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A Simple Shortcut For Writing Irresistible Benefits

Do you know if you're promoting features or benefits in your marketing materials? The answer to this question plays a significant role in the effectiveness of your marketing message. While features are facts benefits explain why facts are important. Its these benefits that target your prospects emotions a key factor in selling situations.

White Paper Writing: Strategies for Success

White papers are a fundamental part of your marketing arsenal. And if you think technical writers don't need to worry about marketing, read on to see why white paper writing is an essential skill, and how to turn a ho-hum paper into a killer communications tool.

How to Select a Proper Article Writing Method

Here are two main methods you can use to launch off your article marketing campaign.

What Reviewers Need to Know About the Regulatory Reader, Continued

One of the big problems in document review is that reviewers often fail to recognize that their principal job as a reviewer is to act as a surrogate for the document end-user, in this case the regulatory reader. In this article, we offer a characterization of the reading style of the regulatory reader which is useful to keep in mind when reviewing any document or group of documents to be submitted to pharmaceutical and medical device regulatory agencies.

Team Virtual Discussion Board: Toward Multipurpose Written Assignments

What do teams, writing, time, technology, and critiques have in common? If you said they all have the letter 't' in them, you were correct. There can be so much more, though, when we connect each of these words in our course written assignments. Most of us use teams in our graduate and undergraduate organizational communication classes. What follows is a brief description of written (letter) assignments that use student pairs in a virtual Blackboard-based discussion board.

Writing for Business: a Graduate-Level Course in Problem-Solving

When I was assigned to teach graduate-level business writing in a Master's of Professional Communication (MPC) program, I was unsure what to do with the course. What kind of writing instruction do students need that they have not already received in their undergraduate business writing classes or in other required graduate writing courses? What makes an advanced writing class advanced? In order to answer those questions, I began looking for articles by other teachers and scholars in the field of professional and business writing. I discovered that in terms of assignments, teachers and scholars seem to agree that client projects form the cornerstones of business writing curricula.

How Do People at FDA Read Documents On-Screen?

With the substantial move to submitting electronic documents versus paper documents to FDA, it is useful to pause and consider how a regulatory reviewer actually reads a large complex technical document on screen.

Why Tech Writers Need To Understand Business: Yet Another Example...

For some years, people, myself included, have noted the lack of interest, even disdain, that many tech writers have for business issues. This reduces these writers' ability to affect company decisions, including decisions that may affect them. Writers from fine arts or English backgrounds can rarely discuss cost-justification in finance terms, so they have little input on buying decisions.

“About Us” Doesn’t Have to be All “Ugh.”

No matter how beautifully designed, if a site’s voice doesn’t ring true, it’s easy to spot an “ugh.” Rather than using this section of a site like a congratulatory press release, consider approaching “About Us” like a magazine’s Editor Letter.

Writing Like a Doctor

The mere act of reading good books, if you are not stopping to scrutinize the moves and tools used by the writers, examining and dissecting the choices they have made and why they work, will do nothing for you when you sit down to write. If you want a journal to accept your paper, or a federal agency to grant you coin, you have to make clear what is at stake and why the reader should care. Then you have to put forward the strongest reasoning based on evidence you provide in the clearest language you are able to rally. And then you need to know when you need help.

Writing For the Market

If you’re a generalist, as most tech writers are, you write about many things in a variety of media with a number of objectives. Each new job involves determining who your audience is, what their needs are, and how your product or service can satisfy those needs. Then you need to recognize, understand, and adjust your writing so one time it appeals to the camper and the next time to the business owner.

Toward a Post-Technê: Or, Inventing Pedagogies for Professional Writing

This article examines the concept of technê in relation to situatedness. Technê is conceived as techniques for situating bodies in contexts. Although many theorists and practitioners in technical communication are working from ecological and posthuman perspectives with regard to interface designs, this article argues for extending those perspectives to workplace and classroom situations. Starting from a Heideggerian reading of technê, the article moves toward the concept of post-technê, which remakes pedagogical techniques for writing and inventing in institutional contexts.

An Ergonomic Format for Short Reporting in Scientific Journals Using Nested Tables and the Deming's Cycle

The typical structure of a scientific report involves highly standardized sections. The key concept of a scientific report is the reproducibility of results. Because not only clarity but also conciseness is a tool for the advancement of science, a new format using nested tables is proposed with the aim of improving the design of short reports in scientific journals, namely short communications, short technical reports, case reports, etc. This format is based on the ergonomic philosophy of visual encyclopaedias (one topic, one page) and on the quality system of the Deming's cycle (plan--do--check--act) for continuous improvement. This new editing tool has several advantages over existing forms, because it provides quick and ergonomic, reader-friendly research reports that, at the same time, would render a saving in terms of available space and publishing costs of the printed version of scientific journals.

Procedural Explanations in Mathematics Writing: A Framework for Understanding College Students' Effective Communication Practices

This study analyzes the procedural explanations written by remedial college mathematics students. Relevant literatures suggest that six communication activities might be key in effective procedural explanations in mathematics writing: (a) orienting the learner, (b) providing kernels or definitions of concepts and procedures, (c) using exemplars or worked examples, (d) providing descriptions of the process or procedure, (e) solidifying learner understanding, and (f) facilitating linguistic control of mathematical terms. Using this framework, 18 practices or types of difficulties were discovered in students' written explanations. Independent experts consistently evaluated student explanations more highly when the explanations contained arithmetic or algebraic exemplars, described specific actions and their meanings, linked new with prior knowledge, and used descriptive language; experts evaluated student explanations more negatively when students displayed difficulties reasoning with kernels, reasoning with exemplars, or with describing processes.

The Life of a Lone Writer

Lone writers are found across all industries, as junior- and senior-level employees, contract workers and direct employees. Sometimes, they’re not even the only writers in their company, but rather are the only writers in their division with either little to no contact — or little to nothing in common — with the other writers in other company divisions.

The Impact of EQ Training on Collaborative Professional Writing

Over the course of each semester, students in 300-level business communication courses can expect to produce a number of various types of messages and reports with emphasis on the psychological development of the message. Although education has traditionally demanded an individual approach to most writing tasks in order to assess student performance, most practitioners in the field of business communication recognize the importance of collaborative writing as a necessary skill in preparing students to enter the job market where teams rather than individuals are the primary work unit.

Writing in the Corporate Workplace: How to Keep Your Writing Healthy at Work

Make sure you know what you're talking about. This means understanding the big picture as well as sweating the small stuff. When interviewing subject matter experts, don't accept high-level answers to questions. Drill down to the details.

Modeling Rhetoric in Scientific Publications

Despite the advent of computer-centered ways of creating and accessing scientific knowledge, the format of the scientific research article has remained basically unchanged. We have developed a model of a more appropriate form for research publications to structure scientific articles, based on a rhetorical structure which is ubiquitous in (natural) science papers. The model has three components: defining rhetorical elements inside the documents, the identification of the argumentational relationships between these elements; and the connection of data elements and entities to external sources.

What Is a White Paper and How Is It Used?

White papers have grown from just another piece of collateral to a super-powered marketing tool. Everywhere you look in marketing, you will see something labeled a "white paper."

Doin' That Old Two-Step: A System for Getting Your Writing Right

Here's an awful question: "What is good writing?" When we run writing workshops for businesspeople, we often begin by asking for the characteristics of good writing versus bad writing. The first list typically contains words like simple, clear, accessible, concise, lively and conversational. The second list is on the flip side of the coin, with participants describing bad writing as complex, wordy, confusing, illogical, full of jargon and having no clear purpose.

What Makes a Story a Story?

When I review internal publications, company or product endorsements, case studies demonstrating customer successes and other print and online communications that purport to convey stories, I find they're often missing crucial story characteristics. They tend to be descriptive of situations instead of relaying actual stories about what occurred. So, what is a story, what is its basic structure and what considerations go into crafting it?

They'll Thank You for Sharing: Make Those Reports, Memos and White Papers Clear and Readable

Words, words, words. It seems as if we're being asked to write something every minute for every need and occasion. Your boss wants a report; your colleagues need a memo explaining a procedure; your clients send e-mails that need to be considered and answered; your company's products or services should be described in a descriptive white paper, and on and on. How can you deal with all that? Are there any general writing rules that apply to business writing of all sorts?

Final Check: Dotting Those i’s and Crossing Those t’s

You’ve worked long and hard on your article, newsletter, press release, promo brochure or report. Now it’s time to move your baby off your screen and into the world. Not so long ago your baby would have gone either onto a printed page or onto the Web. These days, your words will probably head for both. Even materials such as newsletters, white papers, reports and advertorials that are first published on paper are quite likely to be reprinted, archived or otherwise reused on the Web, perhaps even as an audio file or podcast. People may even blog about your content. What does this mean for you as a business communicator?

Training Scientists to be Journalists

Successful applicants show us they can invest their hearts as well as their minds into their writing. They tell us stories that live in our minds long after we read their words.

The Writing of Marketing Materials as Technical Communication

Writers of marketing materials seem to be stepchildren at best in the family of technical communication. Yet one cannot engage in writing effective marketing materials about technical products or services without being a technical communicator. And the more "typical" technical writer--such as an author of documentation--will perform better when she understand-s the marketing component of her work. We will serve the marketing communicator and his technical writer counterpart well by breaking down the barrier that seems to exist between the disciplines.

Marketing Writing for Technical Products

This workshop will examine the types of marketing materials that can give you creative experience. You'll learn how to adapt your skills and subject matter knowledge to these projects, how to plan and develop different types of materials, and how to identify opportunities for new types of communication.

Greatest Copy Shot Ever Written

Anyone can be a copywriter, but the best copywriters actually think about what they're writing.

Improved Student Writing in Business Communication Classes: Strategies For Teaching And Evaluation

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 expected to be proficient writers. In some cases, this is true. In far too many cases, students continue to need writing development. In business communication classes, these weaknesses cannot be ignored. This article's purpose is to give guidance to instructors to motivate their students to produce better written products. The difficulty is how to do this most effectively. The authors present some ideas on how to improve student writing through some creative teaching and evaluation strategies.

Writing for Technical and Business Decision-Maker Audiences

The impact of any technical writing depends on the ability of the writer to understand and address the readers' concern, and to deliver highly usable documents that are relevant to the audience. Especially when readers make business decisions about technology, based on technical communication, writers need to develop best practices for conducting their own audience analysis and writing with audience needs in mind. This paper introduces several likely audiences a technical writer is likely to encounter and makes a few practical recommendations for communicating to them with the intended impact.

The Presentation of Safety Information in Product Manuals

Technical communicators may be asked to design and develop safety information for a product manual. During this process, technical communicators can add value to the presentation of safety information. In addition to adhering to a manufacturer’s internal guideline for the content and formatting of safety information, other factors can be considered as well. This paper presents the following factors: (1) an overview of common failure-to-warn allegations, (2) an analysis of current practices in automotive owner’s manuals for presenting safety information, and (3) an update on a new ANSI Z535 consensus standard for the presentation of safety information in product manuals.

Members' Tips for Writing a Compelling White Paper

It takes time and a strong focus to create a solid white paper, according to TechRepublic members who shared tips and insight about white paper creation. Find out what should be your first step and your last for a successful effort.

The Art and Science of Policy and Procedure Writing and Publishing

This is an informational site dedicated to topics relevant to writing and publishing business process knowledge, especially policies and procedures. The objective of this site is to openly share information about writing and publishing policies and procedures and other forms of business knowledge.

Is Professional Writing Relevant? A Model for Action Research

This article argues that engaged 'action research' can help professional writing researchers both develop new and interesting collaborative models and help our profession develop a greater relevance to those not reading our journals and attending our conferences. I outline one particular, localized approach in the hope that our troubles, struggles, and failures at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee can help others to develop their own programs and can further our discussion of community engagement.

Should Writers Be Held Accountable for Web Page Performance?

Ask print direct response copywriters if they are held accountable, and they'll say yes. That was my own life for 15 years. I wrote direct mail packages and was judged not on my past reputation, but on the performance of each piece I wrote, one mailing at a time.

Where to Find Content for your E-Newsletters, and How to Use It

I am amazed by the number of places you can find content for your newsletter. Some of it takes the form of free articles. Some of it you pay for, and can request any kind of content you like. One way or another, whatever your industry and the focus of your e-newsletter, there are plenty of places to get good content for every issue you send.

Is "Intercultural" Communication a Moot Point?

Good writing is good writing in any language, and focusing on the quality of the writing in your own language is a great start to any communication with people from other cultures.

Communication in Technology Transfer and Diffusion: Defining the Field

Provides an introduction to our field’s connections with technology transfer and diffusion. Technology transfer, the complex social process that moves technology from bench to market, drives global economic growth; technology diffusion, the market-driven process by which innovations are adopted and implemented, follows similar patterns. Indeed, technology transfer and diffusion may be considered synonymous with the phenomenon of growth in a global economy.

Corporate Blogging and the Technical Writer

Corporate blogging is rapidly becoming another way for companies to communicate with their customers and increase internal communication. Learn about the advantages and future of blogging and how to get started.

Issues in Medical Writing

In this country several factors influence the medical writing of medical professionals, professionals in a field that prides itself on combining art with science. The fairly exclusive culture of the medical professional, the power and highly competitive nature of publishing within that discourse community, and the need for accurate, reliable information for immediate use in solving problems, and a strong inclination to put medical 'facts' first and communication of those facts second create interesting dynamics and rhetorical complexities in medical writing.

Lack of Annual Report Analysis on a Social, Political and Historical Basis

One area of rhetorical analysis of business writing that seems to be neglected is the analysis of annual reports on the social, political, and historical level. An admittedly-brief four hour review of on-line technical journals and academic articles on the subject of annual report analysis failed to produce a single article directly related to this subject. The only articles that I did find dealt with the analysis of contemporary annual reports on a financial basis. However, my research did uncover an article on the teaching of the conventions of business writing, such as annual reports, and an article on reconstructing the image and narrative in distressed organizations.

Dead Tree or Detailed Treatise: What is a White Paper?

So what exactly is a white paper? This is one of those questions many people have been wrestling with for some time. If you look up the term in a dictionary, you'll find an outdated response describing a government report.

Steve Slaunwhite, Author and Copywriting Pro

In this interview, Steve shares his insight and tips on successful copywriting and freelancing.

WhitePaperSource

WhitePaperSource is a rich information source for white paper enthusiasts. It contains news about the industry and a forum for discussing everything and anything about writing and marketing white papers.

Writing When You Are NOT the Expert

Have you ever been asked to write a white paper about a topic that is completely foreign to you? If not, you most certainly will. This article will help you set your foot down the right path.

Course Design and Content Organization: A Psychological Perspective

While a lot of effort is spent on designing an effective structure of the course, individual memory is seemingly the more untouched and somehow neglected aspect of our efforts to develop effective learning solutions. There is a need to add a psychological perspective of memory and retention/recollection to the way we design learning solutions.

Wikis, Blogs and Other Community Tools in the Enterprise

Wikis and Web logs (blogs) make a big impact on the Web, but they can also be useful in an enterprise. A community is a group of people with common interests, goals, or responsibilities, such as a project team or an interest group. Combine wikis and blogs with existing collaborative tools to enhance the productivity and effectiveness of enterprise teams.

Issues in Technical Writing

Now it is very important to recognize the vital role of a technical writer and services expected to provide to justify the requirements of this profession. Since technical writer is a sub category of technical communication, that involves other categories involved in documentation, like content writer, software configuration manager, technical editor, information designer and many more.

Signs of Intelligible Life

Looks at a number of institutions that are finding ways to insert plain English into communication between scientists and the public, as well as among scientists of different disciplines.

Wanted: Articulate Scientists

This article outlines the benefits you can realize by articulating your science clearly and succinctly; next time, we'll look at how and why several academic and government institutions as well as some publications are encouraging this trend.

Five FAQs About Business Writing

A few style guide tips for novice business writers.

Maintaining Staff Writing Skills

Use these five tips to reinforce the use of good writing strategies at work.

Dumbing Down vs. Simplicity

Never assume that describing something in basic, simple, fundamental terms will annoy your audience. Dumbing down is a form of distortion and possibly deception. Simplifying and clarifying are forms of altruistic communication. Find out more about the differences between "dumbing down" and simplifying and clarifying...and how to decide how simple an explanation should be.

Technical Writing vs. Science Communication: What is the Difference, and Why Should We Care?

Many technical writer/editors at Los Alamos National Laboratory feel that we (and our colleagues at other institutions) do a good job of helping scientists communicate with each other, but we do not do so well in communicating with the general public. We have done a literature search and interviewed target audience members to learn how to better communicate science. Our research falls into the four following areas: the need for this special knowledge, characterization of audiences, communications strategies, and evaluation of the resulting communication products.

Teaching Science Writing

Teaching students how to write about science for the general public involves helping them research subjects, publications, and audiences. They should learn about research, organization of articles, audience analysis, and writing strategies, and use human interest, background information and examples, proper terminology and pace, and techniques to motivate readers to read the article.

Writing for the Third Millennium

The Third Millennium will require writers to help society cope with rapid technological change. Writers frame experience and communicate it to others in way that allows them to better understand complex ideas and make them part of their own experience. More than ever, technical writers are needed to help society understand the rapid changes taking place. Technology is merging disciplines into multimedia, compressing information into a more compact space.

Writing in the Business Environment

Organisational writing is specialised. To be an effective writer in the business environment, you need to have excellent general writing skills and to understand the complex communication choices involved. Knowing how writing is structured in an organisation and what is acceptable helps you to shape your writing so that it communicates successfully.

Long or Short Copy? Part 2

Why doesn't everyone determine copy length based on the needs and expectations of his site visitors?

The Power of Showing You are Human

Here's a tip on how to achieve that in a way that grabs attention and builds credibility. Illustrate it. Don't tell it.

Knowledge Portal as a New Paradigm for Scientific Publishing and Collaboration

This paper addresses the newly emerging paradigm of scientific knowledge dissemination and collaboration. The paper is based on the particular area of knowledge collaboration in the Architectural, Engineering, Construction and Facilities Management (AEC/FM) industry, including knowledge sharing and technology transfer in the area of environmentally friendly concrete materials. The research and scientific community is moving away from the old “information spread” model for dissemination of scientific information, where knowledge is channelled through paper-based refereed academic journals and conference proceedings. Researchers are becoming involved in publishing their articles in online-refereed journals that provide free or low fee access to scientific information. In this paper the authors propose some general architecture and design guidelines for online, collaborative research environments (Knowledge Portals) in the AEC/FM industry. These virtual, collaborative spaces are becoming an essential part of the modern scientific publishing and knowledge transfer processes within professional communities of practice. The proposed model of the Knowledge Portal for the AEC/FM industry could also serve as a generic model in designing virtual research collaborative environments for other areas of knowledge sharing and collaboration. The paper describes existing technological solutions, adapted by online communities of practice, for maintaining corporate knowledge portals, scientific publishing and knowledge exchange spaces and proposes generic architecture and design principles for a generic Knowledge Portal. As an essential part of the Knowledge Portal, and a sample case study of knowledge dissemination, the paper describes existing stand-alone and Web-based digital collections of research data in the area of environmentally friendly concrete.

Dealing with “Enronitis”: Written Communications for Building Investor Confidence

Recently, investor confidence has deteriorated, in part due to the discovery of fraud at several large companies. As a result, many communications from those in the financial industry have attempted to regain investor trust and confidence. This paper reports my analysis of five such communications and the themes I found appearing in them: need for trust, history of continuous improvement, continued existence of high ethical and professional standards, and investor wisdom. In writing trust-building communications, technical communicators should note: trust is built in several ways, history does not always repeat itself, and emotions are very powerful factors in decision-making.

From Technical Writing To Marketing Communication: Growth From Common Ground

If you think marketing communications are written by an entirely different brand of writer—in a version of the language wholly unlike the one you employ— then think again. Marketing and technical communications do share common ground. And by expanding the horizons of this landscape, you can move into marketing writing. To begin, you must explore what the disciplines share, what attributes are peculiar to marketing communications, and how you can go about developing your skills in this field.

Technical Writers as Marketing Communicators

Although there are important differences between technical and marketing writing, technical writers have some prerequisites that support a transition to marketing writing: in-depth product knowledge, research experience, and strong oral and written communication skills. To develop data sheets, brochures, and other materials technical writers must first understand the goals of marketing communications. By focusing on audience needs and product benefits, by using writing techniques that engage the reader, and by providing appropriate supporting visuals, technical writers can develop persuasive marketing messages.

Memos

A memo is a concise document that conveys essential information about your accomplishment(s). All memos at Ohio University should be written in third person.

Current Status Of Business And Technical Writing Courses In English Departments

We have heard a great deal of talk in recent years about the growth of business and technical writing courses in English departments. But very little, if any, factual information exists on how much enrollments have grown and whether they are expected to grow in the near future. Furthermore, no study has attempted to assess the impact these relatively new, rapidly expanding courses are having and will continue to have on English departments and their faculty members.

Mathematical Writing

Issues of technical writing and the effective presentation of mathematics and computer science. Preparation of theses, papers, books, and 'literate' computer programs.

Getting the Right Tone to Your Business Letter

When you write a business letter, it's important to use a tone that is friendly but efficient. Readers want to know there’s someone at the other end of the letter who is taking notice and showing interest in their concerns. Try to sound—and be—helpful and friendly.

Putting Your Reader First

For all writers the most important people are their readers. If you keep your readers in mind when you write, it will help you use the right tone, appropriate language and include the right amount of detail.

Why Should You Really Care and the Other W’s of Science Writing

The secret to attracting readers from a public increasingly noted for its scientific illiteracy is to hook them. How? By appealing to their real-life concerns, need for stimulating visual images and interesting stories, and sense of humor. Application, not abstractions, are emphasized in effective science writing.

Writing a Strong Opening to Your Business Letter

Your first job in writing any letter is to gain your reader's attention. It's an important principle of effective writing to put the most important information first. Your opening paragraph is both the headline and the lead for the message that follows in the rest of the letter.

Writing About Science for General Audiences

Writing about science for general audiences has its challenges. But by defining your audience (general is rarely general), balancing technical reviews (what the audience wants versus what the scientist thinks they should know), and providing graphics that explain complex concepts to a scientifically unsophisticated audience, you'll do fine.

Writing Powerful Headings for Your Business Letters

Can you imagine reading a newspaper or magazine without any headlines or headings? Headlines and headings help us find our way around, decide what to read, signal what's coming next and highlight key points.

Writing your Business Plan in Plain English

Plain English is clear English. It is simple and direct but not simplistic or patronising. Using plain English doesn’t mean everyone's writing must sound the same. There is no one ‘right’ way to express an idea. There's plenty of room for your own style—but it will only blossom once you have got rid of the poor writing habits that are typical of most business writing.

Writing to Learn in Mathematics

The majority of people, mathematicians included, think that writing out formulas is exactly what we call writing in mathematics. I was guilty of the same preconceptions before I started to work with the Writing Across the Curriculum Project at Medgar Evers College. The definition of writing to learn that we use at MEC helped me come up with the idea that served as the basic principle for my further experiments and conclusions as I implemented writing to learn in mathematics.

Testing the Role of Technical Information in Public Risk Perception

Through experiments with simulated news stories about hazardous materials release, this study finds that providing technical detail about health effects may be less useful than keeping citizens current on the agency's strategies for dealing with problems and other behaviors by officials.

A Virtual Conversation on Bernadette Longo's Spurious Coin: A History of Science, Management, and Technical Writing

A collection of responses to Bernadette Longo's Spurious Coin.

Writing Press Releases

A press release is a (candidate) news story written by a firm for distribution to the media. The purpose of a press release varies from announcing new products, services, and business activities, to introducing the hiring of a new employee. It is not advertising in the classic sense, i.e., there is no hard sell involved although there is a more subtle intent to reach the prospective buyers.

The Art of Risk Communication: Overcoming the Public Fear Surrounding Controversial Projects

Technical writers and editors in the environmental field can make additional contributions to the document production process by becoming familiar with risk communication principles. These principles can help us communicate more effectively with the public about controversial environmental projects, which are ever increasing. Considering the public's power to delay such projects, our ability to diminish public opposition through good risk communication skills is invaluable.

Legal Communication in Technical Communication Programs: Worth Thinking About?

What, if anything, should technical communication programs teach their students about the nature of law and the production of legal discourse? When is technical writing also legal writing, and vice versa; when is legal writing (really) technical? Are there distinctions worth maintaining and dissolving here? Do lawyers' relationships to, and problems with, legal writing contexts and processes parallel in important ways technical writers' relationships to, and problems with, technical writing contexts and processes? If they do, is a conversation between the disciplines worth institutionalizing, at least experimentally, in each other's programs?

The Idea is the Message

Scientific communication differs from technical communication in several ways. One is that scientific communicators work with ideas rather than with a product. They present data and the inferences and conclusions drawn from those data. The information or the idea is the message. Scientific editors facilitate the transfer of knowledge from authors to readers.

"Stepping Lively": Reformatting the Gap Between Student Writing and Professional Writing

Teachers of technical writing are urged to use computers not only for influencing the process of writing but also for designing and formatting the product of writing. Engineering students at a Midwestern university now submit final drafts of senior projects in commercial-style formats, thus increasing their range of skills in the act of preparing final written products and adopting some conventions of communicating in the workplace. Reformatting student writing to mimic commercial-quality writing not only increases the scope and responsibility of writing instruction, but also better prepares students to adapt to communication situations in the workplace.

Go from Brochureware to E-Care

Online brochures don't attract return visits or serve your customers, so turn your Web site into a customer interaction center.

実務文章と楽しみ文章との違い

文章には大きく分けて、実務文章と楽しみの文章があります。実務文章と楽しみの文章とでは、目的や役割、読み手の姿勢が異なりますので、その書き方もおのずと異なります。この２つの文章を、あたかも同じであるかのようにとらえている本がありますが、そのような本はビジネスの現場では使えませんので注意してください。

Contracting and Consulting for Policies and Procedures Engagements

As the number of persons employed by some U.S. organizations declined since the late 1980s, so have employment opportunities for Policies & Procedures (P&P) practitioners. During this period, the number of contractors and consultants has increased to meet the needs of newly changed organizations. A useful way for P&P practitioners to learn how they can provide contracting and consulting services is to understand three roles in leveraging such services: an extra pair of hands, expert, and collaborator.

Resources for Writing Business Plans

A business plan is a document used to start a new business or get funding for a business that is changing in some significant way. Business plans are important documents for business partners who need to agree upon and document their plans, government officials who may need to approve aspects of the plan, and of course potential investors such as banks or private individuals who may decide to fund the business or its expansion.

Expand Your Income by Writing for Magazines

Technical writers are well-equipped to write how-to articles for magazines. There are many markets for informational articles, and by creating a well-crafted query, a competent technical writer can get an assignment. This work is ideal for generating part-time income and it provides a more creative outlet for writers.. Getting ideas for good articles is as simple as following oneâ*™s own interests. Writing for magazines can become a lucrative â*œsecondâ** career for technical writers.

Using Web Tools to Communicate about Risks to the Public

Communicating health, safety, and environmental risks to the public and to the scientific, political, and business communities is a persuasive task as well as an informative one. The job is made easier if the assertions about risk can be backed up with empirical data. But risks are often characterized through the analysis of data sets containing thousands if not millions of measurements. Further, the collection of these data is often conducted by many research teams, and the results often appear in disparate portions of the scientific literature or regulatory reports. On top of all this, environmental, safety, and health data compilations are frequently massive. As a result, finding needed data can be difficult, and understanding it can be bewildering. Web tools are available that synthesize these data and present the information they contain in an organized, understand-able fashion. In doing so, they help risk communicators to focus their writing on a specific topic and to base their assertions on hard facts.

Health and Safety Information for Specialized Vocational Audiences

Using examples from commercial fishing and farming, this article shows how models of health beliefs and risk communication can inform the creation of health and safety materials and campaigns for specialized vocational audiences. These models state that risk communication efforts must balance strong statements of risk with equally strong statements of ways to reduce or avoid risk if they are to motivate change. Audience research can help communicators address attitudes that impair workers’ perceptions of risk, as well as workplace practices, norms, and conditions that the limit the methods that can be used to reduce risk.

The Essentials of Effective Communication

Good writing allows writers to be taken seriously, and being taken seriously is always important in communicating ideas effectively. If a person's writing is awkward, clumsy, or questionable, readers may get the wrong impression. And, first impressions can determine what people will read and what they will not.

Medical Technical Writing

In a multibillion-dollar-per-yearcindustry, medical technical writers are well situated between companies that manufacture drugs and medical equipment and the federal government, which regulates the manufacture of drugs and medical equipment. The government requires that these companies produce specific types of documents, which must be of a very high standard. This situation creates lucrative opportunities for technical writers.

Communicating the Impossible: Is Technology Creating Information Overload?

It is sometimes puzzling why so much of the information to which present-day people are being exposed is so weak. One possible explanation is that because technology makes it so easy to create and distribute large quantities of information in a very short period of time, the creators of the information become more concerned with quantity rather than quality. Is this simply an oversight, a result of too many technocrats who believe that because they created the tools, they are also the best qualified to use them? Or is this phenomenon a deliberate mechanism that has been devised to justify the need for continued technological progress (i.e., more sophisticated communication tools)? One fact is becoming clear: the people driving technology into the future often do not devote enough attention to the quality of information.

Fighting for the Ultimate Desktop

Lately, articles have been appearing in some computer magazines expressing disappointment at the failure of electronic technology to produce a paperless office. What is the problem? Why are offices using more paper than ever before?

Writing Technical Press Releases

Explains how technical communicators with no public relations experience can take charge of their companies' media plans and press releases.

Skimming Is Important

Business documents are read in an irregular manner. Techniques have been developed to aid the reader of paper documents in navigating through those documents.

Nuclear Information: One Rhetorical Moment in the Construction of the Information Age

Since the late 1970's we have been said to be living in the information age, and that name has stuck, with the phrase increasingly appearing throughout the closing decades of the millennium. The slogan, like all slogans, attempts to assert unity in the face of complexity; nonetheless, it captures, better than most such slogans, a dominant theme of almost all aspects of our everyday life. The slogan has its visual icons in advertising and journalism: binary bits flashing down wires and across the sky, tied to no location and independent of the humans who may need or use that information. Information has become an abstract universal, like atoms and electrons, to create or serve any entity, in no particular configuration, serving no particular purpose, gathered and used by no particular people (but of course provided or facilitated by specific companies who make this information their business). Information, however, is a human creation for human purposes, even if our devices now produce terrabytes of signals that travel only to other devices, never to be seen or touched by humans. This essay recovers a small piece of the history by which we constructed our understandings and uses of information, so that information has become pervasive in everyday life, needs, and action. It considers how information came to have major governmental and military meanings to the U.S. public during World War Two and after, and how an anti-nuclear test activist group asserted an alternative understanding of information to foster public opposition to government policy. This rhetorical reconstruction of information advanced a culture of citizen information, validated by citizen scientists to serve the needs and concerns of citizens, which pervaded the anti-war, environmental, and consumer movements that became our everyday reality in the second half of the century. Such citizen information embodies multiple assumptions about threats to everyday life, the necessity of reliable and up-to-date information for action to oppose the threats, large institutions whose interests are served by the threatening situation and which limit access to relevant information, science as an independent and objective source of information, and the responsibilities of a citizen to be informed.

Using the Enthymeme as a Heuristic in Professional Writing Courses

In the following pages, I will offer a methodology for letter and memoranda writing which exchanges an emphasis on forms for one on rhetorical analysis. Ultimately, training in rhetorical analysis helps students exercise and refine the analytical and analogical thinking needed for any discipline; that is, a professional writing course can serve, as Carolyn Miller says, to 'present mechanical rules and skills against a broad understanding of why and how to adjust or violate the rules, of the social implications of the roles a writer casts for himself or herself, and for the reader, and of the ethical repercussions of one’s words—effects which emphasize the fundamental nature of the humanities' (617). But before addressing how a professional writing course advances a liberal education, or even why to adopt a new methodology, it would be instructive to look at the causes for a letter such as the one which opens this article. Certainly, cost is a consideration, it being cheaper to mail form letters than have secretaries research and write personalized letters; for a mail order business, though, especially one whose clientele pay substantial prices, this strategy may be penny-wise and pound-foolish. However, the two causes I want to discuss pertain more to the concerns of a writing class: the writer’s reliance on forms, and the lack of analysis of context and audience.

Converting Science News for the Web

With the Internet emerging as a primary newsgathering source, many traditional media outlets have converted their products for online viewing. This paper explores how two science news magazines, New Scientist and Science News, have approached this challenge. Elements of hyptertext theory are also included.

The Executive Summary: A Key to Effective Communication

Presenting the correct written information to a business decision maker in the appropriate form is often critical to the success of the project. A lengthy report is not likely to be read, while a project abstract with insufficient information may not allow the decision maker to act. In these cases, the executive summary may be the writer's only opportunity to convince the decision-maker to act.

Writing Material Safety Data Sheets Using the American National Standard for Hazardous Industrial Chemicals-MSDS Preparation

This article presents the history of the ANSI standard for preparation of Material Safety Data Sheets, and then provides a section-by-section guide to preparing MSDSs that comply with the standard.