This paper examines what rhetoric used in communicating with general audiences is appropriate to educational research as a form of knowing. Answers to this question depend not only on characteristics of knowledge, but also on what one considers a defensible goal in research reporting. Assuming that this goal is communicating authorized convictions…

The term "job aids" is a phrase used to describe a genre of ready-guidance tools or prompts that assist a person in performing a job or task. The purpose of job aids is to specify what is to be done, how to do it, the order in which it is to be done, and the standards to be met in doing it. Because job aids are not instructional…

Business writers often use--or may be taught to use--strategies for verbal interaction analogous to those they use in conversation. Unfortunately, much current composition theory discounts analogies between verbal interaction in speaking and writing and therefore disallows applying the results of linguistic investigations of spoken language use to…

Designed for use by those administrative personnel in local school districts who are responsible for preparing written releases of the district's educational quality assessment (EQA), this booklet contains aids and suggestions for making the release more effective. Each section of the booklet deals with a different aspect of writing the EQA,…

This study examined students' attitudes towards the use of computer technology in composition instruction. Subjects were 122 college juniors and seniors enrolled in seven sections of a technical writing course. Students received either 10 weeks of computer assisted instruction (CAI) in a computer environment, 5 weeks of CAI in a computer…

Expressiveness in language is necessary for effective communication in every field. Prose should be effective not only in literature but also in science, business, law, and other specialized fields. Writing institutes across the country specialize in a new pedagogy for teaching expository prose, and one of the chief instruments for clarifying this…

For the process leading to the publication of one's professional work to be equitable, all authors must understand why and how publication decisions are made. Psychologists must understand how editors and reviewers look at manuscripts, and how the author's own attitudes and skills may affect the acceptance of manuscripts. These four papers are…

The use of error pattern analysis can reduce the time and money spent on editing and correcting manuscripts. What is required is noting, classifying, and keeping a frequency count of errors. First an editor should take a typical page of writing and circle each error. After the editor has done a sufficiently large number of pages to identify an…

The accomplishments of a team of writers, designers, and education specialists commissioned by the National Institute of Education (NIE) to suggest solutions to the problems that public documents often pose for readers are summarized in this report. Following an overview, the report offers a section on the history and rationale of the Document…

Some differences exist between American and Finnish written business communication practices. The main difference is in the format: the layout of the documents in Finland is standardized. For example, whereas the American secretarial handbooks give at least seven or eight possibilities for letter arrangement, in Finland there is only one. In 1970…

Much current composition theory depends on the notion that writers represent reality--a situational context, an author, and an audience--in the text itself, and that readers construct their own representations of that text. Business writers, on the other hand, often direct their compositions to specific audiences, the members of which have…

That communication is the engineer's responsibility is inherent in the nature of engineering. The engineer's first order of responsibility is to the organization for which he or she works. Engineers fill specific roles in business, industry, public institutions, and government agencies, and their responsibilities are to get things done for those…

American Business Language Education (ABLE) is the product of cooperation between universities and companies in the private sector. It is not designed primarily for use in educational institutions but for use on-site in businesses and industries, and makes use of state-of-the-art telecommunications technology to accomplish distance teaching. The…

The author critically reviews recent suggestions from Buchmann, Fenstermacher, and Zumwalt that teachers draw their own conclusions from research findings, rather than accepting the conclusions researchers draw. Drawing on Gusfield's analysis of the language of social science, the author considers the suggestions as proposals for the rhetoric that…

In preparing students for business writing, a technical writing class should foster (1) a sensitivity to audience and an understanding of the business or technical organizational audience, (2) analytical problem solving that precedes any but the simplest writing task, (3) understanding of the patterns of organization that make information clear to…