ABSTRACTWe asked 15 editors about their perceptions of five sentences using singular they in different contexts and about the style guides that inform their work. Editors appreciated the inclusivity of indefinite and definite singular they and recognized APA for its leading-edge stance. Our findings indicate the need for editors to develop a heuristic for determining when to deviate from style guide advice and to develop their own system for mitigating ambiguity in relation to they.KEYWORDS: Editingsocial justice / ethics Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1. We explained to editors that, in each sentence, the capitalized pronoun referred to the capitalized noun phrase.2. When we refer to a "comprehensive style guide," we mean a manual that provides standards for writing, editing, and publishing texts. A comprehensive style guide may be written by a publisher or discourse community but adopted widely. For example, University of Chicago Press's Chicago Manual of Style is used by other publishers and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is used in disciplines outside of psychology.Companies may create their own style guides for internal use. Such guides may or may not be as detailed or complete as comprehensive style guides and may, in fact, be based on or direct users to a comprehensive style guide for any gaps in content. For example, ACES: The Society for Editing "Style Guide and Proofreading Checklist" (Filippini, Citation2021) is for ACES communications and based on the AP Stylebook.Some editors in this study referred to style sheets. A copyeditor creates and uses a style sheet to note a running list of grammar and usage that are specific to a manuscript and which may be different from house style or a comprehensive style guide (CMOS, Section 2.55).Despite attempting to define these terms, we recognize there are overlaps among the categories and across fields. For example, the Microsoft Writing Style Guide began as an in-house style guide and is now used by other software companies. Further, there exist other contexts of the terms "style guide" and "style sheet," such as brand style guides, programming style guides, and web design style sheets.3. Of the remaining two editors, one said that they would revise the sentence to avoid using singular they, and the other said that they would use the name Pat again instead of a pronoun.4. Only three editors (4%) said they would edit the sentence.5. The two remaining editors differed in their responses. One said that they would avoid using singular they by revising the sentence; the other said that they would change the pronoun to her.6. Ten editors said that they would edit this sentence.7. As of August 16, 2022, AP Stylebook Online advice under "accent marks" reads: "Use accent marks or other diacritical marks with names of people who request them or are widely known to use them, or if quoting directly in a language that uses them: An officer spotted him and asked a question: "Cómo estás?" How are you? Otherwise, do not use these marks in English-language stories. Note: Many AP customers' computer systems ingest via the ANPA standard and will not receive diacritical marks published by the AP."Additional informationNotes on contributorsJo MackiewiczJo Mackiewicz is a professor of rhetoric and professional communication at Iowa State University. She studies the communication of pedagogical and workplace interactions. Her book, Welding Technical Communication: Teaching and Learning Embodied Knowledge was published by SUNY Press in 2022.Shaya KrautShaya Kraut is a PhD student in the Rhetoric and Professional Communication program at Iowa State University, where she teaches first-year writing. She has also worked as an ESL teacher, a writing center tutor, and a teacher/tutor for adult basic education. Her research interests include composition pedagogy and critical literacy.Allison DurazziAllison Durazzi is a communication professional with experience in industry settings including law, the arts, and freelance editing. She is a Ph.D. student in Rhetoric and Professional Communication at Iowa State University where she researches and teaches technical editing and teaches business, technical, and speech communication courses.

We surveyed 80 editors about their perceptions of singular they in five sentences. We asked editors to choose among three responses: maintain, query, or edit. We also examined whether editors’ responses differed according to age group. Editors most often said they would maintain they not only with an indefinite antecedent but also definite and nonspecific antecedents. Editors would query they when used with proper names to verify that they was the accurate pronoun.

We trace the history of the global-local dualism, noting how writing center researchers and practitioners have employed it. We next discuss problems and complications inherent in the dualism, such as the way it obscures the interconnectedness of text components. We illustrate our points with excerpts from writing center conferences. We end by discussing possible implications of our analysis for tutor training. Our goal is to provide a more nuanced understanding of this ubiquitous dualism in writing center studies.

Questions are an important means by which students actively participate in and exercise some control over the moment-to-moment focus of writing center conferences. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis of student questions in 35 writing center conferences, we examined the frequency and type of students’ questions, finding no differences between native English speakers and non-native English speakers’ overall question frequency or their use of each question type. Students used common-ground questions most frequently, and knowledge-deficit questions second-most frequently. Our qualitative analysis revealed how students used questions to coconstruct potential language for their papers and to steer the course of their conferences. It also revealed the dilemma that arises when a student’s questions probe not only the tutor’s writing knowledge but also their subject-matter knowledge. This study demonstrates some ways that students take power over their conferences by asking questions and indicates that tutors might expect similar question frequency and similar types of questions from NESs and NNESs. It also suggests that tutors might use the tutoring strategy of reading aloud to create conversational openings for students’ questions. And it suggests potential benefits of attending to the type of questions that students use, as these types can indicate on a local level the extent of students’ contribution to their papers.

Even small, taken-for- granted words can have a strong influence on the pedagogical effect of a writing conference. In this study, we examined how experienced and trained writing center tutors’ use of the discourse marker so helped them to connect ideas and to manage their conferences with students. We examined the extent to which tutors’ use of six types of so varied according to the English L1 (EL1)/ English L2 (EL2) status of their interlocutor. We studied 26 conferences: 13 involved eight tutors working with 13 EL1 students, and 13 conferences involved eight tutors working with 13 EL2 students. We found that conclusion/ result so occurred most frequently in tutors’ conferences with EL1 and EL2 students and that prompt so was the only type that exhibited a significant difference in frequency of occurrence between the two groups, occurring more frequently in tutors’ talk with EL1 students. We focused our qualitative analysis on prompt so, finding that it served two main purposes. We argue that examining discourse marker so generates implications for tutor training and shows the importance of paying attention to the small, seemingly unimportant words that tutors use.

Writing center tutors strive to facilitate participation from student writers, particularly student writers who are not native speakers of the conference language. This study investigated one way that tutors might better understand student writers’ intent to contribute a substantial turn at talk and thus better understand when they might make way for student writers’ active participation. This study examined four minimal responses (MRs)— mmhm , uhhuh , yeah , and ok —at the beginning of student writers’ turns at talk. It differentiated between MRs that were free standing, constituting the entire turn and suggesting passive recipiency, and MRs that were not free standing, suggesting speakership incipiency. Importantly, the study differentiated between the MRs of native English speakers (NESs) and non-native English speakers (NNES). NNESs used free-standing mmhm far more than NESs, suggesting that the NNESs may have extended the use of mmhm to a greater array of discourse contexts. NNESs used free-standing yeah far more frequently than they did non-free-standing yeah , suggesting that yeah would not have been a reliable signal for tutors that NNESs would extend their turns at talk. This study also found that both NESs and NNESs used ok to signal not only consideration of but also agreement with tutors’ evaluations or acceptance of tutors’ advice about lower-order concerns. Understanding how MRs vary from passive recipiency to speakership incipiency might help tutors better understand student writers’ intent to contribute a substantial turn and thus indicate when tutors might wait for student writers’ participation.

Most tutors are trained in a core writing centers belief: Student writers who talk about their writing are student writers who will achieve better learning outcomes. Our comparative study—one of few in writing center research—examined the points in conferences in which student writers talked the most. We examined the very long turns (VLTs) of eight native English speaking (NES) student writers and eight non-native English speaking (NNES) student writers across 16 writing center conferences. We found that NESs contributed more VLTs than NNESs and that more NES conferences contained VLTs. We also found that stating goals for the conference occurred in half of the NES conferences, specifically, in the opening stage, while no NNES conferences had stated opening goals. In the three NNES conferences that contained VLTs, two contained a statement of a sentence-level goal, a description of potential content for the paper, and a period of time spent reading aloud from the paper. Of the VLTs preceded by questions, pumping questions (questions that prod student responses) occurred most frequently. We discuss the role that student-writer motivation and familiarity with the typical conference script played in the results and some implications of this comparative study for tutor training.

The authors examined a corpus of figure captions from technical and professional communication (TPC)-journal articles to test their sense that TPC captions do not fulfill their communicative potential as well as, they sensed, journals in science often do. The authors performed a content analysis on captions from biology-journal articles and iteratively tested a coding scheme of caption content. The resulting scheme can help in analyzing caption content, developing captions, and imparting a variety of TPC-related skills to students.

Research problem: Increasingly, professional and technical communicators analyze, synthesize, and respond to user-generated content, including online consumer reviews of products, as the influence of user-generated content on consumers' purchasing decisions grows. But product reviews vary in the degree to which people perceive them to be credible. Research questions: (1) To what extent does a product review's environment-a retailer or brand site-affect review users' ratings of that review's credibility? (2) To what extent does review valence (positive versus negative) affect review users' ratings of review credibility? (3) What is the strength of the relationship among credibility and its two main components, trustworthiness and expertise? Literature review: Recent research has made clear the spread and the influence of user-generated comments and, thus, the need for sophistication in handling it. Review credibility has two main components: trustworthiness (which equates to honesty or sincerity) and expertise (which equates to accuracy). Prior research also shows the effects of valence (positivity or negativity) in reviews, noting that negative reviews have more influence than positive reviews on readers' perceptions of review credibility and purchasing decisions. Methodology: We tested the effect of a consumer review's environment (brand or retailer site) and the effect of review valence (positive or negative) on the perceived credibility of that review, as well the degree of correlation among credibility, trustworthiness, and expertise. Through an online survey, we exposed respondents to the same review text with different star ratings (4-star and 2-star) in two types of sites: brand and retailer. We asked participants to evaluate the review's credibility, trustworthiness, and expertise. In half of the exposures, participants evaluated a review in the site of a high-credibility company (Apple or Amazon), and in the other half of exposures, participants evaluated a review in the site of a midlevel-credibility company (Dell or Walmart). Results and conclusions: Credibility strongly correlated with both trustworthiness and expertise. Participants rated 4-star reviews as more credible than 2-star reviews on high-credibility sites, but star ratings had no impact on midlevel credibility sites. We found no difference between ratings of reviews displayed on brand and retailer sites for midlevel-credibility companies but a small difference between reviews displayed on brand and retailer sites for high-credibility companies. Professional communicators should attend to reviews posted both to retailer and brand sites. Conclusions: Professional communicators charged with managing user-generated content need not spend resources on channeling it into retailer and other independent review site environments as opposed to brand site environments. Our findings indicate that professional communicators looking to identify credible reviews should attend to review valence, or the positivity or negativity of a review. When managing user-generated product reviews, they should try to make credible content more noticeable to review users.

We discuss the benefits of using corpus linguistic analysis, a quantitative method for determining the "aboutness" of talk, in conjunction with discourse analysis in order to understand writing center talk at a micro-and macrolevel. We exemplify this mixed-method approach by examining a specialized corpus of 20 writing center conferences totaling more than 75,000 words. Our analysis also uncovered words that differentiated writing center talk from reference corpora and thus helped reveal the aboutness of the writing center talk. For example, student writers said "I don't know" far more frequently than any other 4-gram, and tutors said "You're going to" far more frequently than other 4-grams. We close by discussing the possibility of creating a corpus of writing center talk that researchers could use to ask and answer a broad range of research questions.

Research problem: Gauging the quality of product reviews through helpfulness votes is problematic for a variety of reasons. We examine potential characteristics of review quality that span review credibility, informativeness, and readability to contribute to better ways of assessing review quality. Research question: Do specific review characteristics improve reviewer users' perceptions of review quality? Literature review: Studies from information systems, electronic marketing and commerce, and technical and professional communication suggest that characteristics of reviews fall into three areas, each with specific characteristics of quality. Findings from these studies suggest the 11 characteristics of review quality within those three areas as potential contributors to review quality. The first area is credibility, a construct consisting (in part) of expertise; we tested these potential specific characteristics of credibility: an assertion of a relevant role, of use of a prior model, of other products in the brand, of a similar product, of having conducted research on the product, and of having tested the product. The second area is informativeness, which is a review's diagnosticity. We tested these potential specific characteristics: a general recommendation, a specific recommendation, a statement about the product's value, and a statement about the extent to which the product met expectations. The third area is readability, which is (in part) comfort of reading, and has this specific characteristic: the use of headings. Methodology: We conducted a quantitative study using a survey distributed though SurveyMonkey Audience, a service that samples from a pool of 30 million respondents. Using control and experimental versions of 11 product reviews, we gauged participants' perceptions of review quality on a five-point scale. We looked for significant differences in participants' perceptions of quality using Pearson's chi square. Results and conclusions: We received 829 responses to include in the analysis. We found the following significant at the p > 0.05 level: a statement about reviewer's prior experience with a similar product (credibility). We found the following significant at the p > 0.01 level: A statement about researching the product, for example, online research (credibility), a general recommendation about the product (informativeness), and formatting with headings (readability). We found the following significant at the p > 0.001 level: a statement about the extent to which the product met expectations (informativeness) and a specific recommendation about the product (informativeness). Using these results, companies can better locate quality reviews; reviewers can increase the quality and, therefore, salience of their reviews; and communication specialists can help reviewers write and revise reviews for improved quality. Future research on review quality could investigate other potential characteristics of credibility, informativeness, and readability.

This study examines the type of edit that amateur editors called Advisors used in their comments on Epinions.com product reviews and the extent to which their editing-related comments might have motivated reviewers to revise and update their reviews. Advisors made substantive-type suggestions most frequently, but for the most part, reviews that received editing-related comments were not updated more often than were those with nonediting-related comments. Unlike professional editors, Advisors lack gatekeeping control that compels writers to revise their work, but as companies recognize the value of quality user-generated content, they may use amateur editors more often, perhaps in conjunction with professional technical editors.

These researchers examine how questions function in a corpus of eleven writing center conferences conducted by experienced tutors. They analyze the 690 questions generated in these conferences: 81% (562) from tutors and 19% (128) from students. Using a coding scheme developed from prior research on questions in math, science, and other kinds of quantitative tutoring, they categorized tutors’ and students’ questions. The researchers found that questions in writing center conferences serve a number of instructional and conversational functions. Questions allow tutors and students to fill in their knowledge deficits and check each other’s understanding. They also allow tutors (and occasionally students) to facilitate the dialogue of writing center conferences and attend to students’ engagement. In addition, tutors use questions to help students clarify what they want to say, identify problems with what they have written, and brainstorm. Based on this analysis, the authors make some recommendations for tutor training. 85891-Writing Center-text.indd 37 3/10/14 2:52 PM Thompson & Mackiewicz | Questioning in Writing Center Conferences 38 Introduction To resist the role of teacher-surrogate in favor of the role of helpful peer or collaborator, to get students to do the talking, and generally to achieve a student-centered focus, tutors have been advised to use questions as primary tutoring strategies in writing center conferences (Brooks; Harris). In other words, tutors are supposed to use questions to indirectly guide students to improving their writing. In these oftenidealistic conceptions of writing center conferences, questions are “real,” genuinely reflecting an interest in who the students are and what they want to say rather than leading students to a particular point of view. Moreover, students’ satisfaction with writing center conferences has been connected to their perceptions of having their questions answered (Thompson, Whyte, Shannon, Muse, Miller, Chappell, & Whigham; Thonus, “Tutor and Student Assessments”). Tutors are supposed to encourage students to ask questions freely, and it is assumed that students will ask more questions in writing center conferences than in the classroom (Harris). However, beyond encouraging students to talk and beyond directing tutors toward students’ areas of confusion, questions are important prompts for learning and for maintaining students’ engagement in writing center conferences. Research about question asking and answering in the classroom has typically focused on how teachers can pose questions to enhance critical thinking for students. This research has shown that the dialogic Socratic method, with its back-and-forth questions and answers, is a more effective teaching strategy than didactic teacher talk (Rose, Bhembe, Siler, Srivastava, & VanLehn; see also Kintsch; Tienken, Goldberg, & DiRocco). Today questioning is one of the most frequently used classroom teaching techniques, with elementary and high school teachers asking as many as 300 to 400 questions per day (Tienken, Goldberg, & DiRocco). Research suggests that if used effectively either in the classroom or in one-to-one tutorials, questions can enhance students’ learning in at least three ways. First, as shown in Socrates’s questioning of his student about the concept of justice, questions can direct students in their efforts to “construct and reconstruct knowledge and understanding” (Smith & Higgins 486). By discussing what they are thinking with a more expert tutor or teacher, students engage in self-explanation, a process shown to deepen their understanding (Chi; Chi, Bassok, Lewis, Reimann, & Glaser; Chi, De Leeuw, Chiu, & LaVancher; Rose, Bhembe, Siler, Srivastava, & VanLehn). Second, questions can enhance students’ motivation, stimulate curiosity, and encourage active participation in learning (Lustick; Smith & Higgins). 85891-Writing Center-text.indd 38 3/10/14 2:52 PM The Writing Center Journal 33.2 | Fall/Winter 2014 39 Third, teachers’ and tutors’ questions may become models for selfquestioning, important for students in regulating their own learning processes. Further, in both the classroom and in tutorials such as writing center conferences, learning typically occurs within a conversational context, and along with stimulating understanding, questions are vital linguistic components of an educational conversation. Besides helping tutors identify what students do not know, questions allow tutors to understand students’ goals for coming to the writing center and to politely facilitate the flow of the tutorial conversation. We will consider all of these types of questions in this article. We examined how questions function in a corpus of eleven writing center conferences conducted by experienced tutors. In these eleven conferences, we found a total of 690 questions, mostly asked by tutors but some asked by students as well. Incorporating research about questions in classroom teaching, we adapted a scheme for analyzing questions in tutorials that was developed by the psychologist and linguist Arthur C. Graesser and his associates. This scheme has been used to analyze questions in math, science, and other kinds of quantitative tutoring, with a range of students from elementary school to college (Golding, Graesser, & Millis; Graesser, Baggett, & Williams; Graesser, Bowers, Hacker, & Person; Graesser & Franklin; Graesser & McMahen; Graesser & Olde; Graesser & Person; Graesser, Person, & Huber; Graesser, Person, & Magliano; Graesser, Roberts, & Hackett-Renner; Person, Graesser, Magliano, & Kreuz). Through our analysis, we show how questions can function in writing center conferences so that we and our tutors can understand the potential impact of questions on students’ learning and, subsequently, pose questions more consciously. Previous research about questions in writing center conferences has focused on what questions reveal about tutors’ roles and control over conferences. For example, Kevin M. Davis, Nancy Hayward, Kathleen R. Hunter, & David Wallace analyzed four types of “conversational moves” (47) teachers use in classroom discourse—structuring the interaction, soliciting responses, responding, and reacting—to determine the extent to which tutors took on teacher roles. According to Davis, Hayward, Hunter, & Wallace, tutors are usually in control of conferences, but sometimes they do assume less teacher-like and more conversant-like roles (see also Willa Wolcott’s “Talking It Over: A Qualitative Study of Writing Center Conferencing”). Susan R. Blau, John Hall, & Tracy Strauss considered the nature of the collaboration that occurs in writing center conferences by analyzing “three recurring rhetorical strategies” (22) relating to tutors’ directiveness—questioning, echoing, and using qualifiers. They found that in conferences considered satisfactory, tutors 85891-Writing Center-text.indd 39 3/10/14 2:52 PM Thompson & Mackiewicz | Questioning in Writing Center Conferences 40 demonstrated “informed flexibility” (38) in the strategies they used. Other studies have evaluated tutors’ use of mitigated and unmitigated interrogatives (Thonus, “Dominance in Academic Writing Tutorials”), “question–answer interrogation sequences” (Thonus, “What Are the Differences” 231), and leading versus open questions (Severino). A few studies have included questions in analyzing tutors’ politeness strategies (Bell & Youmans) and self-presentation (Murphy). These studies of writing center conferences tend to analyze questions as signals of assumed role and that role’s concomitant right to control the discourse as opposed to examining all the ways questions can function—including but not restricted to the ways they help construct role and maintain control. We analyzed questions to determine the extent to which experienced tutors ask questions that push students’ thinking, check their understanding, facilitate conversation, and model the types of questions students should ask of themselves in order to assess and develop their own writing. Simultaneously, we speculated on the relationships between questioning and students’ and tutors’ roles. After delineating the question types we found, we examined question-answer patterns according to initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) instructional dialogue (Mehan), a classroom discourse pattern largely unexamined in writing center research (for an exception, see Porter). We examined writing center variations on the IRE pattern, showing how experienced tutors used different types of leading and scaffolding questions in tandem with common-ground questions in a cycle of promoting students’ thinking and engagement and of checking students’ comprehension.

Abstract We justify and describe our development of the Service Learning Opportunities in Technical Communication (SLOT-C) Database. The database broadens the range of organizations that instructors and students have for client-based communication projects. We argue in support of incorporating service learning into classes and facilitating partnerships among university instructors, their students, and nonprofits. We report strategies we learned for working with student interns and IT experts and strategies we developed as we worked with usability-test participants. Keywords: client-based communication projectsiterative designservice learning opportunitiestechnical communicationuser-centered design ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We sincerely thank the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication for awarding us a research grant in 2009 to build this database. We greatly appreciate Sam Singer, whose expertise in databases and Web development made the concept become a reality. We would also like to thank Stewart Whittemore, who contributed ideas in the early planning stage. Notes Waterfall design involves creating a design to which you are firmly committed early in development and letting all design decisions flow from the initial plan. Iterative design is more flexible, allowing the plan to change as needed in response to feedback. Additional informationNotes on contributorsSusan A. Youngblood Susan A. Youngblood teaches technical and professional communication at Auburn University, and many of her classes feature service learning. Her research addresses vulnerability, accessibility, and competing needs in communication, particularly in online environments. Jo Mackiewicz Jo Mackiewicz teaches editing at Auburn University. Her research applies linguistics to technical communication and focuses on politeness and credibility in evaluative texts such as tutoring interactions, editing sessions, and online reviews.

Writing center tutors know that improving writing skills requires sustained effort over a long period of time. They also know that motivation - the drive to actively invest in sustained effort toward a goal- is essential for writing improvement. However, a tutor may not work with the same student more than once, so tutorials often need to focus on what can be done in a single 30- to 60-minute conference. Further, although tutors are likely to attempt to motivate students to invest time and effort in improving their writing, when writers leave the writing center, tutors' influence might end with the conference. Therefore, tutors must work to develop and maintain students' motivation to participate actively during the brief time they are collaborating in writing center conferences.

Colleges of business grapple with a perceived lack of quality in their graduates’ professional writing and recognize students’ need to learn disciplinary discourses. This article describes the motivation, design, and preliminary outcomes of a business-writing prototype at Auburn University. Writing consultants trained in business communication worked with one class on a substantial writing project. They provided conferencing and written feedback, greatly lowering the faculty workload. Student surveys and informal interviews indicate that students, faculty, and consultants were satisfied with this prototype program.

This study examines how, in the realm of social media, Epinions Advisors voluntarily perform a role similar to that of a technical editor. Specifically, the study examines Advisors' use of politeness strategies at various levels of edit in order to motivate product reviewers to improve their work. The study categorizes Advisors' comments about 60 product reviews according to levels of edit in order to determine how Advisors address editing as they attempt to fulfill the concerns of technical editors: advocating for readers and mentoring writers. Updated reviews and Advisor–reviewer discussions suggest that Advisors motivated reviewers to edit.

Reviews of products on Web sites like Epinions.com make explicit the ways in which credible identities are co-constructed. Product reviews reveal not only how reviewers construct credibility for themselves but also how readers of reviews, through their comments about reviews, ratify and contribute to reviewer credibility. I present a framework and analyze examples of reviews of digital cameras to examine how reviewers of a technical product convey credibility and how review readers coconstruct reviewers' credibility. The framework and analysis can help identify those reviewers who are likely to influence review Web site users.

In online consumer reviews on Web sites such as Epinions, laypeople write and post their evaluations of technical products. But how do they get readers to take their opinions seriously? One way that online reviewers establish credibility is to assert expertise. This article describes 10 types of assertions that online reviewers used (along with the three broader categories of these types), explaining the method used to test the types for reliability. This testing revealed that the types are reliable. This study lays the groundwork for understanding how reviewers construct expertise and, therefore, credibility and for gauging readers' perceptions of reviews that contain these assertions.

In our case study, we examined the instant messaging (IM) workplace discourse of a pair of expert IM users. We found that the participants maintained discourse cohesion and thus coherence via short, rapidly sent transmissions that created uninterrupted transmission sequences. Such uninterrupted transmission sequences allowed each participant to maintain the floor. Also, the participants used topicalizations and performative verbs to maintain coherence. We also found that the participants' use of short transmissions may have ambiguated their enactment of their institutional roles and the rights afforded to them by those roles.

Technical communication instructors want to help students, as well as professionals, design effective PowerPoint presentations. Toward this end, I compare the advice of academic and industry experts about effective PowerPoint presentation design to survey responses from university students about slide text, visual elements, animations, and other issues related to PowerPoint presentation design and delivery. Based on this comparison, I suggest some topics, such as PowerPoint's Slide Sorter view, that technical communication instructors and other presentation instructors might address when they cover presentations in their classes or seminars.

Research suggests that book reviews in academic journals tend to be positive but that readers prefer book reviews that include negative and positive evaluation. In this study, the author examines 48 books reviews from three business communication journals to determine whether these reviews are mainly positive. She counts compliments and criticisms, analyzing their location and topics. She also analyzes the force of the criticisms and strategies that reviewers use to mitigate criticism.

Technical communicators need to select typefaces that match the tone that they intend for a document. Rather than relying on intuition or personal preference, technical communicators can use a research-driven approach to analyze objectively the extent to which a typeface's personality meshes with the intended tone of a document. This study describes how technical communicators can analyze a typeface's uppercase J and its lowercase a, g, e, and n letterforms—letterforms that are dense with anatomical information—to gauge the extent to which a typeface will contribute a friendly or a professional personality to a document. Technical communicators—both professionals and students—who are armed with this knowledge can move beyond “safe” typefaces like Times New Roman and Helvetica, selecting instead typefaces whose anatomical features generate different kinds of personalities.

Typeface personality impacts the rhetorical effect of students' documents, yet it receives little attention in textbooks. Technical writing students should stand the definition of “appropriate” in relation to typeface selection, the difference between type's functional and semantic properties, the difference between type family and personality, the effect of a typeface's history, and the contribution of a typeface's anatomy to its personality. Understanding these, students can make informed decisions about typeface appropriateness.