The ability to work with data is an important skill for students enrolled in technical and professional communication programs, but students with limited mathematical and computer programming literacies might find it difficult to do basic data analysis or customize data visualizations. This article examines the extent to which ChatGPT can make data analysis and visualization more accessible for students with limited technical proficiency. The results suggest that although the tool is poised to have a substantial impact in helping students create effective data visualizations, its efficacy as a data analysis tool is more limited.

Despite students’ growing interest in entrepreneurship education (EE), the small body of research exploring rhetorical strategies for proposing new business ventures has focused only on the argument strategies that startup entrepreneurs use when delivering oral pitches to investors. This study, by contrast, explores the topoi, or lines of argument, that small business entrepreneurs use in written business plans created for bank lenders. Small business entrepreneurs use nine topoi in order to accomplish two rhetorical goals: justifying their ventures, via the creation of stability-focused value propositions, and establishing their entrepreneurial credibility. Ultimately, I argue that small business entrepreneurs use these topoi to frame their ventures as low-risk and stable, which contrasts with startup entrepreneurs’ arguments that their ventures are innovative and disruptive. In addition to learning strategies for highlighting innovation and disruption, EE students would likely benefit from learning rhetorical strategies for minimizing risk and emphasizing stability.

Business communication textbooks offer impression management (IM) strategies to help students learn how to soften bad news. But corporations sometimes use these strategies in ethically questionable ways. This article analyzes IM strategies in a landmark case of ethically dubious corporate financial reporting. Findings suggest that the company, Ivax, manipulated three standard IM strategies by overamplifying its power to fix a financial crisis, substantially downplaying bad news, and concealing damaging information. Ivax also used a fourth, less familiar strategy: It buried contradictory information in legal disclaimers. Instructors need to help students become ethical writers who avoid questionable IM strategies like these.