The underlying principles of graphic theory have been largely ignored by the technical and scientific communication community. This impatience with theory creates numerous problems for readers of technical information since about 30 percent of such material is graphic in nature. This article offers an overview of the major theoretical schools that have some importance for these fields and discusses their implications for the design and preparation of referential texts.

At present the ethical concerns for technical communicators are narrowly defined in terms of management issues. Ethical problems cannot be solved by such a simplistic view. Instead we need to explore the ethical nature of the professional fields technical and science writing supports, the ethical positions in closely related fields, and the work that has already been accomplished in the general area of communication ethics. Once we have established such a foundation, we can begin to explore the most basic influences inherent in language uses on ethical concerns.