Desktop publishing is a meta-technology that allows professional writing students access to the production phase of publishing—which is crucial to readers' perception of the writer's text, yet is almost never controlled by the writer. Desktop publishing offers the most convenient means of giving students hands-on practice in preparing text for printing and in learning how that preparation affects the visual meaning of documents.

Developing a course in desktop publishing is a technological, as much as a pedagogical, undertaking. Although a background in layout, document design, and typography is necessary, teaching these subjects with computers inevitably means teaching a particular combination of hardware and software. Students with little prior experience using computers must receive training in computer basics. Thus considerable familiarity, not only with desktop publishing software but also with personal computers, is necessary to teach a desktop publishing course.