Technical Communication Quarterly Apr 2005

Florence Nightingale's Visual Rhetoric in the Rose Diagrams

Lee Brasseur

Abstract

Florence Nightingale is usually pictured as an angelic nurse tending to British soldiers in military hospitals during the Crimean War. Although Nightingale was indeed a tender of soldiers, she was also an administrator, advocate for the common soldier, and proponent of the use of statistics and information design. This article examines Nightingale's rose diagrams, which she designed following her service as the director of nurses at a field hospital in the Crimean War. When the war ended, Nightingale was asked by the queen to write a report on the poor sanitary conditions and make recommendations for reform. When, after six months, the government did not act on the reforms, Nightingale decided to write an annex to the report, in which she would include her invention, the rose diagrams. Nightingale's ultimate success in persuading the government to institute reforms is an illustration of the power of visual rhetoric, as well as an example of Nightingale's own passionate resolve to right what she saw as a grievous wrong.

Journal
Technical Communication Quarterly
Published
2005-04-01
DOI
10.1207/s15427625tcq1402_3
Open Access
Closed
Topics
multimodality

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (21)

  1. Brooks et al. (2026)
    Tactical Technical Communication as Expert Communication: Strategic Ethos in Co…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  2. Li (2022)
    Defining the racial and ethnic “other”: Constructing an American identity throu…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  3. Olman (2022)
    Decolonizing the Color-Line: A Topological Analysis of W.E.B. Du Bois's Infogra…
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  4. Winkle (2022)
    Above All Made by Themselves: The Visual Rhetoric of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Vi…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  5. Agboka et al. (2022)
    Curricular Efforts in Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Show all 21 →
  1. Doan (2021)
    Misrepresenting COVID-19: Lying With Charts During the Second Golden Age of Dat…
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  2. Li (2020)
    Visualizing Chinese Immigrants in the<i>U.S. Statistical Atlases</i>: A Case St…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  3. Phillips (2019)
    Teaching Public, Scientific Controversy: Genetically Modified Mosquitoes in the…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  4. Reed (2018)
    Building on Bibliography: Toward Useful Categorization of Research in Rhetorics…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  5. Walsh (2018)
    Visual Invention and the Composition of Scientific Research Graphics: A Topolog…
    Written Communication
  6. Browning et al. (2017)
    Teaching a “Critical Accessibility Case Study”
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  7. Sánchez (2017)
    The Roles of Technical Communication Researchers in Design Scholarship
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  8. Jones et al. (2016)
    Disrupting the Past to Disrupt the Future: An Antenarrative of Technical Commun…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  9. Zhang (2016)
    Illustrating Beauty and Utility
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  10. Moeller et al. (2016)
    Food Fights: Cookbook Rhetorics, Monolithic Constructions of Womanhood, and Fie…
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  11. Frost (2016)
    Apparent Feminism as a Methodology for Technical Communication and Rhetoric
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  12. Moran et al. (2012)
    A Bibliography of Works Published in the History of Professional Communication …
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  13. Brasseur (2012)
    Sonographers' Complex Communication during the Obstetric Sonogram Exam: An Inte…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  14. Yu (2011)
    Visualizing Banking and Financial Products: A Comparative Study of Chinese and …
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  15. Williams (2010)
    Interpretive Discourse and other Models from Communication Studies: Expanding t…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  16. Malone (2010)
    Chrysler's “Most Beautiful Engineer”: Lucille J. Pieti in the Pillory of Fame
    Technical Communication Quarterly

Cites in this index (0)

No references match articles in this index.

Also cites 2 works outside this index ↓
  1. Kopf Edwin W (1916)
    10.2307/2965763
    Publications of the American Statistical Association 115.6 (  ↗
  2. Woodham-Smith, Cecil. Florence Nightingale 1820-1910. London: Constable, 1950.
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 63 View in citation network →

Related Articles

  1. Journal of Business and Technical Communication Apr 2026
    Stance in CEO Statements from U.S. and Vietnamese Banks’ Annual Reports: A Corpus-Based Cross-Cultural Study ↗
    Minh Hieu Nguyen
    multimodality professional writing
  2. Journal of Business and Technical Communication Apr 2026
    An Acceptance Analysis of Firms’ Posts on Sina Weibo to Build Credibility ↗
    Chenghui Wu
    multimodality social media
  3. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Apr 2026
    Developing Intercultural Socioemotional Communication Skills: A Hybrid Student Exchange Project Between Kenya, Ireland, and Germany ↗
    Belinda Oechsler; Yvonne Cleary; Sissi Closs
    multimodality technical communication
  4. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Apr 2026
    What Video Games Can Tell Us About Interactive Technical Communication ↗
    Emily Kuzneski Johnson
    multimodality technical communication multilingual writers
  5. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Apr 2026
    “Is This Ethical?” New Data on the Ethical Principles and Practices of Document Design ↗
    Leslie Seawright; Amy Hodges; Timothy Ponce
    multimodality technical communication disability studies multilingual writers