Edit yourself, subtitled “A Manual for Everyone Who Works With Words,” is truly short on text and long on examples. It might be called “A Book of Bad and Good Usage.”

Holt, Rinehart and Winston have recently published two works on technical communication. Both of these are third editions of text-books which give chapter-end suggestions for writing-practice. As the two volumes cover about the same material, effort will be made here to point out dissimilarities in content, organization, and tone.

“This book is different!” says a promotional leaflet of Cameraready, a bright blue, 1 1/2-inch, ring-bound manual which tells about the mechanics of producing special-use, limited-life documents in limited editions. And “Vive la difference!” cries this reviewer, who is enthusiastic about every aspect of the book except its price.

When is a handbook not a handbook? One answer to this paraphrased riddle might be, “When it is the most complete and sophisticated technical writing guide ever published.” The Jordan-Kleinman-Shimberg Handbook of Technical Writing Practices seems very well described by these words on its dust-jacket. A joint effort of Wiley-Interscience and the Society for Technical Communication, this work is a tour de force in the most complimentary sense of the phrase.

Among the many text-books, guide-books, case-books, and hand-books now available on technical writing, three small and unpretentious volumes deserve particular attention. All three are instructive, persuasive, and pleasant. One is an old friend, long known as the little book; the other two, very much younger, are works of high quality also:

Relationships in communication by sight, by sound, and by sound-plus-sight as a complex are presented in a three-part tree which specifies how technology is used in processes of imparting information. Applications of technology in making direct communication are indicated; the re-presentation of direct communications is shown as a set of technological processes (e.g., storage and play-back, or transmission and reception) with ideological reinforcement, and so is the reproduction of communications thus transformed or reconstituted (e.g. production of photographic, electronic, typeset, or coded copies). Storage and retrieval of reproduced copies are shown together, without methodological detail, as a separate, major aspect of communication, although they are considered to be part of the technological and ideological applications of re-presentation and reproduction. The tree was prepared for a technology forecasting project.

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.

This paper presents a general view of communication, and urges those who write on technical subjects to follow the `rules' in existing books of instruction. Expediency and custom are the basis of these most acceptable ways for presenting written and spoken messages of many kinds. Such suggestions can be very helpful for writers who want to communicate technical matters successfully. By following the recommendations given in guides like the seven listed in this paper, the author of a technical article is likely to please those who think form and correctness are important, to impress those who think nothing is important, and to be understood by all.