Suggests the case of the British Westland Lysander P12 Ground Strafer aircraft illustrates the problem of narrow thinking. Claims that had the initial designers approached the problem in a broad way, they would have seen in advance that the project would fail. Concludes the case is instructive as an industrial problem, but it also demonstrates the…

Examines the changing role of the technical communication professional in the rapidly evolving environment of organizational life. Presents five principles that serve as an initial step in laying a foundation for the preparation of technical communicators for the challenges and opportunities awaiting in contemporary organizations and the…

Explores how participant characteristics affect the feedback collected during a reader-focused evaluation of brochures. Notes highly educated participants focused more strongly on the structuring of information. Suggests that it may be more fruitful to investigate the influence of more specific participant characteristics that are more univocally…

Examines the rhetoric of Lysenkoism in Soviet Russia from the 1920s to about 1960 as an overt attempt to redefine science. Discusses the rhetorical dimensions of Lysenkoist discourse from the perspective of the rhetorical theories of Aristotle, Burke, Weaver, Bakhtin, Habermas, and Foucault. Reviews two historical commentaries on Lysenkoism. (SG)

Looks at a sample of instructional documents using Restricted and Elaborated Code and metadiscourse analysis to determine how easily users can read and understand the material. Suggests that the documents do not send a clear message to authors and editors and can be stylistically hard to understand and consequently, the approved standards…

Examines the concept of the efficiency with which text is entered into a word processor--from the perspective of effective use of keyboard shortcuts. Illustrates how the possibility for productiveness offered by shortcuts, available through the use of features such as Autotext, are often under-utilized by many word processor users, academics being…

Proposes "technicisation" theory with five central hypotheses to account for various aspects of foreign students learning Technical English (TE), including its linguistic, learning, experiential, cultural, and motivational dimensions. Suggests that the fundamental hypotheses are applicable to TE learning but they may, mutatis mutandis, have direct…

Considers how if literacy is envisioned as a sort of competence in a set of social and intellectual practices, then scientific literacy must encompass the realization that "statistical significance," the cardinal arbiter of social scientific knowledge, was not born out of an immanent logic of mathematics but socially constructed and reconstructed…

Considers how visuals are constructions that are products of a writer's interpretation with its own "power-laden agenda." Reviews the current approach taken by composition scholars, surveys richer interdisciplinary work on visuals, and (by using visuals connected with the Human Genome Project) models an analysis of visuals as rhetoric. (SG)

Explores the effects of the absence of different information types in instructions on action performance for different age groups. Finds that the absence of goal information, consequence information and identification information in the instructions proved to have a negative effect on task performance, especially for the elderly participants. (SG)

Explores implications of increased publication options and examines conceptual distinctions among Fixed-Format, Electronic, and Meta-media Editors. Proposes a keyboard editing/commenting technique that will work across platforms and software programs and in every mode of electronic communication including simple e-mail. Suggests an increased…

Conducts a scenario-based usability test with 10 data analysts using visual querying (visually analyzing data with interactive graphics). Details a range of difficulties found in visual selection that, at times, gave rise to inaccurate selections, invalid conclusions, and misguided decisions. Argues that support for visual selection must be built…

Argues that current approaches to computer graphing practices are ill suited to meet the complex needs of real users. Offers an overview of work in two major areas of graphing theory and research: the sociology of science and the educational research of mathematics and scientific students. Suggests what technical communicators can do to improve…

Describes and illustrates a distributed approach to usability (envisioning usability across the genres, practices, uses, and goals of a given activity) using a four-decade examination of a traffic accident location and analysis system. Uses the theoretical framework of "genre ecologies" to show how communities of users interact with entire sets of…

Presents a historical study of early mainframe computing that demonstrates ways in which computer documentation genres grew out of other document types. Suggests early forms of documentation were borrowed from existing genres, and that official and unofficial documentation existed concurrently, despite efforts to consolidate these divergent texts,…