oral, and nonverbal communication as well as technical communication activities such as illustrating, translating, and editing and the business of technical communication. Researchers now have many online indexes, databases, and archives to assist them in locating and studying primary sources. There is a need, however, for greater coordination among scholars and a better awareness of the areas that have already been studied. Historical studies can serve teachers and practitioners by suggesting ideas, supplying precedents, creating critical distance, and establishing context.

Journal
IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
Published
2007-12-01
DOI
10.1109/tpc.2007.908732
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
genre theory writing pedagogy technical communication
Export
BibTeX RIS

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

  1. Gomez et al. (2013)
    Research Article Measuring Mobile ICT Literacy: Short-Message Performance Asses…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  2. Youngblood (2011)
    Opposing Broad Patent: Scientific American's Response to Morse v. O'Reilly (1848)
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

Cites in this index (118)

  1. Malone (2006)
    Learned Correctors as Technical Editors
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  2. Dombrowski (2006)
    The Two Shuttle Accident Reports: Context and Culture in Technical Communication
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  3. Wickliff (2006)
    Light Writing: Technology Transfer and Photography to 1845
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  4. Williams (2006)
    Tracing W. E. B. DuBois' “Color Line” in Government Regulations
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  5. Johnson (2006)
    Prediscursive Technical Communication in the Early American Iron Industry
    Technical Communication Quarterly
Show all 118 →
  1. Faber (2006)
    Popularizing Nanoscience: The Public Rhetoric of Nanotechnology, 1986–1999
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  2. Kimball (2006)
    Cars, Culture, and Tactical Technical Communication
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  3. Tillery (2005)
    The Plain Style in the Seventeenth Century: Gender and the History of Scientifi…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  4. Moran (2005)
    Figures of Speech as Persuasive Strategies in Early Commercial Communication: T…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  5. Brasseur (2005)
    Florence Nightingale's Visual Rhetoric in the Rose Diagrams
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  6. Strother (2004)
    Crisis Communication Put to the Test: The Case of Two Airlines on 9/11
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  7. Hirst (2004)
    Herbert Spencer's Philosophy of Style: Conserving Mental Energy
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  8. Henze (2004)
    Emergent Genres in Young Disciplines: The Case of Ethnological Science
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  9. Longo (2004)
    Toward an Informed Citizenry: Readability Formulas as Cultural Artifacts
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  10. Tebeaux (2004)
    Pillaging the Tombs of Noncanonical Texts
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  11. Turner et al. (2004)
    Certification in Technical Communication
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  12. Selber (2004)
    The CCCC Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication: A Retrospec…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  13. Blakeslee et al. (2004)
    The State of Research in Technical Communication
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  14. Cunningham (2004)
    The Founding of ATTW and its Journal
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  15. Lay (2004)
    Reflections on Technical Communication Quarterly, 1991-2003: The Manuscript Rev…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  16. Adkins (2003)
    Serpents and Sheep: The Harriman Expedition, Alaska, and the Metaphoric Reconst…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  17. Dombrowski (2003)
    Ernst Haeckel's ControversiaI Visual Rhetoric
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  18. Lippincott (2003)
    Moving Technical Communication into the Post-Industrial Age: Advice from 1910
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  19. Ding (2003)
    The Emergence of Technical Communication in China—Yi Jing (I Ching)
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  20. Lippincott (2003)
    “Something in Motion and Something to Eat Attract the Crowd”: Cooking with Scie…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  21. Moran (2003)
    Ralph Lane's 1586 Discourse on the First Colony: The Renaissance Commercial Rep…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  22. Durack (2003)
    Observations on Entrepreneurship, Instructional Texts, and Personal Interaction
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  23. Lippincott (2003)
    Rhetorical Chemistry
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  24. Todd (2003)
    Teaching the History of Technical Communication: A Lesson with Franklin and Hoover
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  25. (2003)
    Editor’s Column
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  26. Little (2003)
    The Peter Effect in Early Experimental Education Research
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  27. Selfe et al. (2002)
    A Historical Look at Electronic Literacy
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  28. Loges (2002)
    General Burnside and His Orders for the Battle of Fredericksburg: Lessons in Ho…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  29. Battalio (2002)
    A methodology for streamlining historical research: the analysis of technical a…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  30. Moran (2002)
    A Fantasy-Theme Analysis of Arthur Barlowe's 1584 Discourse on Virginia: The Fi…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  31. Renzo (2002)
    The Great Instauration: Restoring Professional and Technical Writing to the Hum…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  32. Durack (2001)
    Research Opportunities in the US Patent Record
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  33. Webb et al. (2001)
    The Design Elements of Medieval Books of Hours
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  34. Petit (2001)
    Domestic, Virtuous Women: Examining Women's Place in a Public Environmental Deb…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  35. Dombrowski (2001)
    Plastic Language for Plastic Science: The Rhetoric of Comrade Lysenko
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  36. BAZERMAN (2001)
    Nuclear Information
    Written Communication
  37. Paul et al. (2001)
    Moving beyond the Moment
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  38. Rohan (2001)
    Women's Technologies, Women's Literacies: Sewing and Computing across the Years
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  39. Tolbert (2001)
    Seventeenth-Century Technical and Persuasive Communication
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  40. Tebeaux (2000)
    Visual Texts: Format and the Evolution of English Accounting Texts, 1100–1700
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  41. Smith (2000)
    Points of reference in technical communication scholarship
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  42. Munger (2000)
    Evolution of the emergency medical services profession: A case study of EMS run…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  43. Salager‐Meyer (2000)
    Debate‐creating vs. accounting references in French medical journals
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  44. Pearsall et al. (2000)
    Guest Editorial: Herman Estrin (1915–1999) a Remembrance
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  45. Longo (2000)
    (RE)Constructing Arguments: Classical Rhetoric and Roman Engineering Reflected …
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  46. Zachry (2000)
    Communicative Practices in the Workplace: A Historical Examination of Genre Dev…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  47. Tebeaux (1999)
    Technical Writing in Seventeenth-Century England: The Flowering of a Tradition
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  48. Sheehan et al. (1999)
    On Scientific Narrative
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  49. Staples (1999)
    Technical communication from 1950–1998: Where are we now?
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  50. WICKLIFF (1998)
    The Daguerreotype and the Rhetoric of Photographic Technology
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  51. LOGES (1998)
    The Value of Technical Documentation as an Aid in Training
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  52. Renzo (1998)
    The Complete English Tradesman: Daniel Defoe and the Emergence of Business Writing
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  53. MILLER (1998)
    Learning from History
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  54. Sutcliffe (1998)
    Feminizing the professional: The government reports of Flora Annie Steel
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  55. Tebeaux (1998)
    The voices of English women technical writers, 1641–1700: Imprints in the evolu…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  56. Charney (1998)
    From logocentrism to ethocentrism: Historicizing critiques of writing research
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  57. Lippincott (1997)
    Experimenting at Home: Writing for the Nineteenth-Century Domestic Workplace
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  58. Longo (1997)
    From Secrets to Science: Technical Writing, Utility, and the Hermetic Tradition…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  59. Shirk (1997)
    Contributions to Botany, the Female Science, by Two Eighteenth-Century Women Te…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  60. Flynn (1997)
    Toward a Feminist Historiography of Technical Communication
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  61. Durack (1997)
    Gender, Technology, and the History of Technical Communication
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  62. Haller (1997)
    Revaluing Women's Work: Report Writing in the North Carolina Canning Clubs, 1912-1916
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  63. Madaus (1997)
    Women's Role in Creating the Field of Health and Safety Communication
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  64. Renzo (1997)
    <i>Sortilegio</i>: Cola Rienzi and the Blasphemy of Documentation
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  65. Johnson-Sheehan (1997)
    The Emergence of a Root Metaphor in Modern Physics: Max Planck's ‘Quantum’ Metaphor
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  66. Brockmann (1997)
    A Homunculus in the Computer?
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  67. DILLON (1997)
    The New Historicism and Studies in the History of Business and Technical Writing
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  68. Wickliff (1997)
    Geology, Photography, and Environmental Rhetoric in the American West of 1860-1890
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  69. Wickliff (1996)
    Toward a Photographic Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Scientific and Technical Texts
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  70. BROCKMANN (1996)
    Victor W. Pagé's Early Twentieth-Century Automotive and Aviation Books
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  71. Battalio (1996)
    The Interplay between Narrative, Education, and Exposition in an Emerging Science
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  72. Kirkman (1996)
    From Chore to Profession: How Technical Communication in the United Kingdom Has…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  73. Pearsall et al. (1996)
    The Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication: A Retrospective
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  74. Warren (1996)
    An Informal Survey of Technical Writing Textbooks: 1950–1970
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  75. Brockmann (1996)
    William Stillman, Rhode Island Mechanician and Communicator—His Lock Patents an…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  76. Ben-Chaim (1996)
    How do Facts Speak for Themselves? The Doctrine and Practice of Classical Empiricism
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  77. HAGGE (1995)
    Early Engineering Writing Textbooks and the Anthropological Complexity of Disci…
    Written Communication
  78. Moran (1995)
    Frank Aydelotte: AT&amp;T's First Writing Consultant, 1917–1918
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  79. Loges (1995)
    A Classical Case of Poor Communication: P. G. T. Beauregard's Battle Orders and…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  80. Dombrowski (1995)
    Post‐modernism as the resurgence of humanism in technical communication studies
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  81. Kynell (1995)
    English as an Engineering Tool: Samuel Chandler Earle and the Tufts Experiment
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  82. Brasseur et al. (1995)
    Gendered ideologies: cultural and social contexts for illustrated medical manua…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  83. Johnson (1995)
    Romancing the hypertext: A rhetorical/historiographical view of the “Hyperpheno…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  84. Dombrowski (1995)
    Can ethics be technologized? Lessons from Challenger, philosophy, and rhetoric
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  85. McDowell (1995)
    Scientific and Technical Communicators' Perceptions of the Performance Appraisa…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  86. Connor (1994)
    Self-Help Medical Literature in 19th-Century Canada and the Rhetorical Conventi…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  87. Johnson (1994)
    The unfortunate human factor: A selective history of human factors for technica…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  88. Harmon (1994)
    The uses of metaphor in citation classics from the scientific literature
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  89. Loges (1994)
    <i>The Treatise of Fishing with an Angle</i>: A Study of a Fifteenth-Century Te…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  90. RIVERS (1994)
    Studies in the History of Business and Technical Writing
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  91. Ceccarelli (1994)
    A masterpiece in a new genre: The rhetorical negotiation of two audiences in sc…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  92. Dombrowski (1994)
    <i>Challenger</i>through the Eyes of Feyerabend
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  93. Kynell (1994)
    Considering our Pedagogical past through Textbooks: A Conversation with John M.…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  94. JOURNET (1993)
    Interdisciplinary Discourse and “Boundary Rhetoric”
    Written Communication
  95. Connor (1993)
    Medical Text and Historical Context: Research Issues and Methods in History and…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  96. Walters (1993)
    Scientific Method and Prose Style in the Early Royal Society
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  97. Sauer (1993)
    Revisioning Sixteenth Century Solutions to Twentieth Century Problems in Herber…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  98. Hager et al. (1993)
    Chaucer's 'A Treatise on the Astrolabe': a 600-year-old model for humanizing te…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  99. TEBEAUX (1993)
    Technical Writing for Women of the English Renaissance
    Written Communication
  100. Miller (1993)
    Framing Arguments in a Technical Controversy: Assumptions about Science and Tec…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  101. Moran (1993)
    The road not taken: Frank Aydelotte and the thought approach to engineering writing
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  102. RUSSELL (1993)
    The Ethics of Teaching Ethics in Professional Communication
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  103. Runquist (1992)
    The Rhetoric of Geology: <i>Ethos</i> in the Writing of North American Geologis…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  104. Harmon (1992)
    Current Contents of Theoretical Scientific Papers
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  105. Parsons (1992)
    A Cautionary Legal Tale: The Bose v. Consumers Union Case
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  106. Tebeaux et al. (1992)
    Expanding and redirecting historical research in technical writing: In search o…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  107. Neeley (1992)
    Woman as mediatrix: women as writers on science and technology in the eighteent…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  108. Harmon (1992)
    An Analysis of Fifty Citation Superstars from the Scientific Literature
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  109. Tebeaux et al. (1992)
    Images of women in technical books from the English Renaissance
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  110. Bernhardt (1992)
    The design of sexism: the case of an army maintenance manual
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  111. Rutter (1991)
    History, Rhetoric, and Humanism: Toward a More Comprehensive Definition of Tech…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  112. Connor (1991)
    History and the study of technical communication in Canada and the United States
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  113. Allen (1991)
    Thematic Repetition as Rhetorical Technique
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Also cites 13 works outside this index ↓
  1. 10.1177/002194360304000402
     ↗
  2. 10.1017/S0047404500019205
     ↗
  3. 10.2190/ESS
     ↗
  4. 10.1093/applin/13.4.337
     ↗
  5. 10.2190/PL1
     ↗
  6. 10.2190/ETT
     ↗
  7. connor (1994)
    the medical pamphlet and pamphleteering in canada
    Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada  ↗
  8. 10.1179/004049686793700890
     ↗
  9. 10.2307/354886
     ↗
  10. 10.1145/504776.504777
     ↗
  11. 10.1145/504776.504779
     ↗
  12. bazerman (1999)
    10.7551/mitpress/4130.001.0001
    The Languages of Edison's Light  ↗
  13. 10.1126/science.1085457
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 10 View in citation network → Build reading path →

Related Articles

  1. Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments Jan 2026
    A Murder Most Technical ↗
    Justin Cook
    genre theory writing pedagogy service learning teacher development argument collaborative writing technical communication professional writing
  2. Pedagogy Oct 2025
    Contributors ↗
    modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism genre theory cultural rhetorics first-year composition writing pedagogy advanced composition creative writing writing across the curriculum graduate education two-year college service learning teacher development technical communication professional writing labor and working conditions archival research multimodality artificial intelligence literacy studies race and writing gender and writing disability studies literary studies editorial matter
  3. Technical Communication Quarterly Apr 2024
    Navigating Genres in Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Doctoral Programs ↗
    Sara Doody
    genre theory writing pedagogy graduate education teacher development technical communication
  4. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Jan 2024
    Conferences With the Engineers: The Innovative Pedagogy and Career of Sada Harbarger, 1884–1942 ↗
    Mike Duncan
    genre theory writing pedagogy teacher development technical communication literary studies
  5. Writing and Pedagogy Feb 2023
    Business and technical writing pedagogy ↗
    Donald W Dow
    genre theory first-year composition writing pedagogy argument technical communication labor and working conditions