0361-1434/00$10.00 c 2000

At first glance, there seems to be very little in common between professional communication and a nineteenth-century detective story. However, there is a strong link between Poe's "The Purloined Letter" (E.A. Poe, 1975) and the successful practices of today's professional communicators, particularly technical writers and editors. In the story, Poe's writing methodology and his main character's investigative advice both offer useful guidelines for successful professional communication. "The Purloined Letter" is a formulaic detective story about Dupin, a witty detective who solves the case of a stolen letter, a case previously unsolved by the French police. Dupin uses intimate knowledge of human logic and reasoning to find the stolen letter. His method is contrasted with that of the French police who had spent months unsuccessfully searching for it. Dupin's means of finding the letter is a series of significant courses of action that can be applied to effective professional communication strategies. The article summarizes Dupin's advice and how it can be applied to effective technical communication today.

Patrick Dean graduated from the University of Waterloo (in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) with an honors B.A. in Rhetoric and Professional Writing and has spent the past four and a half years working in the software industry as a technical writer. He is currently a Senior Technical Writer for the Bulldog Group, Inc., in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. During our interview, Patrick had a few words to say about his recent moonlighting: “A year ago my wife and I bought a 100-year-old house in Toronto, and since then I’ve spent precisely every free second either working on the house, or reading about how to work on the house.”