In a series of books published between 1964 and 1987 (C. Alexander, 1964; 1987; C. Alexander et al., 1975; 1977), Christopher Alexander, an urban planner and architect, has inspired object oriented programmers with his idea of a pattern language, which originally catalogued solutions to common problems faced by any community or individual creating livable structures such as a town or a house. His approach might also help technical communicators polish and perfect our own standard rhetorical structures (such as the procedure, user guide, or reference), viewed as common ways of answering frequent, if virtual questions from our users. Alexander's way of describing age-old patterns such as neighbourhoods, streets, paths, and homes may give us a model for creating our own set of patterns in technical communication, whether or not we adopt some of the eager elaborations offered by folks in the object oriented design world.

For technical editors accustomed to preparing manuscripts for print, editing in the new medium of the World Wide Web can prove challenging. The article suggests how technical editors can prepare themselves by adapting the levels of edit concept, long used in the technical editing of books, articles, and reports, to deal with the different requirements of this new medium.

To improve the structure of complex information when it is to be presented electronically, technical communicators may turn to ideas taken from object-oriented programming to clarify and revive the structure of the material in existing documents before mounting them on-line. When an organization starts moving information onto the Web, technical communicators may go through a phase transition: as the publishing system becomes much more complex, it exhibits emergent behaviors, and it demands new attitudes, concepts, and work from the technical communicator.