Annotates articles on technical communication published during the summer and fall of 1987. Categorized into audiovisual, communication, ethics, graphics, law, management, public relations, publishing, teaching, and writing. (JAD)

Includes references from the fields of technical and scientific communication on writing instructions published through the end of 1987. Excludes sections from textbooks. Not annotated. (JAD)

Suggests ways for technical communicators to improve their visual skills and visual literacy. (SR)

Discusses the process of writing usable instructions, relying on organization, formatting, and visual displays to aid comprehension. (JAD)

Offers a selective bibliography, covering the last 25 years, of articles on how to write instructions for using computers. Contains sections on planning computer documentation, computer manuals, and online documentation. (JAD)

Asks why technical documents rarely contain satisfactory glossaries. Suggests ways to avoid common problems such as superabundance of terms defined, complex definitions, non-parallel structuring of definitions, and excessive cross-referencing. (JAD)

Notes that companies responding to the struggling economy are downsizing staff, including technical communicators. Maintains that such cutbacks affect not only employee confidence and productivity but also product quality, customer satisfaction, and future sales. States that technical communicators' critical knowledge is an asset that companies…

Offers an eight-step approach to the team writing process that will help document managers avoid, minimize, and resolve problems found in the team writing process. (SR)

Presents a rhetoric of visuals in relationship to their accompanying text. Discusses prior research in graphics, outlines a syntax of graphics and their level of abstraction, describes tagmemic analysis of visuals, and discusses rhetorical integration of text and visuals. (SR)

Calls for a concerted effort by publication professionals and government to establish quality standards and trade regulations for technical documents, including consumer product information. Discusses various quality-assurance mechanisms. (PRA)

Establishes a practical model of the document-development process for writers in nonacademic settings. Pulls together and builds from recent research about writers and writing in the workplace. Reveals the process to contain both linear and recursive elements. Asserts that writers must be involved early in the process. (SR)

Argues that the greatest value of technical communicators accrue not from style book editing but from "content editing." Offers suggestions for content editing. (SR)

Discusses the care required in constructing written explanations of numerical data. (SR)

Reports highlights from the first phase of a long-range study into the nature of the rhetorical principle "cover-your-ass" in technical communication. (SR)

Offers suggestions for writing trip reports that communicate the usefulness of the trip. (JAD)