Abstract The professional life of elocutionist Alvina Winker Paterson suggests that previous views about women being excluded from rhetorical activities in the earlier twentieth century need to be revised. Like many other contemporary women, Winkler Paterson was able to avail herself of private instruction in elocution and become a highly successful performer and educator in the Northeast. Her career casts considerable light on the nature of elocutionary performance, the course of elocutionary education, and feminine access to public arenas and power at the time. Notes 1 We owe thanks to RR reviewers Susan Kates, Andrew King, and RR editor Theresa Enos for significant help in revising this manuscript. We also owe thanks to Amber Davisson for using the scrapbooks to create a chronology of Winkler Paterson's performances that was useful in the writing of this article.

The world of knowledge about the book is seemingly inexhaustible, and part of the quest is an endless pursuit of information about the artifact itself.

Rensselaer’s Technical Writers’ Institute, the first program of its kind, had a profound impact on technical communication. It enabled technical communicators without formal education in the field to gain important knowledge, provided a forum for communicators from different industries to meet in order to solve mutual problems, played a key role in defining the field and its needs, encouraged recruitment (including the hiring of more women), promoted professional societies and formal degree programs, and seriously affected industry training programs by enabling them to use institute teaching materials. Knowledge gained through the Technical Writers’ Institute enabled Rensselaer to develop many other innovations.

Abstract Although conventional views about nineteenth‐century rhetoric highlight a shift from oratory to composition and from classical rhetoric with origins in Cicero and Quintilian to a "new" rhetoric with origins in Campbell, Blair, and Whately (with an attendant loss of scholarship and quality), William C. Robinson's Forensic Oratory (1893) can be grouped with a growing number of works that complicate such views. Robinson continues to emphasize oratory and to derive his theory from Cicero and Quintilian, using a complex of ideas called "uniformitarianism" to justify his direct appropriation of classical ideas. The resulting rhetoric lacks neither responsible scholarship nor high quality.

The ornate style practiced before the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century too often led to obscurity and verbal games rather than clarity and the pursuit of truth. In reacting against ornateness, however, scientists developed the ideal of a plain style that is itself problematic. The writer's posture is essentially defensive; he is more concerned with what not to do than what to do in his writing. The practice of amplification, useful for audience adaptation, has been abandoned, and rhetorical devices that promote the personal touch are no longer taught. Recent experiments indicate that classroom exercises involving rhetorical devices can help promote economy and clarity, encourage more personal and aggressive writing, strengthen the idea that writing is an art, and arouse writer and reader interest. The study of stylistic devices in use before the scientific revolution can be fruitful for modern scientific and technical writing.

Excerpts from Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society, published in 1667, are used to explore the parallels existing between the rise of modern scientific and technical writing and the rise of seventeenth century science. The author of this paper shows how the English teachers of today, like the scholastic critics of the past, are too often isolated from the realities of communication. He quotes Thomas Sprat to emphasize that communication techniques should not be studied at a distance. The practice of scientific and technical writing must be brought closer to the university. Doing consulting work is one possibility; another is conducting communication research for business and industry. Additional specialized courses should be introduced for students specializing in the professions. English majors planning to work full time in communication should have internships provided. Sprat recognized that a bridge must exist between science and the humanities. This applies as well to the present condition.

Textbooks describing scientific or technical writing as “impartial” or “objective” are too restrictive. As advances in the history of science have familiarized us with the importance of the human element in science, so the human element must also be given its due in writing in the area. Our students will often be engaged in communication that involves adaptation for an audience relatively unfamiliar with the subject being presented, and they must be aware that the personal touch can arouse interest and sharpen awareness and understanding. History can serve as a source of writing models that successfully use the personal touch.

W. Earl Britton's proposal to substitute technical writing for freshman English is not convincing. The proposal rests on questionable beliefs about the two courses. Freshman English is not neglecting to emphasize the development of communications skills, and technical writing cannot be broadened enough to replace freshman English without becoming a course in freshman English. Both courses have important roles to play in the university. Freshman English should continue to concern itself with general communications skills, and technical writing should continue to involve the application of these skills to special kinds of communication.