IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication Jun 1994

Issue trees: a tool to aid the engineering writer

J. Temple Dennett University of Colorado Boulder ; M. Hseih

Abstract

The paper surveys studies of the process model for understanding writing, focusing in particular on problem-solving strategies in the writing process. It then presents a case study of the use of issue trees-a hierarchal network of goals not unlike the decision trees used in management science and artificial intelligence-to guide the writing process of the second author as he wrote a technical report. A good issue tree shows the relationships between various pieces of information: which information is central and which is supportive or incidental. Issue trees offer engineers a visual view of their writing plan. By building a hierarchal issue tree to illustrate the logical links of the proposed writing task, the engineer can put an overlay of "technology" on the task of writing-an overlay that may "trick" the unwilling writer into writing, and writing well.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>

Journal
IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
Published
1994-06-01
DOI
10.1109/47.291574
CompPile
Open Access
Closed
Topics
professional writing qualitative research artificial intelligence
Export
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Bridgwood (1999)
    Guidelines for communication and engineering problem solving at the basic level
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

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CrossRef global citation count: 1 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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