The Academe-Industry Partnership: What's In It For All of Us?    

I'm always puzzled by the misunderstanding, distrust, and sometimes downright animosity between academic and practitioner members of the technical communication family. At its extremes, this attitude manifests itself in practitioners who consider research and theory to be ivory tower games with no relevance to their practice, and in professors who regard practitioners as ignorant anti-intellectuals. The vast majority of us, of course, would never admit to being either academic snobs or practitioner rednecks, but many of us evidence less extreme vestiges of these biases.

Hayhoe, George F. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>Collaboration>TC

Becoming a Journal Author  

This session will help participants understand how to write and submit a manuscript for publication in Technical Communication. It covers the types of articles the journal publishes, its audience, and suggestions for choosing topics, doing research, and preparing a manuscript.

Hayhoe, George F. STC Proceedings (1998). Presentations>Writing>Publishing

Becoming a Journal Author   

This session will help participants understand how to write and submit a manuscript for publication in Technical Communication. It covers the types of articles the journal publishes, its audience, and suggestions for choosing topics, doing research, and preparing a manuscript.

Hayhoe, George F. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Writing>Publishing

Becoming a Journal Peer Reviewer  

This session will help participants understand the process for reviewing manuscripts submitted to Technical Communication. It covers the types of articles the journal publishes, review procedures and criteria, and approaches to writing constructive evaluations.

Hayhoe, George F. STC Proceedings (1998). Presentations>Editing>Technical Editing

Becoming a Journal Peer Reviewer   

This session will help participants understand the process for reviewing manuscripts submitted to

Hayhoe, George F. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Publishing>Editing

Changing How the World Communicates: Secondary Curricula in Technical Communication  

To prepare today's students for the world of work, language arts curricula should include reading and writing about technical subjects as well as about works of literature. Many students have difficulty comprehending computer documentation, safety instructions, and product manuals. They are also ill prepared to do the kinds of writing and speaking required on the job. This panel will address the following topics, as well as others raised by the audience.

Hayhoe, George F., E. Thomas Abbott, Ronald S. Blicq, Lisa A. Moretto and Trish Pollick. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Education>TC

Changing the Way the Profession Communicates: A Workshop for Prospective Journal Authors  

This session will help participants understand how to write and submit a manuscript for publication in Technical Communication. It covers the types of articles the journal publishes, its audience, and suggestions for choosing topics, doing research, andpreparing a manuscript.

Hayhoe, George F. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Publishing>Writing

Changing the Way the Profession Communicates: A Workshop for Prospective Journal Peer Reviewers  

More than 90% of Technical Communication readers are informed practitioners--writers, editors, illustrators, designers, trainers, and project managers. About 10% are teachers and students. They come from diverse backgrounds as well as from technical communication programs.

Hayhoe, George F. STC Orange County (1998). Articles>Rhetoric>Audience Analysis>Surveys

Electronic Document Production  

This encyclopedia article provides engineering managers with a detailed overview of the process for developing online documents.

Hayhoe, George F. George Hayhoe Associates. Articles>Documentation>Online

Evaluating Distance Learning in Graduate Programs: Ensuring Rigorous, Rewarding Professional Education

Internet-based distance learning programs make it possible for technical communicators located anywhere in the world to participate in graduate courses in their field. But are these graduate programs as rigorous as those offered through traditional educational venues? Do they provide opportunities for participants to learn from professors and their fellow students that are as rewarding as those provided in traditional graduate seminars? This paper reports the responses of students in two such classes to a series of questions probing these issues, and offers conclusions and recommendations that may help others who plan such courses to structure them more effectively.

Hayhoe, George F. IEEE PCS (1998). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

Evaluating Our New Look and Moving Online: Seeing Is Believing    

The editorial advisory board and I have been asking our readers' opinions about the journal's redesign and the directions this publication should take in the future. We've also commissioned usability studies and carefully examined the technologies available for online publication. In this editorial, I'd like to share what we've learned and the directions in which we hope to move during the coming year.

Hayhoe, George F. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>Publishing>Online>Usability

Inside Out/Outside In: Transcending the Boundaries That Divide the Academy and Industry

Having lived and worked on both sides of the academe-industry border, I've thought a great deal about the negative attitudes held by so many who live in both of these parts of the larger world of technical communication.

Hayhoe, George F. George Hayhoe Associates (2001). Articles>Collaboration>Industry and Academy

Interview with George Hayhoe, editor of Technical Communication Journal, on Technical Writing in China and Korea

Keith Hoffman, president of the Madison Wisconsin Four Lakes Chapter, talks with George Hayhoe, editor of the Technical Communication Journal, about the emergence of technical communications in China and Korea, and the forces behind the push for technical communicators.

Hayhoe, George F. and Keith Hoffman. Tech Writer Voices (2007). Articles>TC>International>Podcasts

Keeping Up with New Technologies: Professional Development for the Freelancer  

Online documentation... usability testing... multimedia—new tools and processes to support these and other technologies flood the technical communications field. All technical communicators face the challenge of keeping up with these developments. Freelancers, however, face a special challenge: they must be prepared to use any technology and must provide their own training. In this panel, four experienced freelancers discuss proven solutions to the professional development challenge.

Hayhoe, George F., Barbara J. Philbrick, Lynnette R. Porter, and David M. Taylor. STC Proceedings (1995). Careers>TC>Technology

My Time in Hell, or Why I Fired a Client  

Some team members wanted the guide to be extremely prescriptive of format and content. Others insisted that it offer only minimal guidelines. A compromise was unacceptable to either side.

Hayhoe, George F. STC Orange County (1998). Careers>Consulting>Collaboration

Online Triple Play: Three Tools for Implementing Multiplatform Online Documents  

Using currently available products, technical communicators can produce a single hypertext file which can be read on the Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX platforms. Three multiplatform online document solutions will be demonstrated during the session, and a tool selection methodology will also be presented.

Hayhoe, George F. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Web Design

A Practitioners' Citation Index?    

Whether articles have been applied on the job or have simply expanded our mastery of the field, how can we tell which articles practitioners find useful? This is the question I've wrestled with over the past three months. Unfortunately, supplying an answer isn't as easy as asking the question.

Hayhoe, George F. Technical Communication Online (2005). Articles>Publishing>Assessment

Report of the STC Education Task Force: Considering the Current and Future Role of STC in its Mission to Educate its Members  

To date, STC has not been very aggressive or innovative in terms of electronic delivery of educational content to our members or others in the profession. Aside from telephone seminars/Webinars and the online availability of articles from Intercom and the journal, the Society has largely ignored the methods that its members, their companies, and other professional organizations are using to deliver content to stakeholders. Because only a fraction of the membership attends the annual conference and regional/chapter conferences, and because the Society is attempting to reach out to members of the profession outside North America, it is imperative that STC pursue other means of offering educational opportunities. By truly leveraging the power of the Web and other emerging technologies, STC can address a worldwide audience and provide significant educational offerings to members and prospective members alike.

Barnum, Carol M., Saul Carliner, David Dayton, Lynn Harris, George F. Hayhoe, Bill Horton, Kathryn Northcut, Makarand Pandit, Janice C. 'Ginny' Redish and Alison Reynolds. STC (2006). Articles>Education>Reports>STC

Seeing Clearly    

On the morning of 29 August, Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama with winds clocked at 140 miles (225 km) per hour and more than a foot (30 cm) of rain. Although the hurricane spared New Orleans, the major population center of the area, a direct blow, the storm surge caused several of the cityï¿s levees to fail, flooding 80% of the city with up to 20 feet (6 m) of water fouled by sewage, oil, and other pollutants. It will be many years before the coastal areas of southeast Asia and the U.S. Gulf Coast have rebuilt and recovered from this year's disasters. Likewise, it will take time for us to create better disaster plans and disseminate them to the public, and for the value of those plans to be perceived. Neither of these facts makes the rebuilding, recovery, and planning any less necessary. We must do all we can to ensure that they happen as quickly as possible. We should see clearly that we can't afford to do any less.

Hayhoe, George F. Technical Communication Online (2005). Articles>TC>Risk Communication>Southern US

SIGs: A Good Investment

In a recent discussion on TECHWR-L, an e-mail discussion list for technical communicators (not affiliated with STC) several posters debated whether STC SIGs are worth the $5 per SIG assessment the Society instituted a few years ago for SIG membership. Some writers noted that they didn’t see any value returned from the SIGs that they belonged to, while others believed that their experience had been quite different. I belong to seven STC SIGs. Admittedly, some provide more value for the dollar than others (at least in terms of tangible benefits such as newsletters and listserve activity), but all of them have been well worth the investment. I’d like to offer a few observations based on my experience as a SIG member as well as four years on the STC’s board of directors and two years on the SIG advisory committee in the early 90s.

Hayhoe, George F. Usability Interface (2000). Articles>Usability

Six Tips for Effective E-Mail

Who to target with your email, how long it should be, and what should and shouldn't go in it so that it can be an effective means of communication for you.

Hayhoe, George F. IEEE PCS (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Email>Podcasts

A Teacher's Perspective: An Interview with George Hayhoe

A lot of faculty feel threatened by distance learning because they think that it’s going to displace them. If a University’s view of courses is 'canned courses', then the instructor is no longer needed. In theory, the University can capture a professor’s intellectual property once and offer the course as often as the University wants to without any further compensation to the professor. To me, canned courses are not graduate education anyway. I guess watching a tape lecture is better than nothing at all. Of course, you can read books and get the ideas if that’s all you want, but to me graduate education is more than just reading books. The major experience is the exchange of ideas between instructor and students. I don’t think videotaping or HTML-izing lectures gives you that.

Hayhoe, George F. STC Online Information SIG (1998). Articles>Education>TC

Technical Communicators Shun Research, Yet Research Results Are Applicable In Practice  

Like their colleagues who produce paper documents, few help developers are aware of the research that has been done on topics relevant to the information products they design. This article describes four recent studies that are relevant to help developers, and suggests how help developers can use the knowledge gained from those studies to improve the performance support systems they build. The fact, however, is that there is a lot of good research that addresses topics of concern to practitioners in our field. Moreover, the best research reports always include implications for practice. Finally, if we ignore research results, we won’t learn what we need to know so that we can stop spending all our time putting out fires.

Hayhoe, George F. George Hayhoe Associates (2001). Articles>Documentation>Research