This research project focuses on the nature of oral presentations given (and produced) by scientific, technical, and managerial professionals working in business and industry. Our findings are survey-based; they reflect responses to a range of “issues” about technical/professional presentations, including these: 1) frequency; 2) target audience(s); 3) objectives; 4) types; 5) lengths; 6) data/information base; 7) use of visuals; 8) equipment; 9) obstacles; and 10) training. Our results indicate that presentations are frequently used in business, industry, and government and involve a wide variety of managerial audiences within organizations. Primary objectives of presenters surveyed are to inform (“sharing information”) and instruct/train.

In trying to project a positive corporate image and financial health in their annual reports, companies too often confuse and alienate readers with rhetorical smoke and statistical mirrors. Through a more complete understanding of their audiences and by applying effective rhetorical principles to reach those audiences, corporations can both meet the informational needs of report readers and promote a positive and accurate corporate ethos.

Many engineers and other technical/managerial professionals continually generate writer-centered memos, letters, and brief reports. Because such documents often contain needless repetition, excessive detail, and chronology-based information, an approach for encouraging writers to produce clear, well organized, rhetorically sound prose was developed. Technical writing teachers and communication trainers must 1) make these prose “paladins” aware of the essential ingredients for generating reader-centered prose, 2) familiarize these writers with the major steps involved in the writing process, and 3) operationalize the process through face-to-face writer-editor collaboration — involving peer editorial review. Only through frequent drafting and rewriting and the regular sharing of peer editorial response (oral and written) will clear, rhetorically effective prose accrue value. And only then will technical/managerial writers routinely generate reader-centered documents that communicate.