http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Rhetoric A listing of the most recently indexed works about Articles and Rhetoric in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Rhetoric http://tc.eserver.org/35528.html http://tc.eserver.org/35528.html In a case like this, you don’t need documentation made up of perfectly-chosen words and phrases. Instead, you need something that can be easily scanned, easily understood, and easily digested. Documentation that distills the main points quickly. Far more quickly than even the kind of minimalist documentation that I encourage can. http://tc.eserver.org/35458.html http://tc.eserver.org/35458.html Whether you are getting a client to sign off on a website’s design or persuade a user to complete a call to action, we all need to know how to be convincing. Like many in the Web design industry, I have a strange job. I am part salesperson, part consultant and part user experience designer. One day I could be pitching a new idea to a board of directors, the next I might be designing an e-commerce purchasing process. There is, however, a common theme: I spend most of my time persuading people. http://tc.eserver.org/35437.html http://tc.eserver.org/35437.html This article develops a rhetorical theory of delivery for Internet-based communications. Delivery, one of the five key canons of classical rhetoric, is still an important topic for rhetorical analysis and production. However, delivery needs to be re-theorized for the digital age. In Part 1, the article notes the importance of delivery in traditional rhetoric and argues that delivery should be viewed as a form of rhetorical knowledge (techne). Part 2 presents a theoretical framework for “digital delivery” consisting of five key topics—Body/Identity, Distribution/Circulation, Access/Accessibility, Interaction, and Economics—and shows how each of these topics can function strategically and heuristically to guide digital writing. http://tc.eserver.org/35358.html http://tc.eserver.org/35358.html Describes the most challenging aspect of creating slides for an oral presentation. Presents two principles for creating informative and persuasive graphics. Explains how to use drawing tools to communicate the schema of the slide and to emphasize important portions of the images. http://tc.eserver.org/35318.html http://tc.eserver.org/35318.html What can a non-designer do to harness the power of visual design without calling professional help? Quite a lot, says internationally-regarded visual designer Dan Rubin. We called Dan to talk about what design techniques are accessible to mere mortals. http://tc.eserver.org/35331.html http://tc.eserver.org/35331.html The purpose of this article is to reflect upon the emergence of programs in rhetoric, technical, professional, and scientific communication (RTPSC) during the past twenty years through a personal narrative of experiences from graduate study to the present. Using a method of inquiry based in rhetorical meditation, the article presents a story of these experiences at Purdue University, Miami University-Ohio, and Michigan Tech University and then moves outward toward national concerns and, finally, suggests a selected “inventory” of challenges the RTPSC field faces in the coming years. http://tc.eserver.org/35273.html http://tc.eserver.org/35273.html In 2009 we are in the midst of an interesting era for data visualization, particularly as it becomes coupled with the social web. Increasing processing speed, bandwidth and storage capacity are making it relatively simple to render and access visual representations of data. Developers have released libraries of code so we can easily create our own visualizations; and access to all kinds of data is becoming incredibly standardized, particularly through the use of APIs. So as visualization becomes much more straightforward to integrate into online environments, it makes sense to rethink how it can best be used in this setting. http://tc.eserver.org/35232.html http://tc.eserver.org/35232.html Through the designs we create, we have the ability to directly influence another person’s behavior. The ethical implications of this are important and not easily definable. I was interested in ethics before I ever considered becoming a designer, but the lessons I learned while studying philosophy impacts the way I view my designs. In nature, our goal is a good one. We strive to help others by improving the interactions that define their life. This drives us to create and innovate new ways of interacting with old concepts. The question remains, do we have the right to influence another person? Further, are there guiding principles we can follow that can keep us on the moral path? The answers to these questions rests on the shoulders of the whole community, not a single person or group. http://tc.eserver.org/35212.html http://tc.eserver.org/35212.html Why do product manuals sound formal and stiff-upper-lipped? Why don’t users read manuals? These questions have haunted the precincts of Technical Writing for quite some time now. From what I have seen in Indian writers, I am forced to conclude that English Composition, as we were taught in school, is the culprit. Our merit was based on how verbose we were. They judged our style based on how ‘formal’ we were. Take for example, the leave letter. I am sure you have written a few in school or college. Rewind and replay one of those leave letters. Right from the salutation (Respected Sir/Madam) to the signature (Faithfully/Obediently yours) it reeks of colonialism. And, we have yet to learn our lessons. In this age of globalization (or globalisation, to my stiff-upper-lip comrades), it is important to pay attention to the three Cs: Consistency, Context, and Culture. http://tc.eserver.org/35205.html http://tc.eserver.org/35205.html "Leverage," "interface," and "circle back" are among the most annoying and overused terms in work settings today, according to a new survey of executives. http://tc.eserver.org/35129.html http://tc.eserver.org/35129.html This article documents a novel yet theory-informed process of preparing research reports designed for government officials who are concerned with creating adult-literacy policy. The authors use cartoons that include verbatim dialogue from the transcripts of interviews with research participants with low functional literacy. This dialogue, which depicts positive messages about the participants’ moral character, strengths, and resilience, is set against photographic backdrops of the participants’ lived environment to give a sense of real people in a real place. Inclusion of such images is an attempt to change policy-report readers’ thinking about adult literacy because creative visual communication offers ways to approach this challenge that text alone cannot. http://tc.eserver.org/35138.html http://tc.eserver.org/35138.html In working with business executives, engineers, and government officials to improve their writing, I learned that it is much easier to teach clarity than tone. To bolster lessons on tone, I now draw on theory and research from interpersonal communication and social psychology. In the following discussion, I describe one such approach: applying the concept of defensiveness to business and technical writing. http://tc.eserver.org/35145.html http://tc.eserver.org/35145.html We communicate via many forms every day. When what we say or write is misunderstood, the fault may lie with either party. One source of miscommunication is the different meaning people place on commonly used words and phrases. In this article, the authors report preliminary results from a study on such miscommunication and lay out an agenda for research on improving business communication based on the Integrative Model of Levels of Analysis of 'Miscommunication,' developed by Coupland, Wiemann, and Giles. http://tc.eserver.org/35147.html http://tc.eserver.org/35147.html This study investigates the relationship between strategic leader language (as embodied in Motivating Language Theory) and employee absenteeism. With a structural equation model, two perspectives were measured for the impact of leader spoken language: employee attitudes toward absenteeism and actual attendance. Results suggest that leader language does in fact have a positive, significant relationship with work attendance through the mediation effect of worker attendance attitude. http://tc.eserver.org/35094.html http://tc.eserver.org/35094.html Designers believe that if something isn’t working well, and it comes down to changing the copy or the design, it’s always the copy that should be changed, reduced or sometimes nearly completely eliminated. How can I convince my designer co-workers that succinct, simple and memorable words can be just as important as the visuals? http://tc.eserver.org/35049.html http://tc.eserver.org/35049.html We need context in order to live, and if the environment of electronic communication has stopped providing it, we shouldn't search online for a solution but turn back to the real world and slow down. To do this, we need to uncouple our idea of progress from speed, separate the idea of speed from effi­ciency, pause and step back enough to realize that efficiency may be good for business and governments but does not always lead to mindfulness and sustainable, rewarding relationships. http://tc.eserver.org/34981.html http://tc.eserver.org/34981.html As digital cameras have become ubiquitous, and cheap (or free) photo websites plentiful, more people than ever are using images in presentations. Images are not appropriate for every kind of talk, but even when images are appropriate (such as keynote/ballroom style presentations), people are still making the same common mistakes. So here are some things to keep in mind if you use images in your next talk. http://tc.eserver.org/34997.html http://tc.eserver.org/34997.html Phishing e-mails deceive individuals into giving out personal information which may then be utilized for identity theft. One particular type, the Personal Solicitation E-mail (PSE) mimics personal letters—modern perversions of ars dictaminis (the classical art of letter writing). In this article, I determine and discuss 19 appeals common to the PSE. These appeals were established first by conducting generative rhetorical analysis, then by volunteer coding, on 170 e-mails collected over a 12-month period. After defining these categories, I show how these letters are excellent twenty-first century teaching tools for pathos-based argumentation, logical appeals, the creation of ethos, and kairos in the development of perceived exigency. http://tc.eserver.org/34916.html http://tc.eserver.org/34916.html Each time I sign up a CIO speaker, I hopefully suggest the option of going slide-free. From the reaction I get, you'd think I suggested walking on stage pants-free. http://tc.eserver.org/34881.html http://tc.eserver.org/34881.html Scholarly conversation within the field of professional communication increasingly has focused on the practice, research, and pedagogy of visual rhetoric. Yet, visual thinking has received relatively little attention within the field. If our programs produce students who can think verbally but not visually, they risk producing writers who are visual technicians but are unable to move fluidly between and within modes of communication. This article examines the literature and pedagogical practices of visually oriented disciplines to identify strategies for helping students develop the ambidexterity of thought needed for the communication tasks of today's workplace. http://tc.eserver.org/34849.html http://tc.eserver.org/34849.html This study explores how employees express dissent to management about the same issue on multiple occasions across time (i.e., how they practice repetition). Employees completed a survey instrument reporting how often they used varying upward dissent tactics, how often and for how long they raised the same issue, and how they perceived their supervisors responded to their concerns. Results indicate that employees relied predominantly on competent upward dissent tactics but that they adopted less competent and more face-threatening tactics as repetition progressed. In addition, employees' perceptions of their supervisors' responses to repetition related to the overall duration of repetition but not to the frequency with which employees raised issues or the amount of time that elapsed between dissent episodes. http://tc.eserver.org/34855.html http://tc.eserver.org/34855.html In contemporary organizations, competitive advantage can come from ideas employees communicate to supervisors for improving processes, products, and services. One approach to studying employee communications with supervisors is voice behavior. In this research, the authors consider leader— member exchange (LMX) and the individual cultural value orientation of power distance (PD) as predictors of voice. Two studies, conducted in different countries, demonstrate the unique and combined effects of these predictors. In Study 1, conducted in the United States, LMX was positively related to voice, PD was negatively related to voice, and PD made more of a difference in voice when LMX was high. In Study 2, conducted in Colombia, LMX and PD were both related to voice but did not interact. The authors discuss the implications for theory and practice. http://tc.eserver.org/34856.html http://tc.eserver.org/34856.html The complex distribution and negotiation of authority in real time is a key issue for today's organizations. The authors investigate how the negotiations that sustain authority at work actually unfold by analyzing the ways of talking and acting through which organizational members establish their authority. They argue that authority is achieved through presentification—that is, by making sources of authority present in interaction. On the basis of an empirical analysis of a naturally occurring interaction between a medical coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières and technicians of a hospital supported by her organization, the authors identify key communicative practices involved in achieving authority and discuss their implications for scholars' understanding of what being in authority at work means. http://tc.eserver.org/34776.html http://tc.eserver.org/34776.html When we start talking consistency, we often think of our documents’ formatting. Consistency is important from the serial comma all the way up to the arrangement of information. http://tc.eserver.org/34724.html http://tc.eserver.org/34724.html The credibility of web sites is becoming an increasingly important area to understand. To expand knowledge in this domain, we conducted an online study that investigated how different elements of Web sites affect people’s perception of credibility. Over 1400 people participated in this study, both from the U.S. and Europe, evaluating 51 different Web site elements. The data showed which elements boost and which elements hurt perceptions of Web credibility. Through analysis we found these elements fell into one of seven factors. In order of impact, the five types of elements that increased credibility perceptions were “real-world feel,” “ease of use,” “expertise,” “trustworthiness,” and “tailoring.” The two types of elements that hurt credibility were “commercial implications” and “amateurism.” This large-scale study lays the groundwork for further research into the elements that affect Web credibility. The results also suggest implications for designing credible Web sites. http://tc.eserver.org/34725.html http://tc.eserver.org/34725.html The issue of building trust with the audience is core to technical communication. If the user doesn’t trust your instruction, it’s worthless—no matter how well researched, thought out, and reviewed it is and how much time, effort, or problems it will save. http://tc.eserver.org/34684.html http://tc.eserver.org/34684.html This exercise of increasing diagrams and illustrations to assist visual learners could potentially help me increase the clarity of the text in any deliverable so that it benefits any who take the time to read or at least scan. At the very least, asking myself whether I could easily illustrate or visualize the text may help me write more clearly. http://tc.eserver.org/34669.html http://tc.eserver.org/34669.html Given the engineering audience, one can’t hope for too much style and flair in the prose, but it reads like a college textbook, outlining basic principles in a flat way. It is too focused on “clarity, accuracy, correctness, etc.” (p.79) to make for a fun or engaging read. http://tc.eserver.org/34663.html http://tc.eserver.org/34663.html User interface experts are often suspicious of the role of visual aesthetics in user interfaces—and of designers who insist that graphic emotive impact and careful attention to a site’s visual framework really contribute to measurable success. Underneath the arguments, I see a fundamental culture clash. http://tc.eserver.org/34566.html http://tc.eserver.org/34566.html Annotations come in all shapes and sizes depending on the artifact and the intent of the document. People are probably most familiar with wireframe annotations, where the author calls out areas of the screen to describe functionality not immediately discernible from the picture alone. http://tc.eserver.org/34444.html http://tc.eserver.org/34444.html Why do product manuals sound formal and stiff-upper-lipped? Why don’t users read manuals? These questions have haunted the precincts of Technical Writing for quite some time now. From what I have seen in Indian writers, I am forced to conclude that English Composition, as we were taught in school, is the culprit. http://tc.eserver.org/34392.html http://tc.eserver.org/34392.html Our capacity for mimesis -- the capacity to represent experiences and states-of-affairs in iconic and indexical formats under strict bodily control -- molds later symbolic thought and action. Culture is not the initial product of language, language is the product of a particular manifestation of Mimetic Culture. http://tc.eserver.org/34155.html http://tc.eserver.org/34155.html Producing effective charts is essential to any document that conveys technical, scientific, or financial data. Here are four suggestions to ensure that your charts are effective and enhance rather than detract from your document. http://tc.eserver.org/34142.html http://tc.eserver.org/34142.html A while ago, I queried the techrhet mailing list for suggestions. I asked: Which five technical/technological skills (beyond the basics of e-mailing and word processing) would you make absolutely sure you had under control at the start or the end of the PhD process? Here are the responses. http://tc.eserver.org/34051.html http://tc.eserver.org/34051.html Since you only have 140 characters to get your message across, you’re forced to dust off your dictionary and thesaurus and find new words to use—Words that are shorter, words that are more descriptive, and words that get the job done in 140 characters or less. http://tc.eserver.org/34016.html http://tc.eserver.org/34016.html You may not have known your presentations have protagonists, but they do (or should). And whether the protagonist is you, your product, your cause or even your audience, IT must be primarily responsible for the major benefit or crisis you are trying to convey. If you’re selling a product or service, let it demonstrate exactly what it does. If you’re asking for funds, the audience may be the protagonist. Make it clear that they are the key to making it all happen. http://tc.eserver.org/33962.html http://tc.eserver.org/33962.html Educators should include new dimensions of visual literacy in academic curricula. Today’s students are actively involved in interactive experiences. They are contributing content to websites as well as designing websites and other types of online experiences for the public. Students need to understand the semiotics of interactive computing and how the integration of diverse sensory data with social interaction impacts the way we interpret online information. http://tc.eserver.org/33891.html http://tc.eserver.org/33891.html Several authors of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the projected effects of global warming now say they regret not pushing harder to include an updated diagram of climate risks in the report. The diagram, known as “burning embers,” is an updated version of one that was a central feature of the panel’s preceding climate report in 2001. http://tc.eserver.org/33878.html http://tc.eserver.org/33878.html People perceive someone who speaks up as a competent leader - regardless of whether they actually are competent. That’s the finding of a fascinating research study that has just been reported online at Time. http://tc.eserver.org/33656.html http://tc.eserver.org/33656.html What is it about XML, and the technical publishing solutions that storing content in XML enables, that makes non-technical, design-oriented people in publishing want to run for the hills while screaming “You just don’t get it!”, leaving the technical people in publishing in the dust, wondering why no one understands all the wonderful benefits that can be reaped through publishing automated by XML-enabled technologies. http://tc.eserver.org/33504.html http://tc.eserver.org/33504.html In situations of potential business change, the cooperation of various direct and indirect stakeholders (i.e., employees, customers, shareholders, neighbors) is crucial. The alternative policy courses may all be reasonable, and yet none of them may be clearly best for all stakeholders; support for an option must be cultivated through public rhetoric. Loci communes and Burkean transcendence are two potent rhetorical strategies that can help business leaders publicly weigh and civilly advocate a policy position relative to competing alternatives. This article develops and illustrates that argument by analyzing the public rhetoric involved in AirTran's attempt to build support for its hostile takeover of Midwest Airlines and Midwest's successful resistance to that attempt. Midwest's deft development of the transcendent term value helped it circumvent the initial deadlock between its preferred loci communes (i.e., the existent and quality) and AirTran's (i.e., the possible and quantity). The article advances a rationale and call for rhetorical scholarship to adopt more situated, social practice views of loci communes and transcendence. http://tc.eserver.org/33481.html http://tc.eserver.org/33481.html In many of my columns, I have touted the importance of persuasive, or influential, content and shared relevant theories and arguments, sprinkling in some practical tips and examples along the way. This column brings together a collection of practical tips, or recipes, for persuasive content. http://tc.eserver.org/33483.html http://tc.eserver.org/33483.html How can design teams get to a successful visual design with their clients? Getting to the right visual design can be the trickiest part of a design project. One of the key reasons is that some clients have a hard time saying clearly what they want from the visual design. http://tc.eserver.org/33413.html http://tc.eserver.org/33413.html Maybe your business isn’t a massage clinic, but you are probably as passionate about the heart of your business as my client is about hers. I’m not talking about what you do. I’m talking about your business being an extension of who you are. For your business, I believe a blog is the answer. But not a stupid blog. http://tc.eserver.org/33318.html http://tc.eserver.org/33318.html The poem at the top of the linked page was written around the time that I first conceived of creating a not-for-profit (NPO) online meeting place for academic research writers, editors, translators, illustrators, and publishers (The Research Cooperative). The aim of the poem is to emphasize the creative and contemplative aspects of academic writing, and it has been posted on the Research Cooperative as a kind of founding text for the site. http://tc.eserver.org/33288.html http://tc.eserver.org/33288.html Few people have ever commented about my blog’s design at all. The same goes with the music intros for my podcasts. I can change the music each time, and no one ever responds. In contrast, if a post has good content, I see a steady stream of comments. My experience leads me to conclude that content is about 90% important, and design is 10% important. http://tc.eserver.org/33291.html http://tc.eserver.org/33291.html Connecting people and giving them a place in the world IS (what makes you a living). I immediately thought, this affects technical authors. They connect people to information, rather than people. They help people find their place. They play a role in building and maintaining an organisation's tribe. They show there's more to the supplier-customer relationship than the moment of the sale. http://tc.eserver.org/33228.html http://tc.eserver.org/33228.html Visual communication can be thought of as two intertwined parts: personality, or look and feel, and visual organization. The personality of a presentation is what provides the emotional impact —your instinctual response to what you see. Creating an appropriate personality requires the use of colors, type treatments, images, shapes, patterns, and more, to “say” the right thing to your audience. This article, however, focuses on the other side of the visual communication coin: visual organization. http://tc.eserver.org/32963.html http://tc.eserver.org/32963.html In order for a Web application to be "usable", it must be understandable. It needs to communicate, and communicate effectively. When a user interacts with a Web application they have only the visual presentation (the interface) to "tell" them what the application has to offer, and how they can make use of it. As a result, designers must rely on visual communication principles to tell our audience: about the behavior, structure, and purpose of our Web applications. The better at communicating we are, the easier it is for our audience to understand our messages and intentions, and the easier it is for them to use and appreciate our Web applications. http://tc.eserver.org/32983.html http://tc.eserver.org/32983.html Scientists tell us that visual communication is natural human behaviour which all normally sighted persons engage in every day and take for granted, yet it is the product of a complex human intelligence that is very poorly understood. http://tc.eserver.org/32984.html http://tc.eserver.org/32984.html Strong visual design is about balance. It requires an appropriate relationship between written content, information hierarchy and the use of visual elements such as graphics and photography. While most visual designers will tacitly acknowledge this, the preponderance of visual design artifacts shows a bias toward either the words or the visual elements, and too often does not reflect strong information hierarchy. These all-too-frequent examples of spotty visual design belie personal comfort levels and experience. http://tc.eserver.org/32768.html http://tc.eserver.org/32768.html The 2008 Presidential election's brought a new battleground to the forefront of the political arena - online. The online activities of both Barack Obama and John McCain, and their UK counterparts, highlights the increasing reach and influence of online channels and seems to be setting a trend for elections to come. http://tc.eserver.org/32675.html http://tc.eserver.org/32675.html Metaphor teaches. Metaphor influences. Are you drawing on its power? Perhaps not, because many major works on writing for interactive products make little mention of it. To help encourage better use of metaphor, this column describes both the usefulness of shallow metaphors and the potential of deep metaphors, while offering tips and examples. http://tc.eserver.org/32616.html http://tc.eserver.org/32616.html Pedagogical and scholarly representations of collaborative writing and knowledge construction in technical communication have traditionally recognized consensus as the logical outcome of collaborative work, even as scholars and teachers have acknowledged the value of conflict and "dissensus" in the process of collaborative knowledge building. However, the conflict-laden work product of a Denver task force charged with recommending changes to the city police department's use-of-force policy and proposing a process for police oversight retains the collaborative group's dissensus and in doing so, illustrates an alternative method of collaborative reporting that challenges convention. Such an approach demonstrates a dissensus-based method of reporting that has the potential to open new rhetorical spaces for collaborative stakeholders by gainfully extending collaborative conversations and creating new opportunities for ethos development, thus offering scholars, teachers, and practitioners a way of reimagining the trajectory and outcome of collaborative work. http://tc.eserver.org/32489.html http://tc.eserver.org/32489.html Sometimes, we come across articles on technical subjects that are hard to put down. They even make us ruminate over their content, and talk about them. Though these articles are just for our information, they end up staying in our heart by chance or by design. It is not possible to get so far a reach through the technical coverage alone. The authors have presented them so nicely that we even resist any demand to stop in the middle while reading them. We find such articles mostly in news papers and magazines. As an editor, I have my own reasons for that 'Coup de grâce'! We, the technical writers, can surely pick up some of the clues from our brethren - the journalists. http://tc.eserver.org/32302.html http://tc.eserver.org/32302.html This paper seeks to provide a brief overview of those developments which have taken the theory and practice of image and video retrieval into the digital age. Drawing on a voluminous literature, the context in which visual information retrieval takes place is followed by a consideration of the conceptual and practical challenges posed by the representation and recovery of visual material on the basis of its semantic content. An historical account of research endeavours in content-based retrieval, directed towards the automation of these operations in digital image scenarios, provides the main thrust of the paper. Finally, a look forwards locates visual information retrieval research within the wider context of content-based multimedia retrieval. http://tc.eserver.org/32332.html http://tc.eserver.org/32332.html This paper examines a large number of failed queries submitted to a web image search engine, including real users' search terms and written requests. The results show that failed image queries have a much higher specificity than successful queries because users often employ various refined types to specify their queries. The study explores the refined types further, and finds that failed queries consist of far more conceptual than perceptual refined types. The widely used content-based image retrieval technique, CBIR, can only deal with a small proportion of failed queries; hence, appropriate integration of concept-based techniques is desirable. Based on using the concepts of uniqueness and refinement for categorization, the study also provides a useful discussion on the gaps between image queries and retrieval techniques. The initial results enhance the understanding of failed queries and suggest possible ways to improve image retrieval systems. http://tc.eserver.org/32288.html http://tc.eserver.org/32288.html Three experiments that examine communicators' ability to inhibit linguistic bias are reported. Research has shown that communicators use more abstract language (e.g., "Jamie is affectionate" vs. "Jamie kisses Rose") to describe more expected behavior. Recent research has shown that this bias may be overwhelmed by goals to put a "spin" on actions or to manipulate audiences' impressions of actors. Similarly, the present experiments show that people who wish to communicate without bias may often be able to do so. Inhibition occurred when participants selected descriptions from a list of alternatives and when they freely described both expected and unexpected behaviors. However, inhibition failed when participants were asked to freely describe either expected or unexpected behaviors alone. http://tc.eserver.org/32170.html http://tc.eserver.org/32170.html Recent historical examinations of nonliterary, nontheoretical texts within their activity settings have aimed to identify the historically developed communicative and rhetorical resources currently available to writers and to reveal the dynamics of the formation,use,and evolution of those resources. These studies, in examining communal literate practices, combine theoretical, empirical, and practical concerns by building theories of the middle range. This methodological article elaborates how theories of the middle range can guide research through identifying interrelated levels of research questions (originating, specifying, and site specific) and identifying strategic research sites. This article further elaborates methods of finding, selecting, and analyzing relevant texts and placing them within appropriate social and historical contexts. http://tc.eserver.org/32094.html http://tc.eserver.org/32094.html Comments on the magnificent Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte. http://tc.eserver.org/32060.html http://tc.eserver.org/32060.html With the cost of quality traffic rising and reaching and maintaining top search engine position becoming more and more difficult as EVERYONE is moving to the net, viral content blows up one of the most spouted off cliche of all time… “NOTHING IS FREE”. The exposure and added traffic that an amazing piece of content can generate is free. That’s the beauty… with a truly viral piece of content, everyone else does your promotion for you, letting you sit back and enjoy the ride. http://tc.eserver.org/32055.html http://tc.eserver.org/32055.html Technology advancements have allowed for many improvements and enhancements in web design. Drastic changes have been made concerning programming, development, and available features. From flash animations, to blog pages, forums, and live chat, website designers have a multitude of design elements that can be added to their websites. Multimedia products such as audio, video, and podcasts are some of the other advancements in web design. One thing that has not changed, however, is the website readers. Successful website developers know and understand this concept, and apply it to every website that they design. http://tc.eserver.org/31979.html http://tc.eserver.org/31979.html Recent management research imports rhetorical scholarship into the study of organizations. Although this cross-disciplinarity is heuristically promising, it presents significant challenges. This article interrogates management's use of rhetoric, contrasting it with communication studies. Five themes from management research identify how rhetoric is used as an organizational hermeneutic: The article demonstrates that management research conceptualizes rhetoric as a theory and as an action; as the substance that maintains and/or challenges organizational order; as being constitutive of individual and organizational identity; as a managerial strategy for persuading followers; and as a framework for narrative and rational organizational discourses. The authors argue that organizational researchers who study rhetoric characterize persuasive strategies as managers' most important actions. http://tc.eserver.org/31978.html http://tc.eserver.org/31978.html Rhetorical analysis provides a means through which a political perspective on technological change can be developed at a micro-discursive level. Through the analysis of managers' arguments and counterarguments, this article identifies three rhetorical strategies that negotiate the relationship between the technical and the social: attributing the effects of technology; claiming convergent and divergent interests; and constructing identities for self, groups, and the technology. It argues that a rhetorical approach maintains space for agency on the behalf of employees (through the witcraft of argument) and analytical skepticism concerning the reality of technology properties and effects (through counterargument). In addition, it proposes the concept of the argumentative context as a means of bridging the gap between individual and organizational rhetoric. http://tc.eserver.org/31977.html http://tc.eserver.org/31977.html What is the role of contradiction in organizational rhetoric? This article argues that existing research tends to focus on contradiction at an institutional level and then develop a distinct but complementary perspective that views contradictory rhetoric at an interactional level and as a practical concern, especially when routine is disrupted and repair tactics are required. Drawing on data from a study of a quality improvement initiative in the United Kingdom, the authors examine the contradictions that were constructed when a 'change champion' attempted to deal with resistance to change. They conclude by depicting how contradiction can emerge when actors reflexively shift their identifications to portray themselves and their actions in a contextually appropriate manner. http://tc.eserver.org/31980.html http://tc.eserver.org/31980.html On the first day of Nikki's undergraduate seminar, Organizing Work, she Oasks students to list the idioms and phrases commonly used to make sense of the 'work' experience. She shares the example of her father repeat- edly using the phrase 'daily grind' when she was growing up (important to note, he was not referring to the ubiquitous Starbucks of today). Slowly but surely, the chalkboard fills with an array of idiomatic expressions: 'on the clock,' 'work like a dog,' 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,' 'work your fingers to the bone,' 'all in a day's work,' and a host of others, including the Marxian favorite, 'a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.' Students are asked to reflect on the meanings embedded within the list and how language constitutes cultural meanings and values of work. As such an exercise should make abundantly clear, work and meaning would seem to be central to our study of organizational communication. Our talk about work both embodies and structures individual and social under- standings, attitudes, and actions. Yet, the meanings associated with work and the notion of work as meaningful have not been foci of study within our dis- cipline. Indeed, the term work is not even indexed in the New Handbook of Organizational Communication (Jablin and Putnam, 2001), and a search of the EBSCO database found not a single article with work and either meaning or meaningful in the title in a communication journal. Given contemporary devel- opments that make work more central to people's lives as well as less secure, the question of what work means to people and how such meanings contribute to or detract from a sense of purpose or dignity in people's lives is important to consider. http://tc.eserver.org/31985.html http://tc.eserver.org/31985.html People often use colors in their documents in the wrong ways. Many students think that bright colors should be used in a document when they want to attract someone’s eye to a place on the page. Colors alone, however, should be used in synch with white space, font size, type and placement of whatever it is you want someone to be attracted to. Furthermore, just because something is filled with a bright color does not mean that it is eye-catching or attractive. True, bright colors will quickly draw the eye there, but use colors in a way that will make the eye stay there, not glance away in disgust. http://tc.eserver.org/31805.html http://tc.eserver.org/31805.html This work advances a stronger conceptual and empirical understanding of two broad, conceptual communicative treatments for implementing change: programmatic and participatory. These theoretical approaches are elucidated respectively through established communication models, activities, and strategies advanced by previous scholarship within the communication and business disciplines. In addition, conclusions are drawn about the supposed limitations and benefits of using these change implementation approaches in applied settings. This article concludes with potential strategies for advancing for research in this arena. http://tc.eserver.org/31812.html http://tc.eserver.org/31812.html Narrative is a valuable genre to use in composition classes to help students understand their own identity, develop writing skills, including understanding how to structure and use personal experience with a rhetorical purpose in an essay or argument. Once they get to upper division writing courses, however, students are exposed to writing that places less emphasis on that personalized, subjective genre and moves toward the impersonal. Such writing limits the use of narrative, which is generally perceived as highly personal and subjective because it generally conveys only the narrator’s perspective. Narrative includes precise details of an event that occurred in the past which are reported in the same order in which they occurred, as well as an observation or evaluation of the information by the narrator. http://tc.eserver.org/31806.html http://tc.eserver.org/31806.html Scandals, accidents, product problems, criminal activity, deception or fraud, misconduct, harassment, discrimination, financial or regulatory improprieties, malfeasance, misappropriations, or ethical breaches can not only damage the reputation of corporate executives but can reek financial havoc on the value of a company’s brand 'assets.' When companies face these types of crises they are compelled to act quickly and decisively in order to limit their brand and image losses and seek to repair the 'black eye' to their corporate 'face' as effectively as possible. Although companies will attempt a wide range of actions and messages as symbolic appeals to that organization’s constituent publics, there is little certainty about what types of actions and messages are persuasive. http://tc.eserver.org/31804.html http://tc.eserver.org/31804.html This paper aims to fill a gap between knowledge and practice about the effectiveness of rhetorical strategies in the communication of change inside large private organizations. http://tc.eserver.org/31784.html http://tc.eserver.org/31784.html This article describes a study that examined the tables and figures in articles from a basic research journal, The Journal of Cell Biology, and compared them to tables and figures from an applied medical journal, The New England Journal of Medicine. Comparison of graphics between the two journals shows sharp differences in terms of range of graphics types, visual consistency within and between articles, or use of color. As the articles take into account what is needed by different audiences, the graphics help to build the credibility of the journal. The study also addresses the question of how scientific visuals contribute to the persuasiveness of a writer, looking at how the graphics within an article affect the credibility or ethos of the writer. http://tc.eserver.org/31782.html http://tc.eserver.org/31782.html Kaplan's framework of contrastive rhetoric has been widely accepted in the field of cross-cultural technical communication. However, in the last four decades, contextual factors such as economic globalization trend and the advances of communication technologies are changing our ways of interacting with others. As a result our understanding of culture and cultural differences need to be adjusted. In this research, I start by recommending a workable definition of culture in the present context—culture as a process, which establishes a foundation for cross-cultural rhetorical research in the new era when communication across cultures transcends national boundaries. Based on the critical perspective of culture, I continue to point out the limitations of contrastive rhetoric and argue that contrastive rhetoric's view of culture and its research purpose and methodology need to be modified to overcome its constraints and better meet the needs of the present social context. http://tc.eserver.org/31700.html http://tc.eserver.org/31700.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31683.html http://tc.eserver.org/31683.html The authors propose an alternative to the postmodern way of viewing metaphor primarily as an instrumental and functional rhetorical tool designed to influence members of an organization through ideological appeals, a view that depicts rhetoric as merely subjective and manipulable. Our alternative draws from the "aesthetic side of organizational life" and argues that communication exceeds the theoretical reach of the postmodern perspective, which requires a new conceptualization of metaphor as epistemic and capable of signaling meaning that is inseparable from its unique and discrete form. http://tc.eserver.org/31672.html http://tc.eserver.org/31672.html More importantly, most lists of ten principles of clear writing are not really principles at all, but rather tips and technique. Understanding why you are doing something, i.e., the benefit you will gain, helps ensure that you will actually do it and do it consistently. Too often, when we are told only what to do, we follow the instruction half-heartedly, inconsistently, or not at all. http://tc.eserver.org/31651.html http://tc.eserver.org/31651.html Criticisms that Tufte and others have leveled against PowerPoint are not insurmountable defects of the programs themselves. These defects are generally due to an orientation, shared by program designers and users alike, and toward images rather than diagrams, toward perceptual decoration and object indication rather than toward visually mediated, iconic representations of verbal information. Using Peirce's theories of visual rhetoric, we show that improvements in visual communication generally - and PowerPoint slides in particular - depend on shifting our orientation away from image-driven thinking and toward diagrammatic modes of presentation. http://tc.eserver.org/31611.html http://tc.eserver.org/31611.html One of the central causes of poor writing is a lack of a thorough understanding of the audience. What are the problems that readers have to solve, and how can we help them? Too many writers believe that people will understand what they have written just because the writers themselves understand it. Good writing always begins with a study of the readers' reading skills, their actual physical situation, the problems they face, the motivation they need, and the actions they need to take. http://tc.eserver.org/31610.html http://tc.eserver.org/31610.html If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better. http://tc.eserver.org/31605.html http://tc.eserver.org/31605.html Elements of persuasion are important to creating winning content. To help safeguard content from becoming manipulation, we need to understand its distinction from persuasion. As a step toward that understanding, this article: provides basic definitions of persuasion and manipulation; explores the key differences between them; and describes some consequences for UX content. http://tc.eserver.org/31565.html http://tc.eserver.org/31565.html "You have two options when you walk into a room," says public speaking expert Richard Levick about the art of giving speeches. Most entrepreneurs find speech making to be either terrifying or a waste of time. Too many CEOs see dealing with the media or making presentations as an interruption, but it's as essential to doing business as customers. If you can't deliver energetic and commanding speeches, or polished and articulate interviews, then you're short-circuiting your company's future. It's time to do something about it. http://tc.eserver.org/31567.html http://tc.eserver.org/31567.html Virtually every employee in an organization performs a discrete set of tasks. Only the leader sees the big picture -- unless the leader does a good job of conveying that big picture to his workforce. Of course, there's more to leadership than getting people to buy into your vision. http://tc.eserver.org/31530.html http://tc.eserver.org/31530.html Effective communication requires understanding the target population and how it operates. That need to understand runs the gamut: sometimes it's simply information gathering, other times it's copy testing, or it may mean monitoring the effectiveness of a campaign. But before you start any campaign, you need to know your audience. http://tc.eserver.org/31486.html http://tc.eserver.org/31486.html Jean-Paul Sartre said, “We understand everything in human life through stories.” I believe that is true. We comprehend better when a message is related in story form, and we also feel a stronger rapport with the person telling the story. Why not use these memorable stories in your internal communications? When you cram too much information into a communication, training session or presentation, you’re doing a data dump on your listener. Nothing sticks. Yet, if you’ve ever had a supervisor tell a story to illustrate a point, you learned the lesson and probably enjoyed the learning process, too. http://tc.eserver.org/31481.html http://tc.eserver.org/31481.html Once upon a time, a former CBS newsman devised a new strategy for telling a company's story: classic storytelling. Robbie Vorhaus founded his own public relations firm based on this principle. He shares the story of how it works in this interview with About Public Relations. http://tc.eserver.org/31448.html http://tc.eserver.org/31448.html A speech generally needs personal language because it is delivered by a live human being whose words should not sound, as Wabash College Professor William Norwood Brigance put it, "like an essay standing on its hind legs." http://tc.eserver.org/31431.html http://tc.eserver.org/31431.html Professional communicators and attorneys have long stood side by side as both fought to win in court—one in the court of law, the other in the court of public opinion. These two sometimes wary compatriots, however, are now beginning to partner more frequently to garner the best results for the executive suite. http://tc.eserver.org/31395.html http://tc.eserver.org/31395.html Some say it's a revolution that will change radio broadcasting and people's listening habits forever. Others say it's a fad that's of limited appeal or use to anyone but geeks and enthusiasts. Whatever anyone says, something that has rocketed out of nowhere and gotten big companies and radio stations alike interested (and after only eight months) must be worth investigating. That "something" is called podcasting. http://tc.eserver.org/31380.html http://tc.eserver.org/31380.html Liberal historians tend to seek the disciplining of English in terms of the English department, as in Graff's account of people talking past each other while all finding shelter under the umbrella of a "humanist myth." While both these stories are useful (and in many ways, complementary), I want to examine disciplining of English into composition and literature by looking in relations English had with other disciplines, both within the new university, in that most defining feature of it, he specialization of disciplinary activity, and, indirectly, beyond the new university, in various social practices with English and its neighboring those disciplines interacted. Composition, I will argue, mediated those interactions in such a way that English was quite successful in its professionalization, but because composition was marginalized in crucial ways, its success was very limited. http://tc.eserver.org/31284.html http://tc.eserver.org/31284.html 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? http://tc.eserver.org/31251.html http://tc.eserver.org/31251.html Internal communication isn't generally seen as a direct, short-term contributor to the bottom line, and therefore it is not considered "hot." More to the point though, people's understanding of what communication is and how it can work is extremely varied and often plain wrong. It seems that what makes internal communication "hot" is still mainly understood only in professional communication circles. http://tc.eserver.org/31241.html http://tc.eserver.org/31241.html Anyone can relate the facts of an event, just like anyone can hold a camera up to a scene and document it. But bare facts and badly composed images make for poor communication. It takes skill and talent to write a good story, one that will inform and entertain. The same is true for photography. Images have always been storytellers. A good image can relay large amounts of data in a format that is pleasing and quickly absorbed by the viewer. That makes photos potentially more influential than a massive amount of words. http://tc.eserver.org/31062.html http://tc.eserver.org/31062.html It is the job of the information architect to discern the internal structure of content and than give it external form to support users in constructing meaning, in relating the content to their own knowledge, needs, and purposes, and thus making sense of the content. http://tc.eserver.org/31023.html http://tc.eserver.org/31023.html This article discusses the development of a unified social theory of genre learning based on the integration of rhetorical genre studies, activity theory, and the situated learning perspective. The article proposes that these three theoretical perspectives are compatible and complementary, and it illustrates applications of a unified framework to a study of genre learning by novice engineers. The author draws examples from a longitudinal qualitative study of a group of novice engineers who developed their professional genre knowledge through both academic and workplace experiences. These examples illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework for the study of professional genre learning. http://tc.eserver.org/31021.html http://tc.eserver.org/31021.html This article investigates the introductions of 40 professional speeches from a rhetorical perspective to address the problems audiences seem to have with presentations about engineering. The authors use an exordial model that they derived from classical manuals on rhetoric. This model enumerates and groups rhetorical exordial techniques into 3 main functions: attentum, benevolum, and docilem . The study shows that rhetorically complete introductions are rare. Most of the speakers seemed to prefer a content-oriented, direct approach (docilem) in their introductions and seldom used techniques to garner the audience's attention (attentum) or sympathy (benevolum). The article concludes with an evaluation of the exordial model and a discussion of the study's pedagogical implications. http://tc.eserver.org/30876.html http://tc.eserver.org/30876.html This page includes a list of grant planning questions and a list of basic proposal elements that I use when I offer grant-writing workshops. http://tc.eserver.org/30857.html http://tc.eserver.org/30857.html Taking photographs seems no longer primarily an act of memory intended to safeguard a family's pictorial heritage, but is increasingly becoming a tool for an individual's identity formation and communication. Digital cameras, cameraphones, photoblogs and other multipurpose devices are used to promote the use of images as the preferred idiom of a new generation of users. The aim of this article is to explore how technical changes (digitization) combined with growing insights in cognitive science and socio-cultural transformations have affected personal photography. The increased manipulation of photographic images may suit the individual's need for continuous self-remodelling and instant communication and bonding. However, that same manipulability may also lessen our grip on our images' future repurposing and reframing. Memory is not eradicated from digital multipurpose tools. Instead, the function of memory reappears in the networked, distributed nature of digital photographs, as most images are sent over the internet and stored in virtual space. http://tc.eserver.org/30859.html http://tc.eserver.org/30859.html This article argues that, with respect to the copyright protection of works of visual art, the general uneasiness that has always pervaded the relationship between copyright law and concepts of creativity produces three anomalous results. One of these is that copyright lacks much in the way of a central concept of 'visual art' and, to the extent that it embraces any concept of the 'visual', it is rooted in the rhetorical discourse of the Renaissance. This means that copyright is poorly equipped to deal with modern developments in the visual arts. Secondly, the pervasive effect of rhetorical discourse appears to have made it particularly difficult for copyright law to strike a meaningful balance between protecting creativity and permitting its use in further creative works. Thirdly, just when rhetorical discourse might have been useful in identifying the significance and materiality of the unique one-off work of visual art, copyright law chooses to ignore its implications. http://tc.eserver.org/30858.html http://tc.eserver.org/30858.html his article describes the (re-)design of newspapers and magazines as a process of cultural change which goes beyond designing a publication's layout, typography and use of colour, and includes designing the processes and structures of its production. http://tc.eserver.org/30850.html http://tc.eserver.org/30850.html Charts and graphs are ubiquitous in business documents, and most students in my business communication courses are well aware that they need to be able to create many different types of data representation. Most of them have had a great deal of experience working with spreadsheet applications, and they know how to manipulate data and present it in the various forms permitted by their software. http://tc.eserver.org/30845.html http://tc.eserver.org/30845.html Teaching students to write persuasive messages is a critical feature of any undergraduate business communications course. For the persuasive writing module in my course, students write a persuasive message on the basis of the four-part indirect pattern often used for sales or fund-raising messages. The course text I use identifies these four components by their rhetorical functions: gain attention, build interest, reduce resistance, and motivate action. http://tc.eserver.org/30815.html http://tc.eserver.org/30815.html How do you go about writing technical manuals for software without going insane? Here are some guidelines you can follow to maintain your sanity when writing software documentation. http://tc.eserver.org/30809.html http://tc.eserver.org/30809.html I know that a lot of people never read instruction manuals or online help. But you know what? Some people do. http://tc.eserver.org/30797.html http://tc.eserver.org/30797.html The techne I envision for digital production deliberately makes things more difficult for designer users, whether they are teachers or students. This is a hard sell, particularly to teachers who feel intimidated enough by technology of the consumer ease variety. But we should remember that rhetoric, unless it takes the form of a Mad-Lib, is not easy. A techne of digital production is an effort to remove the disproportionality between effort and consequences: only when we earn the knowledge of production from a designer user standpoint can we more fully take responsibility for what we do with it. Digital writers must do the hard work of fashioning their content into a sound structure, developing unique presentational designs, and considering audience interaction with their finished works. http://tc.eserver.org/30734.html http://tc.eserver.org/30734.html Find the one thing you want people to remember as you write a posting for a Web page, a subject line for an e-mail or a headline for a newsletter. http://tc.eserver.org/30687.html http://tc.eserver.org/30687.html Arguments manifest in scientific visuals through graphic representation, content placement, and overall document structure. These arguments, designed to influence public perception, change over time in relation to sociopolitical climate. Analysis of a series of documents constructed deliberately to influence perception can help to determine patterns of argumentation and perceived exigencies. In this article, four self-guided tour brochures produced for distribution to visitors to the Glen Canyon Dam in 1977, 1984, 1990, and 1993 are analyzed in order to identify rhetorical strategies designed to influence public perceptions of the dam site, and examine how public perception of the dam, and related argumentation, is structured by sociopolitical climate. http://tc.eserver.org/30706.html http://tc.eserver.org/30706.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/30688.html http://tc.eserver.org/30688.html This study investigates the link between the linguistic principles of implicature and pragmatics and software documentation. When implicatures are created in conversation or text, the listener or reader is required to fill in missing information not overtly stated. This information is usually filled in on the basis of previous knowledge or context. Pragmatics, the study of language use in context, is concerned with the situational aspects of language use that, among other things, directly affect implicatures required of the reader. I investigate how two manuals for the same software product can be analyzed on the basis of implicature and pragmatics. One is an original copy of the documentation that came with the product, the other an after-market manual. Results show that the aftermarket manual requires far fewer implicatures of the reader and does a better job of providing pragmatically helpful information for the user. http://tc.eserver.org/30690.html http://tc.eserver.org/30690.html Throughout the book, Kolln works to build the readers' confidence and encourage them to think of grammar as a tool. Rhetorical Grammar is a textbook for undergraduate students, and Kolln keeps this target audience in mind by making the 322- page book user-friendly. http://tc.eserver.org/30700.html http://tc.eserver.org/30700.html Given Alan G. Gross's substantial contributions to the rhetoric of science, most recently with Joseph E. Harmon and Michael Reidy (2002) in Communicating Science, I looked forward to reading Gross's latest work, Starring the Text: The Place of Rhetoric in Science Studies--until I read the preface. In the preface, Gross notes that Starring the Text is not a new con- tribution but a 'major refiguring' (p. ix) of his earlier work The Rhetoric of Science (1990). Like most readers, I am decidedly less enthusiastic about reading a revision of an older contribution than I am about reading a new contribution. http://tc.eserver.org/30728.html http://tc.eserver.org/30728.html The inferences individuals make about others' goals is an integral, but neglected, aspect of empirical and theoretical work on social interaction. An original theoretical framework is proposed to account for interindividual agreement and certainty of goal inferences. Two experiments applied the framework to explain how contextual ambiguity and tactical functionality affected agreement and certainty. Results generally support hypotheses regarding agreement, such that goal inferences converged (i.e., interobserver agreement increased) as the context and tactic became more compatible, yet results largely do not support hypotheses for inference certainty, as the only significant effect that emerged was that certainty was higher in unambiguous than ambiguous contexts. A reconsideration of the theoretical framework on goal detection is discussed and implications are advanced. http://tc.eserver.org/30722.html http://tc.eserver.org/30722.html To be effective, writers must understand what knowledge they share with the audience and what they do not. Achieving this understanding is made difficult by the knowledge effect--a tendency of individuals to assume that their own knowledge is shared by others. Understanding the knowledge effect and methods for reducing it is potentially useful for understanding and teaching writing. In Study 1, we explored the impact of an individual's knowledge of technical terms on that person's ability to estimate other people's understanding of those terms. We assessed how individuals' familiarity with technical terms influenced their predictions that college freshmen and college graduates would understand those terms. Results indicate that familiarity with the meaning of technical terms leads to substantial overestimation of others' knowledge. In Study 2, we evaluated an online tutor designed to improve writers' predictions of other's word knowledge by providing them with feedback on the accuracy of their judgments. http://tc.eserver.org/30614.html http://tc.eserver.org/30614.html Effective visual design enhances the overall success of a manual as much as, if not more than, the other factors that go into its makeup. The presentation shows how we redesigned a 2-volume manual into a 6-volume manual and otherwise maximized the visual impact of the manual. The many examples of improved visual presentations show how important effective visual design is to the overall impact of the manual. While we also changed stylistic and organizational elements of the manual, we found the impact of the changes in the visual elements most powerful. http://tc.eserver.org/30620.html http://tc.eserver.org/30620.html How can writers enhance their visual literacy in order to create effective online documentation? By partnering multimedia production expertise with technical writing expertise, DVS Communications and Bell-Northern Research (BNR) have co-developed an introductory course 'Words into Pictures' that stimulates visual thinking capabilities. This paper describes the main components of the course and illustrates its contribution to the success of BNR's online information system CADHELP. http://tc.eserver.org/30596.html http://tc.eserver.org/30596.html Writers of technical information need to be aware of their rhetorical stance and think of themselves as narrators, as people telling other people about something or how to do something or what they propose to do. Too often writers of technical information write in passive voice and third-person narrative perspective, disguising or blurring their involvement in the activities they describe and often blurring and dulling the information as well. Writing in active voice and, when appropriate, the first person, enlivens information, removing it from the realm of the stuffy and stale. http://tc.eserver.org/30600.html http://tc.eserver.org/30600.html During this workshop, To Be or Not To Be, the workshop presenters demonstrate how getting rid of the verb 'to be' increases accuracy, clarity and effectiveness in verbal communication. E-Prime originated in the field of general semantics; it consists of the English language, but excludes all forms of the verb 'to be.' Practitioners in the field of general semantics have developed a number of techniques that promote clear understanding of communication in the world around us. The workshop presenters strive to create an environment for participants to learn the philosophical background and practical application of the English language subset known as E-Prime. http://tc.eserver.org/30601.html http://tc.eserver.org/30601.html The techniques of film language areas important to video and multimedia presentations as the techniques of written language are to technical documentation. Film language consists of such components as shot content, frame composition, camera movement, color (or shade), lighting, and film transitions. Film transitions are the way in which shots and sequences are connected and carry specific semantic weight for the viewer. However for many technical video-makers, the meanings of film transitions are overlooked in favor of flashy presentations or are abused to cover a problem. In developing videos for training or informational purposes, we should respect and understand the significance of film transitions and other aspects of film language. http://tc.eserver.org/30732.html http://tc.eserver.org/30732.html This presentation looks to the past to explain the present lack of attention given to memory and to imagine a possible future for the canon in contemporary rhetoric with the inclusion of the study of material rhetorics, or a comprehensive inquiry of situated things produced in cultural contexts that investigates both the material dimension in rhetoric and rhetorical dimension in the material. To this end, this essay summarizes noted reasons for memoria's limited study in contemporary rhetoric; revisits classic rhetoric's memoria and mines it for features worth recuperating for contemporary study; introduces material rhetoric and its potential to recuperate memoria in light of these features; and calls for further discussion of material rhetoric, the canon of memory, and the place of both in the study of rhetoric. http://tc.eserver.org/30730.html http://tc.eserver.org/30730.html A study of how three historical rhetorical concepts (kairos, memoria, and mestiza consciousness) are relevant to professional communication practices today, and productive historical concepts for contemporary practitioners. http://tc.eserver.org/30565.html http://tc.eserver.org/30565.html The need for timely and relevant computer documentation is a constant challenge. Sometimes there is a need to redesign such documentation to make it more useful. Rhetorical analysis is a useful aid for technical communicators in redesigning such documentation. Using Kenneth Burke’s notion of terministic screens, a quick reference aid for the users of a machine-aided translation system is examined from the perspective of graphic communication. Although rhetorical analysis cannot replace accepted principles of good design, it allows the technical communicator to examine design decisions from another perspective, giving one a very different set of questions to consider and some principles of explanation to justify design decisions. http://tc.eserver.org/30535.html http://tc.eserver.org/30535.html Technical communicators are skilled rhetoricians whose persuasive documents include letters, reports, and proposals, and with these documents, technical communicators persuade their audience to accept their ideas. Persuasion is the method of supplying new information about a subject to change people’s attitude about that subject. According to the Information-Integration Theory people form their initial attitude about a subject when they first learn about it. As people receive new information about that subject, they adjust their attitude in relation to the new information. http://tc.eserver.org/30514.html http://tc.eserver.org/30514.html This paper takes a look at what is being said in various disciplines (technical writing, journalism, education, psychology, user interface design, and visual arts) in an attempt to answer the question 'What is visual literacy?' A corollory is 'How will I know when I have achieved it?' A working definition of visual literacy has many implications for how we train technical writers in order to meet the professional challenges of the future. http://tc.eserver.org/30413.html http://tc.eserver.org/30413.html The Doublethink and Newspeak of Orwell's 1984 have counterparts in the Doublespeak that can be identified in many contemporary public documents. As technical editors, we may be confronted with documents that use Doublespeak to misdirect or deceive the reader. What is our role in dealing with such documents? http://tc.eserver.org/30426.html http://tc.eserver.org/30426.html Good design, like good writing or editing, cart make or break a technical publication. Even if you know little about design us a discipline, as a technical communicator you employ it in every publication you produce. If technical communicstion is indeed the art that bridges the gap between people and technology, then understanding the function of design us an inherent element of communication is paramount. Design seeks 10 translate perceptions, goals, and desires through the manipulation of images and language. Design inspires understanding, is both an art and a science, and is good business. Design matters! The purpose of our presentation is to explore the relationship between design until technical communication and heighten the level of consciousness of the function of design. http://tc.eserver.org/30385.html http://tc.eserver.org/30385.html A person usually expects another person to behave according to accepted norms, but how does a person respond to a message that violates his/her expectations? One theory dealing with violations of expectations is Burgeon and Hale's (1) nonverbal expectancy-violations theory. This theory posits that, under certain circumstances, violations of social norms and expectations may be an effective strategy for communicators to achieve the intended communication purpose. Although the expectancy-violations theory focuses on expectations for nonverbal behavior, such as gaze and conversational distance (2), I believe that this theory can also apply to expectations for humancomputer interaction. http://tc.eserver.org/30386.html http://tc.eserver.org/30386.html Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) can help proposal writers identify effective document design techniques and parts of arguments that are critical to persuasion. In addition, ELM has implications for other types of technical communication, including recommendation or feasibility reports. While one would anticipate that decision-makers would be willing and able to evaluate critically all arguments presented in a recommendation report, ELM explains why this is rarely so. Therefore, technical communicators can profit by understanding and using the two routes to persuasion or attitude shift, the central and peripheral routes, explained by ELM. http://tc.eserver.org/30397.html http://tc.eserver.org/30397.html Multimedia can sometimes convey meaning in ways that text and graphics alone cannot. This paper offers two principles for understanding how multimedia can clarify abstract concepts. The first principle is that multimedia is excellent for conveying any kind of change, such as change in quantity, size, shape, or relationship. The second principle is that multimedia can help present complex concepts by providing information in both the visual and auditory modes simultaneously. These principles can guide technical communicators in evaluating whether multimedia is a cost-effective way to present their information. http://tc.eserver.org/30210.html http://tc.eserver.org/30210.html This article uses qualitative material gathered at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to construct a model of the rhetorical activity that occurs at the boundaries between diverse communities of practice working on complex sociotechnical systems. The authors reinterpret the notion of the boundary object current in science studies as a rhetorical construct that can foster cooperation and communication among the diverse members of heterogeneous working groups. The knowledge maps constructed by team members at LANL in their work on technical systems are boundary objects that can replace the demarcation exigence that so often leads to agonistic rhetorical boundary work with an integrative exigence. The integrative exigence realized by the boundary object of the knowledge map can help create a temporary trading zone characterized by rhetorical relations of symmetry and mutual understanding. In such cases, boundary work can become an effort involving integration and understanding rather than contest, controversy, and demarcation.