Review: Communication Reference Books for Engineers and Scientists

Over the past years, many reference books have been published for various science and engineering disciplines. Based on publishers’ descriptions, I selected four for review.

Kaempf, Charlotte. ATTW Bulletin (2005). Articles>Reviews>Scientific Communication>Engineering

Review: Communication Skills for the Processing of Words, 5th Edition    

This text aims to prepare students for entry-level jobs and foster their career progress after they enter the workplace. The focus of this book is not as broad as the typical introductory text on business communication. However, this book could be the right choice for an advanced business writing course in a high school or an introductory business writing course in a college, university, or technical school. This book might also work well as a supplement in a postsecondary business communication course for use by students who either have not completed a 1st-year composition course or who have completed that course without mastering grammar, mechanics, and style. This textbook includes 18 units: 8 discuss specific types of punctuation (e.g., commas and colons); 7 cover usage and mechanics (e.g., capitalization and numbers); and 3 cover grammar (e.g., subject and verb agreement).

Stallworth Williams, Linda. Business Communication Quarterly (2007). Articles>Reviews>Textbooks>Business Communication

Review: The Complete Guide to Digital Graphic Design  

Bob Gordon and Maggie Gordon, authors of The Complete Guide to Digital Graphic Design, reinforce effective design principles by creating a text that visually inspires and instructs. With its vibrant colors and captivating images, the book demonstrates the capabilities of graphic design through instructive images and text. Each page provides a snapshot into the creativity and power of graphic design.

Craft, Tiffany. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Reviews>Graphic Design

Review: A Concise Guide to Technical Communication  

If one of the savory ironies of reviewing a text on technical communication is the potential for contradiction between discussion of principles and execution of principles, then one of its joys is finding a book that hits the mark. Gurak and Lannon's A Concise Guide to Technical Communication does just that.

MacLemale, Laura A. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Reviews>TC

Review: Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery  

One comes away from the book with a feeling of an enormous challenge—technical, organizational, budgetary, and political. If you or your boss is considering developing and deploying a content management system at your place of work and you both want to know what you might be in for, get this book.

Hudak-David, Ginny. Technical Communication Online (2003). Articles>Reviews>Content Management>Personalization

Review: Convergence and Emergence: 2008 IA Summit

The 2008 IA Summit was held April 10–14, at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Miami, Florida, shown in Figure 1. It had the highest attendance in the conference’s nine-year history: Over 600 people signed up for the conference run by ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science and Technology). All the signs are that information architecture (IA) is a community and a practice that is growing, and that its sister disciplines—interaction design (IxD) and experience design—are well-represented at the conference—not just in terms of attendees, but also speakers.

Kelway, James. UXmatters (2008). Articles>Reviews>Information Design>Interaction Design

Review: Copyediting: A Practical Guide  

If you could own only one book on copyediting, Karen Judd's Copyediting: A Practical Guide would be an excellent choice. Even if you already own the second edition, published in 1990, you will certainly find useful updates in the new third edition.

Judd, Karen. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Reviews>Editing

Review: The Copyeditor's Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications  

The Copyeditor's Handbook is a solid resource for novice and experienced copyeditors alike. Although it functions well as a textbook and a general learning tool, it certainly is not a replacement for The Chicago manual of style, nor does it purport to be. It's a book that acknowledges an assortment of vexing copyediting questions and offers multiple answers to most of them.

Hernandez, Gary. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Reviews>Editing

Review: Counterfeit Capital: Searching for a Silver Lining in Bernadette Longo's Spurious Coin    

Dr. Bernadette Longo, Ph.D., uses the metaphor of devalued currency to trace some of the roots in technological history for technical writing's lack of intellectual and cultural capital. She ingeniously incorporates early threads of management and industrial technology, like the formation of the railroad, in an attempt to contextualize her research. Academics must view Longo's text, Spurious Coin, as just one branch of what must be a webbed tree of intersecting social attitudes towards knowledge definition and science. In understanding the gaps in Longo's narrative, people interested in technical writing might find her book to act as a launch pad for better defining the questions guiding their own research. In this review, I will focus on some of the important gaps I see in Longo's research methodology as she historically situates the emergence of engineering as a discipline and then as the determining factor in technical communication's subjugated position within the academy and industry.

Trim, Michelle. Journal of Computer Documentation (2001). Articles>Reviews>Documentation>History

Review: The Craft of Scientific Presentations: Critical Steps to Succeed and Critical Errors to Avoid  

As the word craft in the title of the book suggests, the ability to give good presentations is not a genetically linked trait but a craft that can be learned.

Armbruster, David L. Technical Communication Online (2004). Articles>Reviews>Presentations>Scientific Communication

Review: Creating Conceptual Comics: Storytelling and Techniques

How often can you say you truly learned something completely new in a design workshop? For me, it had been a long time. But there I was, working hands-on with paper and pencil, dreaming up great ideas, and experimenting with visual communication in a medium I hadn't before seriously considered for the purpose. If you have a chance to attend this workshop, do it! If nothing else, it'll help you remember why you wanted to be a designer in the first place.

Hinton, Andrew. UXmatters (2006). Articles>Reviews>Technical Illustration

Review: Culture, Technology, Communication: Towards an Intercultural Global Village  

The Internet is continually changing how we think about "the office." Online media now allow us to exchange information with overseas colleagues almost as quickly and as easily as we can with coworkers located across the hallway from our workstations. This new degree of access, however, means that cultural differences could affect workplace interactions.

St. Amant, Kirk R. Technical Communication Online (2004). Articles>Reviews>Collaboration>International

Review: CyberRegs: A Business Guide to Web Property, Privacy, and Patents  

By providing excellent and easy-to-read overviews of certain legal developments, CyberRegs helps readers understand the ever-changing challenges of regulating cyberspace interactions. By including listings of online resources on specific legal topics, the author also provides a method for augmenting what one learns in the book itself. For these reasons, CyberRegs is a resource that can continue to prove useful even after the laws it examines have changed.

St. Amant, Kirk R. Technical Communication Online (2004). Articles>Reviews>Intellectual Property>Online

Review: Degunking Microsoft Office

Degunking Microsoft Office, by Christina Palaia and Wayne Palaia, addresses the problem of anything that slows down the computer, interferes with your operations, crashes applications, or loses data, and presents some ways of avoiding it.

Delwood, Robert. STC Houston (2006). Articles>Reviews>Software>Microsoft Word

Review: Demolition Derby

I started The Myths of Innovation in a positive frame of mind, generated by my interest in the topic (and the excitement of seeing my photos in print). I ended the book similarly enthusiastic. While it isn't a long read (I started in Cambridge and finished before I touched down in Los Angeles), good books don't need a lot of words to make their point. Scott Berkun clearly presents his arguments, demolishing many of the misconception about innovation. For those of us running businesses or developing new products, it's a must-read.

Robertson, James. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Reviews>Information Design

Review: DENIM, del Lápiz a la Web

El diseño de sitios web suele empezar con bosquejos hechos con papel y lápiz. Denim convierte directamente los diagramas que salen de una tableta gráfica o del dibujo con el ratón en prototipos de sitios web funcionales.

Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2003). (Spanish) Articles>Reviews>Software>Web Design

Review: Design Is Rocket Science

Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction is cunningly released at a time when acceptance of Interaction Design as a discipline is reaching a critical mass. The book precipitates a huge turn in the creation of interactive technologies toward the more research/creative or human-centric model, approaching the subject of this change from different angles and illuminating historical insights.

Evans, Clifton. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Reviews>Information Design

Review: Designing for Interaction

Dan Saffer's Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices was an ambitious undertaking. In fewer than 300 pages, he has attempted to cover the history, current practice, and notions about the future of the rapidly evolving discipline of interaction design (IxD). Whether you are simply curious about interaction design, are entering the profession yourself, or are collaborating with an interaction designer, Designing for Interaction is a good place to start your journey down the road of interaction design.

Frishberg, Leo. UXmatters (2006). Articles>Reviews>Interaction Design

Review: Designing Interfaces

Over the past few years, I have come to appreciate the power patterns have as a shorthand that lets software engineers communicate their design intentions. Being able to discuss an Observer or Factory pattern with other engineers quickly moves the design discussion to more substantive concerns.

Frishberg, Leo. UXmatters (2006). Articles>Reviews>User Interface

Review: Designing With Web Standards

Jeffrey Zeldman shows us how we should be doing things, plain and simple.

Accessify (2003). Articles>Reviews>Web Design>Standards

Review: e-Video: Producing Internet Video as Broadband Technologies Converge

e-Video is divided into four major sections: Opportunity, Production, Compression, and Delivery. Although these can (and must) get a bit technical to be useful, I found Alesso's style understandable.

Boeri, Bob. Boston Broadside (2001). Articles>Reviews>Multimedia>Video

Review: Easy Web Graphics  

Easy Web Graphics would be a good choice for novice or intermediate users of Microsoft FrontPage and Microsoft Photo Editor who want to make better use of those products.

Hudak-David, Ginny. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Reviews>Graphic Design>Web Design

Review: The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information, by Richard A. Lanham    

This is a clever, witty, and engaging--if at times frustrating--book. The central thesis is that in our information age, made possible by digital technology, the scarce commodity to be allocated (and thus a matter of economics) is not 'stuff,' broadly defined as what you can kick or the information based on such stuff (also, stuff). We're drowning in stuff. Instead, it's attention that's scarce, and allocating attention is a matter of style, of rhetoric.

Andrews, Deborah C. JBC (2007). Articles>Reviews>Rhetoric

Review: Effective Prototyping for Software Makers

Effective Prototyping for Software Makers is an ambitious undertaking that in some ways redefined the meaning of prototyping for me. No reader is likely to absorb this tome from cover to cover--certainly not in one sitting and maybe never. The authors have tried to include as much information as possible on the topic, resulting in an extensive reference that paradoxically leaves me unsatisfied.

Frishberg, Leo. UXmatters (2007). Articles>Reviews>Prototyping