Outlines the technical writing tutorial (TWT) that precedes an advanced English as a second language (ESL) writing course for students of English Philology at the Jagiellonian University, Poland. Finds a statistically significant increase in the performance of the students who had taken the TWT. Indicates that technical writing books and journals…

Examines the use of French and Dutch personal and possessive pronouns in the first person plural in internal communication documents. Focuses on the link between text types and the use of inclusive, exclusive, or ambiguous "we." Demonstrates that managers can exploit personal pronouns strategically and that the use of "we" is a parameter for…

Carries out a meta-analysis to see if there might be a positive effect for colored paper overall on survey result rates. Finds no significant differences between the response rates to white and to colored paper in general. Notes that when considering separately the most common colors used, it appeared that pink paper had the greatest effect. (SG)

Traces the ways in which educational researchers referred to Ronald A. Fisher's analysis of variance (ANOVA) between 1932 and 1944 in the "Journal of Experimental Education" (JXE). Shows how the changes in citational practices served to separate the ANOVA from its affiliation with Fisher, essentially effacing the memory of its human conditions of…

Provides and defends four guidelines as a foundation to study ways to incorporate history into classroom lessons: maintain a continued research interest in teaching history; limit to technical rather than scientific discourse; focus on English-language texts; and focus on American texts, authors, and practices. Works within the guidelines to show…

To improve technical communication education, educators and internship providers need to find ways to revise internship experiences so that educators, internship providers, and students/interns can use internship experiences in a way that benefits all three parties. This article uses a stakeholder education approach to propose two new kinds of…

This article argues that the small school context has been a relatively unexamined or under-examined context for technical and professional communication program development. While graduate program development holds a large share of the field's attention in recent national forums, growth in graduate programs is a consequence of demand in the job…

Background: Previous research suggests that there are advantages to writing in groups or in pairs compared with writing individually, and that men write differently from women. However, as far as we know, no one has yet used new technology to assess published academic articles written in these different modes. Method: We assembled 80 papers from…

The article outlines the technical writing tutorial (TWT) that preceded an advanced ESL writing course for students of English Philology at the Jagiellonian University. Having assessed the English skills of those students at the end of the semester, we found a statistically significant increase in the performance of the students who had taken the…

Students in business communication classes are expected to write various types of documents. Research has illustrated that undergraduate student writing skills have not improved even though most states have begun writing proficiency tests at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. By the time students enroll in college, students are…

The first part of this article shows that research in the history of technical communication has increased in quantity and sophistication over the last 20 years. Scholarship that describes how to teach with that information, however, has not followed, even though teaching the history of the field is a need recognized by several scholars. The…

This study examines the skills that recent technical communication graduates and managers believe technical communication students need before entering business and industry as new technical communicators. Through questionnaires and interviews with recent graduates and managers of technical communication departments as well as an analysis of the…

One of the signatures of scientific writing is its ability to present the claims of science as if they were "untouched by human hands." In the early years of experimental education, researchers achieved this by adopting a citational practice that led to the sedimentation of their cardinal method, the analysis of variance, and their standard for…

Scientific and technical jargon--specialized vocabulary, usually Latinate--plays a vital role in scientific and technical communication. But its proper use continues to be a point of discussion because of our concern with audience adaptation, rhetorical exigence, rhetorical purpose, and ethics. We've focused on teaching students--and on convincing…

While research in international technical communication has flourished during the last 10 years, there has been little published on technical communication programs outside the United States. This article addresses this need by describing 12 representative academic technical communication programs in Germany, including Germany's first master's…