Discusses two ways of organizing writing: "imitative" or "natural" order, which reflects either chronology or spatiality; and "imposed" order, in which topical materials have been restructured in a significant way. Argues that all rhetorical alternatives should be considered when teaching writing. (MM)

Explains how charting cause and effect in expository texts can increase students' knowledge of text structure. Provides a sample effect and cause chart. (MM)

Defines good expository text and reviews studies on two text features--structure and interestingness--that affect readers' comprehension. Discusses implications for further inquiry. (JAD)

Describes global strategies (such as choosing a consistent text paradigm) and local strategies (such as using sentence chains and creating causal networks) that are characteristic of coherent task instructions. (JAD)

Presents the list-structure data model for dealing with sets of objects, which has ordering as its fundamental principle. An extended notion of patterns and several operators of the algebra are presented. Design issues that influenced the development of the language are described. (Contains 30 references.) (KRN)

Outlines desirable qualities for graphic representation of sentence dependency structures in texts more than a few sentences in length. Several different display formats prototyped in the TEXNET experimental text structure management system are described, illustrated, and compared, and automatic structure manipulations are discussed. (36…

Focuses on a general document navigation strategy called the known/need-to-know strategy. Illustrates the strategy using a variant of this strategy called "locate." (SR)

Shows how students majoring in technical writing can use the professional vocabularies of their own disciplines (engineering, business, and computer science) to explain literature and gain fresh insights into how writers write. (SR)

Points out that desktop publishing is a metatechnology that allows professional writing students access to the production phase of publishing, giving students hands-on practice in preparing text for printing and in learning how that preparation affects the visual meaning of documents. (SR)

Modifies the analysis of causal relations in narratives to describe more broadly defined logical relations in expository text. Compares the relative sensitivity with which three different systems of prose analysis describe recall for expository text across different age groups and recall conditions. (SR)

Argues that Plato considers his philosophical doctrines unwritable and shows how this assumption can be mobilized as the dominant trope for interpreting Plato. Suggests that Platonic texts deploy language in dramatically rhetorical fashion to control the reader and lead her analogically to a vision of an extralinguistic reality. (RS)

Assesses the role of technical communicators in electronic data interchange (EDI). Argues that, as experts in information design, human factors, instructional theory, and professional writing, technical communicators should be advocates of standard documentation protocols and should rethink the traditional concepts of "document" to…

Explores trends in text linguistics related to the diverse scope of applied linguistics. A 26-citation annotated and a larger unannotated bibliography are included. (CB)

Assesses the effects of headings on text processing behaviors during immediate and delayed testing of 65 undergraduate students. Finds that headings did not appear to affect overall comprehension or overall answer location accuracy. (MG)

Describes a study of 77 abstracts in English language medical journals that was conducted to examine the internal structuring of the abstracts. A form for structured abstracts is described, the importance of abstracts in medical journals is discussed, and structural flaws in the abstracts studied are described. (24 references) (LRW)