In this article we explore how some contemporary language usage presents challenges for technical editing. Drawing on scholarship in the rhetoric of science and in critical linguistics, we argue that language does affect our perception of reality. Consequently, the language used in some technical documents needs to be reconsidered or even challenged by technical editors. Present textbooks on technical editing do not directly confront this issue, though some scholars have begun to challenge the use of terms such as “studgun.”; We conclude by demonstrating how a critical analysis of metaphors in everyday technical documents would help students question these language choices and draw attention to the consequences of using them.

delegitimate any work that has been done on scientific style and arrangement and any attention that has been paid to ethical and pathetical proofs in (252) by scholars in sociology and rhetoric of science. Pera responds to the point about scientific style by stating believe that style and arrangement, although interesting topics of philosophical analysis, are inessential to science (the law of falling bodies, say, did not acquire or change its status of scientific knowledge when Galileo translated it from Latin into Italian and put it in the context of a dialogue) (255). In effect, he agrees with Gross's assessment by implying that style has no role in science. In addition, Pera's example suggests that he limits the scope of style to mere surface features of discourse-words may change but the concept (or scientific law) does not. If we examine examples from the realm of contemporary science in action, it becomes difficult to continue to conceive of style as ornamental or reduced to surface features and separate from the thoughts being articulated. While some scholars and many scientists may share Pera's reductive definition of style as surface, recent research in rhetoric and composition, as well as postmodern theories of language, suggest that style is connected in central ways with thought and argument (Faigley, Gage, Rankin). To build on this recent scholarship on style, the study of scientific practices can provide important examples of style that encompass an integral part of the scientific concepts or laws being formulated. The role of the rhetorical trope of metaphor or the figure of analogy in the process of scientific inquiry constitutes a prime example. In fact, the role of analogies and metaphors (and a third, related category, models) in scientific investigation has been, for several decades, a topic of much discussion by scholars interested in the workings of science; however, there has been much less inclination for scholars to draw out the implications of these discussions. In this paper, I want to begin to explore some of these implications by reviewing first, how philosophers and rhetoricians of science have conceptualized analogy and its contribution to the work of science; and second, by reporting some observations drawn from an empirical study of a group of physicists as they

(1995). Rhetoric and reality in the process of scientific inquiry. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 106-125.

Recent trends in gender and writing research avoid or ignore the issue of essentialism while attempting to formulate a theory of “composing as a woman” that might rely on essentialist assumptions. Codifying the characteristics of “writing like a woman” or “writing like a man” can result in a limited—and limiting—conception of gender and its effect on writing. To illustrate this argument, this article uses as an example of I'écriture féminine the writing of Kenneth Burke and as an example of writing like a man the prose of Julia Kristeva. It argues for conceptualizing and studying gender as a secondary factor affecting writing rather than the principal factor.