Surveys English accounting, its origin, its development, and its first books (1553-1680) to provide insight into the shift from orality to textuality in English society. (SR)

Notes that as teachers integrate social theory into the technical communication classroom, they interpret the connection between writing and culture in different ways. Describes four social pedagogies of writing--the social constructionist, the ideologic, the social cognitive, and the paralogic hermeneutic--distinguishing them by their pedagogic…

Shows some of the connections between the social structure of the law and the everyday writing of marketplace participants. Sets out a legal dispute resolution framework and a classification of the types of liability-prone prose. Suggests a rhetorical model that facilitates an expanded perspective of the business writer. Offers an approach for…

Extends a previous article which describes an assignment (integrating many concepts taught in a technical writing course) in which students write an employee handbook. Describes the employment-at-will doctrine and discusses some recent legal cases surrounding employee handbooks. Offers exercises on defining audience, classifying and partitioning,…

Describes current indexing systems, documents the shift from manual to automated indexing methods, and offers suggestions for writers and editors on the critical importance of careful wording and controlled vocabularies to ensure effective access to technical and scientific articles. Suggests teaching strategies for helping students control…

Offers a Burkean framework for study of collaborative business writing. Reviews the research on collaborative writing, explains a Burkean framework that identifies key areas for future investigation, and provides categories for conducting research. Argues for a research agenda that emphasizes qualitative studies first, to be followed by…

Describes a 10-stage process approach to teaching technical students "definition." Includes an assignment that encourages the use of the defining process. Discusses advantages of the approach. (PRA)

Describes two studies on the comprehension of pharmaceutical text containing pictorial and written instructions by mothers in rural Kenya. Comprehension of printed instructions was compared with interpretation of illustrations, propositional analysis used in the study is explained, recall protocols are examined, and implications of writing…

Evaluates well-designed cases involving students in situations which simulate those outside the classroom environment. Offers additional features based on problem solving and rhetorical theory to help make cases more adaptable to the field of professional communications. Describes examples of two types of cases which put the theory into practice.…

Argues that metaphorical language and metaphorical thought pervade the sciences and science writing. Asserts a useful bond between technical writing and poetry. Provides numerous poems uniting scientific themes with metaphorical language. (HB)

Proposes a model for creating citations in academic writing that relates variation in citation language forms to writers' ability to control how they position themselves and their texts within a multimember colloquy that comprises the past, present, and future academic community. The model is potentially valuable pedagogically and for analyzing…

Explains the rhetorical implications of actions and states in various models of procedural discourse and in specific writer strategies. Considers more flexible alternatives to the "streamlined-step" model. States that one goal of technical communicators may be to help ensure that systems are designed, developed, implemented, and supported with…

Suggests that effective communication between technical and nontechnical people is difficult because technical communication lacks a personal dimension: technical people give up their identity to be considered competent. Argues that a different approach to communication education for scientists, engineers, and technologists is required to equip…

Examines a 1994 General Accounting Office (GAO) report on sexual harassment at U.S. service academies to determine how power structures affected the report writers' rhetorical choices. Identifies what is valued and devalued in the report's contents. Describes Congress's reaction to the report and speculates on the report's impact on public…

Designs a technical-communication course for software-engineering majors to take concurrently with their capstone project course in software design. Studies effects of writing on students' user-centered beliefs and design practices and on usability of their product. Suggests the synergy of this interdisciplinary approach sensitized students to…