This article proposes the Canon to Code (C2C) Auditing Framework for evaluating generative (artificial intelligence) AI output through classical rhetoric, arguing that AI's characteristic failures—guessing instead of knowing, politeness instead of credibility, and confidence instead of judgment—revisit problems that rhetoric has addressed since antiquity. Developed using a rulemaking methodology and drawing on classical rhetorical theory, this framework presents 10 auditing rules that operationalize rhetorical principles into evaluation criteria for AI-generated content, focusing on accuracy, transparency, and accountability. It offers content auditors, technical communicators, and compliance professionals a theoretically grounded method for distinguishing AI output that meets audience needs from output that simulates credibility through pattern matching.

<bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Introduction:</b> This article examines the rhetorical implications of archiving technical documents by studying the erasure of Black women's mental health narratives in Virginia's Central State Mental Hospital in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This article seeks to examine how historical mental health documents characterize (or fail to characterize) Black women and their mental health. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">About the case:</b> We examine Black women's mental health experiences through absences in the annual reports from Central State Hospital in Virginia (formerly Central State Lunatic Asylum for Colored Insane). <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Situating the case:</b> There is a dearth of work related to the unique experiences that Black women face when dealing with mental health challenges coupled with or compounded by a legacy of misogynoir. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Methods/approach:</b> We offer an inventive approach for reading rhetorical absences and provide guiding questions for employing the critical archival inquiry methodology. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Results/discussion:</b> In taking on this endeavor to learn more about how Black women's mental health was represented in historical archives, we learned a great deal, not from the text on the page of the documents but from the text that was missing from those documents. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Conclusions:</b> Technical communication scholars, especially those with an interest in inclusion and justice, must adjust their methodological orientation and their approaches to historical and archival research to include an exploration of what is missing from the archives. Technical and professional communicators have a unique skill set that is ideal for reading through absences and erasures in both contemporary and historical documents.

The author proposes Policy, Roles, Sites (PRS), a conceptual model to help technical communicators analyze high-stakes, long-debated public policy issues and reveal ways that technical and professional communication informs public policy development and implementation. The author demonstrates how the PRS model can be used to examine complex public policy issues from race and policing to gun rights and gun control, as well as policy issues that intersect these seemingly disparate issues.

Introduction: This study investigates how plain language, examined from a social justice perspective, is implemented in mortgage documents and what the implications are for African-American homebuyers. About the case: We argue that plain language has the potential to engage issues of human dignity and human rights because language accessibility in documents plays a large role in how citizens engage in civic and social activities. In regard to the home ownership process, in which African-American homebuyers are more likely to experience discrimination, we need a study of the implementation of plain language in documents that might contribute to communication breakdowns between the banking industry and this historically marginalized group. Situating the case: We examine plain language from a social-justice stance by turning a more critical eye toward how and why plain-language guidelines are implemented. Methods/approach: Our study focused on the initial disclosure statements for adjustable-rate mortgages. We paired critical discourse analysis with the Securities and Exchange Commission's Plain English Handbook guidelines for disclosure statements to analyze three disclosure statements. Results/discussion: We found that, generally speaking, each of the three disclosure statements effectively adhered to plain-language recommendations. However, the idea that plain language increases accessibility, reader comprehension, and usability is complicated, and the accessibility and usability of each document varied. Conclusions: We advocate for a human-centered approach that explores ways that plain-language guidelines can be applied along with a critical focus on amplifying agency and reducing inequity.

The author uses game theoretical models to identify technical communication breakdowns encountered during the notoriously confusing Texas Two-Step voting and caucusing process. Specifically, the author uses narrative theory and game theory to highlight areas where caucus participants needed instructions to better understand the rules of the game and user analysis to better anticipate participants' motives and strategies. As a central tool of analysis, the author uses Nobel Laureate John C. Harsanyi's work on “incomplete game” or Bayesian games. The article demonstrates opportunities for technical communication scholars and teachers to use interdisciplinary approaches to discover layers of technical communication in small group negotiations and to evaluate the layers of instructions and technologies needed to facilitate effective and ethical decision making in political caucusing.

In 2010, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) commemorated its 50th anniversary by launching an anniversary Web site, which includes links to a photographic timeline, videos, and documents that the agency views as important in telling its history. This article uses concepts from narrative theory and visual rhetoric to analyze the images used in the NASA History Timeline, paying special attention to why certain images were selected as historical markers over other photographs that are more widely published and televised. Specifically, the author uses arguments from Sontag’s On Photography and Barbatsis’s “Narrative Theory” to explain how NASA’s photographic narrative provides a story with a plot that spans from triumphs and tragedies in space exploration to pioneering efforts in racial, ethnic, and gender diversity.

In this book, Miriam F. Williams explores regulatory writing that promotes distrust in historical and contemporary African American constituencies. Focusing specifically on Texas regulatory laws, she examines how writers of legislation and policies struggle with making language of legislation and policies clearer and objective while grappling with long-held feelings of distrust of government legislation in African American citizens--feelings that have been perpetuated by historical use of veiled language in laws and policies. She explores the possibility of mitigation an audience's mistrust by writing these policies in Plain English in an attempt to be more objective and transparent. The book is recommended to all who seek to explore the connections between public policy and technical communication and the implications of these fields of study on social and cultural concerns.

This article discusses public policy writing as a genre of technical communication and, specifically, public policy development as a technological process. It cites DeGregori’s theory of technology to demonstrate the shared invention processes of technology and public policy, the work of public policy scholars to describe the policy-development process, and the work of human—computer interaction scholars to identify cognitive models of public policy development as a technological process. The article concludes with a discussion of e-rulemaking Web sites and the role of technical communicators in creating these blended spaces.

Abstract As the City of Houston's Bureau of Air Quality Control embraced new policies, technologies, and rhetorical strategies, they simultaneously moved through Lukensmeyer and Torres's "four levels of public involvement," which include the information, consultation, engagement, and collaboration levels (Lukensmeyer & Torres, 2006 Lukensmeyer, C. J., & Torres, L. H. (2006). Public deliberation: A manager's guide to citizen engagement. IBM Center for the Business of Government Collaboration Series. Retrieved November 2007 from http://www.businessofgovernment.org/pdfs/LukensmeyerReport.pdf [Google Scholar]). Because of the technical and scientific nature of air quality inspections, increasing public involvement, especially the involvement of those in a predominantly African American and a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, has been a challenge. This article describes the Bureau's journey through the information level, where the Bureau opens public access and participation in the investigation and reporting process; the consultation level, where Bureau staff go door-to-door in poor and minority neighborhoods collecting citizen feedback regarding perceived environmental hazards; the engagement level, where the Bureau conducts monthly environmental meetings with neighborhood residents; and the collaboration level, where citizens are taught to collect evidence of environmental violations.

In this article, I present findings from a discourse analysis of an often-overlooked genre of technical communication, regulatory writing. The study focuses on post-bellum regulations that disproportionately affected African Americans and the historical contexts in which the regulations were written. Historically, African Americans of all socioeconomic backgrounds have maintained an implicit mistrust of government regulations and the government officials who write them. The justification for this mistrust is deeply rooted in the fact that for decades regulations were not written to protect the rights of African Americans nor was their input considered in regulatory writing. In Communicating Across Cultures, Stella Ting-Toomey argues, “if conflict parties do not trust each other, they tend to move away (cognitively, affectively and physically) from each other rather than struggle side by side in negotiation” [1, p. 222]. This study reveals rhetorical strategies used in historical regulatory writing that may still impact the ethos of regulatory writers.