Writing tutors are encouraged to use compliments in their interactions with technical writing students. However, the form of compliments strongly influences how they function. Specifically, formulaic compliments like "It's good" function differently from nonformulaic compliments like "The size is excellent in terms of visually aiding the reader." A total of 107 compliments were analyzed from 13 interactions between 12 writing tutors and 12 engineering students. About 61% of tutors' compliments followed one of six formulae, and about 39% were nonformulaic. Formulaic compliments were general and mainly performed a phatic function, filling pauses and avoiding silence, particularly in interaction closings. Nonformulaic compliments were more specific and individualized, and they may, therefore, be more instructive than formulaic compliments. Nonformulaic compliments also performed an exploratory function, allowing participants to renegotiate discourse status. This study points to other avenues of research, particularly research that systemically examines writers' perceptions of formulaic and nonformulaic feedback, such as compliments.

This study examines the frequency with which 12 writing tutors used hints in their suggestions to 12 engineering students in 13 interactions about technical writing. Of the 424 suggestions tutors made, 106 were hints. Using Weizman's model as a guide, the study describes three types of hints that tutors used: evaluations, general rules, and elisions. It also investigates the benefits that tutors receive from using those types of hints and examines the problems for students that can arise when tutors state their suggestions as hints. Combined with previous research findings, the findings of this study suggest that tutors should pair mildly negative evaluations and general rules with direct suggestions, and tutors should avoid strongly negative evaluations, i.e., criticisms. The findings also suggest that tutors can elude suggestions and provide words and phrases for students' documents but that they should only do this occasionally to model effective tone or syntax.

Writing tutors often have very little or no expertise in conventions of engineering writing. In this study, I examine the topics and politeness strategies of tutors' comments, investigating how non-expertise in engineering writing decreases the effectiveness of tutors' interactions with engineering students. I show how the three non-expert tutors gave inappropriate advice and often stated their advice with certainty. I also show how a tutor with expertise in engineering writing gave specific and useful guidance to her tutee and built rapport with him as well. I outline how writing tutors could be trained to help engineering students better.

Professionals, like technical specialists, have increasingly needed to engage in online communications such as email or posts to online discussion lists. As the amount of their writing has increased, rules for online writing, such as, "Make subject headings short and descriptive," have emerged. However, the extent to which such rules have become conventionalized, standard practice is not known. Consequently, the extent to which writers should concern themselves with following these rules is unclear. In this study, I examine eight rules in 11 handbooks for online writing, analyzing the frequency with which these rules are stated, the extent to which these rules are consistently stated, and the extent to which following the rules is justified. The results show that five of the eight rules are emerging as standard practice but that rules relating to greetings and farewells in emails, emoticons, and abbreviations are not yet standardized.

Reviewers of technical documents must often work with nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English. Drawing on research in cross-cultural pragmatics and institutional discourse, we discuss linguistic patterns that document reviewers are likely to use when commenting on NNS writing. We anticipate miscommunications that may arise from some of these linguistic patterns, especially when a reviewer attempts to be both clear (so that the writer understands the comments) and polite (so that the reviewer maintains positive working relations with the writer). We recommend specific linguistic strategies that allow reviewers to balance clarity and politeness most effectively when communicating with NNSs.

Although handbooks (those often used as references in business and industry) tend to adhere to traditional usage prescriptions, it is clear that they cannot possibly all display the same degree of prescriptivism. Likewise, people who select handbooks, whether they are writing instructors or professional writers, differ in how much importance they invest in following traditional prescriptions. What is needed, then, is a method to match handbooks to users, enabling writing professionals to select a reference that reflects their views on the importance of adhering to traditional rules. Toward this end, this article describes a study of the level of prescriptiveness of 14 handbooks and provides a method based on this study for gauging the prescriptiveness of other handbooks. This study supports W.E. Meyers' (1995) findings in that it suggests prescriptive usage entries are still prevalent in handbooks. However, handbooks do display some variation in their prescriptiveness, and their prescriptiveness can be gauged by analyzing a sample of ten usage items.