Technical Writing as Mapping Description onto Diagram: The Graphic Paradigms of Explanation

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Jul 1984

Technical Writing as Mapping Description onto Diagram: The Graphic Paradigms of Explanation

David Sten Herrstrom

Abstract

Technical writing explains and, in contrast to other kinds of writing, insists on the visual. Explanation and visualization are mutually dependent, because explanation combines “description,” the observable facts, and “diagram,” the graphic paradigm of the relations that obtain among these facts. The technical writer's principal task, then, is to make explicit, by using appropriate spatial, temporal, and logical signals, one of three diagrams—schematic, flowchart, tree—that define the basic modes of explanation—object, process, and logical hierarchy. Where the novelist submerges the diagram in metaphoric layers, the technical writer strips them away and surfaces the diagram.

Journal: Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Published: 1984-07-01
DOI: 10.2190/8ean-j605-ql07-pech
Topics: multimodality technical communication

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

KOSTELNICK (1994)

From Pen to Print:

Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Lyon (1988)

Paideia to Pedantry: The Dissolving Relationship of the Humanities and Society

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication

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10.2307/374228

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