Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

Sometimes, You’ve Got to Break the Rules

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.

Exploiting Verbal-Visual Synergy in Presentation Slides

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.

"Sort of Set My Goal to Come to Class": Evoking Expressive Content in Policy Reports

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.

Management Consulting and Teaching: Lessons Learned Teaching Professionals To Control Tone in Writing

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.

Copywriting or Design: Which Gets the Best Results?

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?

Consistency Leads to Trust in Information Sources

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.

Visualization Can Help Improve Writing

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.

How Twitter Makes You A Better Writer

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.

Ten Recipes for Persuasive Content

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.

Read It! A Poem for Writers

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.

Does Design Matter in Comparison to Content?

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.

There's the Tribe, Where's the Technical Author?

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.

Writing Skills and Better Visual Design

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.

The Magic of Metaphor

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.

Sustaining the Readers' Interest

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.

Theories of the Middle Range in Historical Studies of Writing Practice

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.

Make Your Content Work for You: Creating and Promoting Viral Content

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.

A Rhetorical Tool and a Link to Composition: The Appeals of Narrative in Professional Writing Pedagogy

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.

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.

Fixing the Flaws in the Ten Principles of Clear Writing

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.

It's a People Thing: The Switch to Reader-Centered Documents

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.

Politics and the English Language

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.

Winning Content Persuades, Not Manipulates

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.

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?

Why Write Instructions That No One is Going to Read?

I know that a lot of people never read instruction manuals or online help. But you know what? Some people do.

A Techne for Artful Choices in Digital Writing

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.

To Draw and Hold Readers' Attention, Apply a Hollywood Technique

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.

Implicature, Pragmatics, and Documentation: A Comparative Study

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.

Understanding and Reducing the Knowledge Effect: Implications for Writers

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.

The Nature of the Narrator in Technical Writing

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.

To Be or Not To Be

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.

Understand Film Language: An Introduction for Technical Communicators

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.

What Historical Rhetoric Concepts Can Tell Us about Contemporary Professional and Technical Writing Practices

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.

Advocating Plain Language: Thom Haller Discusses The Need For Clarity

Plain language is clear, concise, and straightforward presentation of information. It is professional content structured to eliminate ambiguity and confusion in technical, government, and legal documents. Plain language allows readers to fully comprehend complex regulations, practices and instructions by requiring the language of bureaucracy to reflect the language of everyday speech.

The Paragraph: the Weak Link in Corporate Communication?

The paragraph has been a writer's design convention for centuries. It can be applied to any kind of writing. It is flexible. It is easy to learn. It is what everyone is taught from about third grade onwards as the sole design for writing information. However, two different fields of endeavor are impacting the use of the paragraph as the best convention for communicating written information in the corporate world. They are: Cognitive science research; online media.

Sensitivity in Writing

The biggest impact of globalization is our vast exposure to diversity. Compared to earlier generations, we regularly come across a variety of different people. As professional communicators, it is extremely important for us to recognize this diversity and represent it sensitively in content that we develop.

Aligning Theme and Information Structure To Improve The Readability Of Technical Writing

The readability of technical writing, and technical manuals in particular, especially for second language readers, can be noticeably improved by pairing Theme with Given and Rheme with New. This allows for faster processing of text and easier access to the "method of development" of the text. Typical Theme-Rheme patterns are described, and the notion of the "point of a text" is introduced. These concepts are applied to technical writing and the reader is then invited to evaluate the improvements in readability in a small sample of texts.

A Syntactic Approach To Readability

Focusing on the issue of readability, this article examines problems that readability formulas present to the technical communicator, especially in terms of interaction with government agencies, and focuses on readability formula requirements mandated by The Office of Health and Industry programs [OHIP] for medical technology product support literature. Because the Flesch Reading Ease and the Flesch-Kincaid formulas are widely available, they are probably the ones most frequently used. Contemporary readability scholars have overlooked the Golub Syntactic Density Formula, which evaluates prose according to a sentence's syntax at a deeper level than the number of words per sentence and the number of syllables per word. The authors recommend it as a tool for evaluating readability. How it might be applied with current computer applications is discussed.

Teaching The Complexity Of Purpose: Promoting Complete and Creative Communications

The successful communicator is expected to provide communications that are not only complete but also representative of effective thinking (i.e., original). Creating complete and creative communications begins with a disciplined process of discovery--identifying, assessing, prioritizing, and integrating the articulated and embedded purposes. Expanding on the work of Linda Flower and John Hayes, this article first explores a means to promote a thorough examination of purpose. It then provides tools for capturing and integrating these insights into communications that are complete, capable of satisfying the rhetorical challenges, and compelling reflections of the student's creative problem solving abilities.

The Abstract Trap: Why Abstracts Are Bad for Persuasive White Papers

Abstracts, also known as executive summaries, are bad. As a matter of fact, they are really bad, and I stand nearly alone in my opinion. Abstracts are those summaries that typically stand in front of the core content of a white paper. They tend to include the key points about the white paper.

Are You Frodo, Aragorn or Legolas? Writing Wisdom from The Lord of the Rings

Are you a 'Frodo,' 'Aragorn' or 'Legolas' writer? Each has a unique style and advantages suited to specific types of writing. Much can be learned from J.R.R. Tolkien's epic The Lord of the Rings characters.

Eleven Tips on Terrific Titles

Honestly, which white paper would YOU sooner read: 'Implications of Business Intelligence Methodologies on Operational Efficiencies: A Retrospective Study' or 'Six Things You Must Know about Data Warehousing'? This article offers eleven tips on putting together compelling titles for white papers.

Getting Off the Starting Block: Practical Tips to Starting a White Paper

Why are white papers so hard to write? Simply put, they require effort. Effort makes us sweat. Just the thought of working hard causes some people's blood to percolate.

Seven Steps to Writing White Papers More Efficiently

Read about a seven-step process used when writing write white papers and other complex documents.

The Top Five Writing Mistakes in White Papers

A compelling topic and an attractive design will initially draw readers to a white paper. But those readers may lose interest if the paper contains any of five common writing mistakes.

Why a Good Title Makes a White Paper

The title is your white paper's absolute first impression. In it rests success or failure for the words that lie beyond, waiting for a reader. If the title does not encourage someone to read further, the ink that coats your white paper will never be seen.

Clear as Mud: The Plot Thickens

A lot of the time, management-speak simply seems ridiculous. But campaigners for plain English say there is a more serious side to the issue.

What is Plain English?

Over the last two decades, a â€˜culture of clarityâ€™ has been gaining ground in many large organisations around the English-speaking world. In the United Kingdom, government departments, banks, insurance companies, local councils and others have come to realise that clear communication is actually a good idea. Instead of writing to impress or confuse, they are now writing to inform and explain. They are using plain English to do this.

Cut Big, Then Small

Precise and concise writing comes from disciplined cutting.

Fear Not the Long Sentence

Everyone fears the long sentence. Editors fear it. Readers fear it. Most of all, writers fear it. Even I fear it. But...

Let It Flow

To become a more fluent writer, try these strategies.

Parallel Lines

Writers shape up their writing by paying attention to parallel structures in their words, phrases, and sentences.

Rehearsal

Procrastination can be productive.

Write Endings to Lock the Box

All writers have a license to end, and there are many ways to do so.

Writing Cinematically

Authors have long understood how to shift their focus to capture both landscape and character.

Beware of Adverbs

Beware of adverbs. They can dilute the meaning of the verb or repeat it.

Branch to the Right

Begin sentences with subjects and verbs, letting subordinate elements branch to the right. Even a long, long sentence can be clear and powerful when the subject and verb make meaning early.

Control the Pace

Control the pace of the story by varying sentence length.

Editorial

Recently a striking change has taken place in the organization and visibility of what we writing teachers do.

Interesting Names

Remember that writers are, by training and disposition, attracted to people and places with interesting names.

Internal Cliffhangers

What makes a page-turner, an irresistible read, a story or book that you can't put down? Well, lots of things. But one indispensable tool seems to be the internal cliffhanger.

Name the Big Parts

Seeing the structure of a story is easier if you can identify the main parts.

Narrative Opportunities

Take advantage of narrative opportunities.

Observe Word Territory

Observe 'word territory.' Give key words their space. Do not repeat a distinctive word unless you intend a specific effect.

Odd and Interesting Things

Put odd and interesting things next to each other.

Period As a Stop Sign

Place strong words at the beginning of sentences and paragraphs, and at the end. The period acts as a stop sign. Any word next to the period says, 'Look at me.'

Place Gold Coins Along the Path

Learn how to keep your readers interested by placing gold coins throughout your story.

Play with Words

Play with words, even in serious stories. Choose words the average writer avoids but the average reader understands.

Prefer Simple to Technical

Prefer the simple to the technical: shorter words and paragraphs at the points of greatest complexity.

Repeat

Repetition works in stories, but only if you intend it. The repetition of key words, phrases, and story elements creates a rhythm, a pace, a structure, a drumbeat that reinforces the central theme of the work.

Reveal Character Traits

Reveal character traits to the reader through scenes, details, and dialogue.

Seek Original Images

Seek original images. Make word lists, free-associate, be surprised by language. Reject cliches and 'first-level creativity.'

Tune Your Voice

What is voice, and how does the writer tune it?

Use Strong Verbs

Use verbs in their strongest form, the simple present or past. Strong verbs create action, save words, and reveal the players.

Learning to Speak With, Not To, Readers

I think that most journalists prefer giving lectures to having conversations. But today it seems clear to me that the creative-writing class was the more valuable experience. As tough as it was, I learned more in that 'conversation' than I could ever have learned in my own lecture.

The Great Myth That Plain Language Is Not Precise

Occasionally, when you try to convert from legalese to plain language, someone will come forward and assert that you made a mistake. You missed something in the translation. You inadvertently changed the substance.

Playing the Synonym Game

Churchill wasn't scared of repetition, but many people are. Even the best writers and editors play the synonym game.

Writing Reader-Friendly Documents

The traditional way of writing government documents has not worked well. Too often, complicated and jargon filled documents have resulted in frustration, lawsuits, and a lack of trust between citizens and their government. To overcome this legacy, we have a great responsibility to communicate clearly.

Communicating Clearly: It Often Pays to Repeat Information

A common observation of clients who're reading first drafts of the work they've ordered is that, 'You said that once already, so we can take this sentence out.' In fact, a certain amount of redundancy helps to get the point across.

How to Write Effective Text

It doesn't matter how dazzling your Web site looks if you don't have good, clear copy that appeals to your readers' basic desires--and is easy to read.

Whose Ideas?: The Technical Writer's Expertise In Inventio

Compelling arguments from researchers studying the rhetoric of science have convinced both scientists and humanists that technical writing involves invention, or discovery of the available means of argument. If we agree that inventio is crucial to technical writing, however, we encounter a problem: namely, that the rhetor engaged in invention as part of a technical writing process does not necessarily have expertise in the subject matter of the composition. What, then, is the expertise that the technical writer contributes to the invention process? Working from the notion that knowledge is an activity rather than a commodity, I argue that a technical writer's expertise in invention lies in an ability to adapt rhetorical heuristics to situations of interdisciplinary collaboration. This focus expands our understanding of how invention works when the goal of communication is producing knowledge across disciplinary boundaries, rather than winning an argument with persuasive techniques.

The Untapped Potential of Voice

Think back a few years, to a time when most enewsletters were text-only, packed with useful information and carrying the unmistakable voice of the writer.

The Wonder of Writing Across the Curriculum

The main reason I got involved with writing across the curriculum fifteen years ago was administrative and related to campus politics. The main reason I have stayed actively involved in writing across the curriculum for fifteen years is personal and related to my teaching. Quite simply, I am a better teacher because of writing across the curriculum. So while motivations and intentions are messy things to characterize, for me the combination of administrative and teaching responsibilities and personal and public desires have led to most of my professorial life being engaged in writing across the curriculum — in my own classroom and on my college campuses — first at Michigan Tech, and now for six years at Clemson University.

What Good Writers and Editors Know About Design

Words seldom exist in a visual vacuum. With the exception of audio tapes and speeches, words are designed to be read-on book and magazine pages, on computer screens, even on product boxes. And how well those words are designed can greatly influence how often and closely they are read. To communicate effectively, good writers and editors must combine their words with good designs.

Twelve Exercises for Improving Dialogue

Dialogue is one of the most difficult aspects of writing to master. There are many pitfalls you must try to avoid, such as: Stilted language Dialogue that does not sound like natural speech. Filler Dialogue that does not further the scene and does not deepen your understanding of the characters. Exposition Dialogue that has the character explain the plot or repeat information for the benefit of the audience. Naming Having one character use another character’s name to establish identity. People almost never say other people’s names back to them, and if they do it is a character trait typical of a used car salesman. Overuse of Modifiers Too many dialogue modifiers such as shouted, exclaimed, cried, whispered, stammered, opined, insinuated, hedged and a million others. Modifiers such as this can sometimes be useful, but are often annoying and used as a crutch for poorly designed dialogue.

How to Be Persuasive in Writing

The persuasive theories of Stephen Toulmin and Carl Rogers can be effective in applications to writing on the job. Toulmin’s strategies lead writers to specify the exact claim they are making, to give evidence to support the claim, and to refute the arguments likely to be made against the claim. Roger’s strategies can be used to identify the viewpoint of the audience, grant the points in the audience’s position which the writer agrees with, and then attempt to show how the audience’s position will actually be improved if the writer’s claim or proposal is accepted.

Seven Simple Steps to Persuasive Writing

Almost all technical writing benefits from the technique of persuasion. Grants and proposals must have persuasive elements to be effective; operating instructions should convince customers that they have bought the best product for the job; hospital literature should assure patients that they have chosen the most well-equipped place to recover from surgery; research results should leave no doubt in the reader’s mind about the data’s validity. This article will describe simple ways to add subtle persuasion to your writing, to make your company or organization the frontrunner in the minds of its clients.

Three Steps to Great Copy

There are some simple steps you can take which, when taken in the right sequence, can improve your copy.

Ecrire Concis

La concision, c'est l'ergonomie de l'écrivain, c'est obtenir le même résultat informatif en moins de mots, en moins de phrases, moyennant moins de 'bruit' (au sens linguistique du terme).

How To Write Well

The phrase 'Plain English' (although widely used) is a little misleading. It is nothing to do with the English language as such. The principles outlined here apply to writing in any language. A more accurate expression is 'plain language'.

Plain Language: What Is It?

When you reach out to your readers, you show that you have considered who they are and what they need to know. Communicate a concern for your readers' needs so they will be receptive to your message.

Compositionality, Rhetoricity, and Electricity: A Partial History of Some Composition and Rhetoric Studies

Since 1949, when the Conference on College Composition and Communication was founded in Chicago, the terms composition and rhetoric have been linked in a social-constructionist move that is now ubiquitous in many United Statesian English departments as well as in many free-standing composition-rhetoric programs.

Writing for Decisionmakers: Using Evidence and Structure to Persuade

In approaching a writing task, we often write from the standpoint of writers, which is, of course, what we are. But if we want our writing to result in some kind of action on the part of our readers, we need to remember that how we present and structure the evidence that we have has a great deal to do with how persuasive our argument is— and what action, if any, results from it. The more oriented toward the reader our writing is, the more powerful it will be.

Effective Writing, or Tips on How to Write English 'Gooder'

Some quick tips toward a clearer, more lucid, meaningful,…well, you know what I mean.

Teach Others To Write Clearly

Simplicity is the key to clarity. Review basic principles of clear writing, such as using simpler words and using fewer words. (See sample curricula of two inhouse writing classes in the column to the right). Examine overheads used to teach these skills inhouse.

Your Reader

It is critically important to consider the needs of your reader when writing. If you can do this well, everything else follows naturally.

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.

Making Sense of Step-by-Step Procedures

Procedural instructions that consist of only a sequence of steps will probably be executable, but nevertheless 'meaningless' to users of technical devices. This paper discusses three features that can make procedural instructions more meaningful: adding functional coordinating information, adding information about the use of the technical device in real life, and adding operational information about how the device works. The research literature supports the effectiveness of the first feature, but offers little evidence that real life elements enhance understanding of instructions. As for operational information, the research suggests that users are willing to read it, and that it contributes to better understanding and performance in the long term, but only if it is closely related to the procedure. As a conclusion, we propose a theoretical framework that assumes three levels of mental representation of instructions: syntactical, semantic, and situational.

Learn the Techniques of Writing Before You Write

Writing is an art form. You must understand this art form before you can begin to challenge yourself and grow. Not many people would pick up a cello and start playing right away, without any knowledge of the basics of music, but the same does not hold true with writing. In fact, many people perceive writing to be some sort of inherent talent, without the need for training and hard work. Of course, some writers have a natural gift for creating structured and meaningful works with only minimal revision, but these are the exception rather than the rule.

Writing Processes

Our Writing Guides help you locate information quickly on specific topics. These guides focus on a range of composing processes as well as issues related to the situations in which writers find themselves.

Audience and Document Analysis

Before you begin editing a document, try to find out as much as you can about the audience for the document and purpose of the document.

Pre-Writing and Outlining

If there’s a single step in writing that makes the process easier, it’s right here. Ask yourself this question: Why does a writing task -- whether a memorandum or document -- seem to come together easily for one writer and not for another? Well, one answer is the successful writer spends more time planning than writing. I call this my pre-writing time, or phase, and for me the planning phase is actually pre-writing.

Clear Writing: Ten Principles of Clear Statement

If you want to test the clearness of your writing, you may wish to consider using a 'fog index.' Fog indexes measure the complexity of writing samples, and often provide a means of calculating the reading or educational level required to understand a particular passage. Some fog indexes are available as computer software programs, or you may do the calculations yourself.

Prepare Web Content and Organization For Your Audience

Communicators must know whether the audience consists of viewers, users or readers before selecting, writing and organizing content.

Quotations Give You Wisdom of the Ages

Quotations allow you to tap a wealth of wisdom and ideas that have survived the test of time, or caught your attention amid information overload. They also give credibility to the speaker's points. But you must take care in choosing and using others' words.

Use Metaphors to Communicate, Not Decorate

Good metaphors emerge from the writer's experience and observation. They connect the readers' knowledge to new ideas or information through concrete images.

Writing, Editing and Designing: a Unified Process

What's in it for me? That's what magazine readers must see at first glance, or they will flip on by. Winning their attention requires thoughtful blending of words and design from the beginning of the publication process.

Engaging and Educating Readers Through a Progressive Writing

Although technical communication documents cannot possibly be tailored to exactly match the interest, reading level and many-faceted influences of a reader, they can I believe, take measures to engage the reader to believe that the information he or she is receiving from the document is valuable to their experience in some way.

The Rhetoric of Critical Procedures

One important aspect of technical writing is the production and use of procedures. Though technical writing serves a variety of purposes, teaching, informing, persuading, and even questioning, one of its primary and most common purposes is the 'how-to' function of providing procedures. There is a great deal of information available on writing procedures, the vast majority of it focusing on software documentation and product documentation.

"Prescriptive" Audience Analysis: Moving Beyond the Purely Descriptive

Editing and writing both require an understanding of our audience, because without that knowledge, we can't shape our words to help them easily grasp difficult concepts. To understand our audience, we do what all writers and editors do, whether consciously or unconsciously: We create an image of our audience that guides our choice of words, images, and metaphors. This image is variously known as a 'stereotype' or a 'persona'. Keeping that image in mind as we work helps us satisfy the reader's needs, but if we're not careful, it can also cause us to waste valuable time collecting information that doesn't really help us communicate.

Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments

This essay illustrates key features of visual rhetoric as they operate in two professional academic hypertexts and student work designed for the World Wide Web. By looking at features like audience stance, transparency, and hybridity, writing teachers can teach visual rhetoric as a transformative process of design. Critiquing and producing writing in digital environments offers a welcome return to rhetorical principles and an important pedagogy of writing as design.

Piecing Together Your Audience

Technical writers live by the commandment 'Know thy audience.' While the best approaches to fulfilling this commandment include conducting site visits and user surveys, we must often turn to other sources for information when deadlines loom or budgets are slashed. Individually, these resources provide anecdotal snapshots of users, but taken together they offer an understanding of our audience necessary for quality documentation.

Talent vs. Skill in the Modern Writer

Skill, not talent, is the distinguishing factor between the writer whose work others appreciate and the writer whose work only he enjoys. 'Ideas are a dime a dozen' is a helpful aphorism when separating writers into those who think of creating art and those who actually do.

"Big Picture People Rarely Become Historians": Genre Systems and the Contradictions of General Education

This study synthesizes Y. Engeström's version of cultural historical activity theory and North American genre systems theory to explore the problem of specialized discourses in activities that involve non-specialists, in this case students in a university 'general education' course in Irish history struggling to write the genres of professional academic history. We trace the textual pathways (genre systems) that mediate between the activity systems (and motives) of specialist teachers and the activity systems (and motives) of non-specialist students. Specifically, we argue that the specialist/lay contradiction in U.S. general education is embedded in historical practices in the modern university, and manifested in alienation that students often experience through the writing requirements in general education courses. This historical contradiction also makes it difficult for instructors to make writing meaningful for non-specialists and go beyond fact-based, rote instruction to mediate higher-order learning through writing. However, our analysis of the Irish History course suggests this alienation may be overcome when students, with the help of their instructors, see the textual pathways (genre systems) of specialist discourse leading to useful knowledge/skill in their activity systems beyond the course as specialists in other fields or as citizens.

Creating a Writer's Identity on the Boundaries of Two Communities of Practice

In this case study, we explore the way one student, who aspired to become a professional writer, learned through her writing activity in two communities: academia and public relations. We use activity theory to conceptualize the student's learning as an activity that balances between individual agency in meaning making and the social, historical and cultural forces that shape how individuals make meaning. Perceiving the two settings as communities of practice that provided opportunities for pursuing shared enterprises and engaging in collective learning, we show how the student's simultaneous participation in these contrasting communities challenged and refined her understanding of what it means to be an effective writer . We discuss how the work she engaged in on the boundaries of two writing communities enhanced her developing identity as a professional writer as she became aware of and tested the limitations of writing in these two communities. Our study shows the benefit of providing opportunities for teachers and students to explore how contrasting communities of practice define successful writing activity and how writing activity operates in the cultural and political sphere of each community.

The Importance of Audience

Clear writing is essential if you want your message to get across clearly to your audience. But, what makes your writing clear will vary and is ultimately dependent on your target audience. Before you write, know who you are writing for.

Purpose in Writing

Before you write one word, you need to know what you want your writing to accomplish. Are you conveying information to the general public? Reporting on a recent project? Do you want your readers to do something when they finish reading? If you aren't sure what your purpose in writing is, your writing will not be clear.

Paradigm Online Writing Assistant

Whether you have an assigned subject or choose your own, you need to get focused and engaged with the project. Assigned subjects may look limiting at first, but they offer plenty of room for individual expression. Open subjects, while promising great freedom, can be daunting because they don't provide direction. They leave it all up to you. Yet these two situations, different as they appear, present similar challenges.

Three Ways to Persuade

Over 2,000 years ago the Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that there were three basic ways to persuade an audience that you were right: ethos, logos, and pathos.

Writing for Results

All writing elicits some action or reaction—some result—from the reader. These results need not be arbitrary. You, as author, can greatly influence how your reader acts. Effective writing achieves your desired results. You can increase your chances of success by following the ten steps outlined in Writing for Results. Through these steps, you tailor your message so that it appeals to your reader’s needs and interests, thus enabling action that helps you get exactly what you want. This process works for both long and short communiqués.

Shakespearean Technical Writing

Shows how technical writers can make better use of literary devices such as metaphor and foreshadowing to produce better, and more enjoyable, documentation.

Using a Writing Method to Design Applications

Arguing that technical writers have the skills to do more than write documentation, Van Mansom demonstrates how technical writers can apply writing methods to the creation of software.

Writers Who Love Words Too Much

Cautions writers against a variety of linguistic sins.

Purpose and Composition Theory: Issues in the Research

Unlike audience and context, rhetorical purpose has not been the subject of concentrated, comprehensive research. For example, we do not have a bibliographic overview of purpose as we do for audience (Coney; Ede, “Audience”), and we have not explored the meaning of purpose as we have audience (Park; Kroll; Ede and Lunsford) and context (Brandt; Piazza). However, we need answers to a number of questions concerning purpose. How is it defined? Is it a synonym for goal, intention, end, or aim, as certain research seems to suggest? If so, do these terms differ at all; and if not, what does purpose mean and how does it figure in our theory and pedagogy? Answering questions such as these would assist all composition specialists by encouraging more informed research and teaching about the rhetoric of purpose. In the following article, I begin the task of surveying research on purpose. Although not an exhaustive bibliographic survey, this article can serve as an introduction to the subject.

Building Goodwill

This is chapter two from the 6th Edition of Business and Administrative Communication, developed to teach you how to communicate effectively and improve your written and oral business communication skills. This knowledge will help you in your courses and, more importantly, in your future career. Throughout this text, several pedagogical elements appear to teach readers about all the aspects of business communication. These examples in their many formats are found in every chapter and provide excellent real-world examples to underscore key concepts throughout the text.

Reconsidering the Role of Plain Style in Technical Writing

According to the technical writing textbook used in the Introductory to Technical Writing class I teach, there are two purposes and at least five audiences of technical documents. Yet students are taught only one style of writing to satisfy all writing situations: the plain style. This essay examines the history and current state of plain style's role in technical writing. It further discusses plain style's relation to rhetorical and instrumental approaches to technical communication, and finally offers writing teachers a new approach to plain style and instrumental language in technical writing.

Fluency, Fluidity, and Word Processing

Despite the above maxim, numerous studies have been conducted over the past five years to determine whether student compositions improve significantly with the use of a computer. As Gail Hawisher (summarizing Seymour Papert) suggests, our field is so new that we seem lobe in a technoúcentric phase comparable to the egocentric phase through which Piaget’s children must pass on the way to maturity. We are searching for “THE effect” of the computer on the product (the text) rather than “the effects” of the computer both on the writer and on the context in which the product is produced. We have already passed judgment on what the computer should do (improve the product) rather than investigate what it does do. Thus, the results of the studies conducted to date appear contradictory.

Functional Redundancy and Ellipsis as Strategies in Reading and Writing

Redundancy is widely seen as a kind of linguistic cholesterol, clogging the arteries of our prose and impeding the efficient circulation of knowledge. However, I will argue that, just as a more thorough understanding of cholesterol reveals the existence of good cholesterol (HDL) as well as bad (LDL), so a broader view on the principle of redundancy reveals its effectiveness in certain situations, particularly beyond the sentence level. In this article I aim to revive the beneficial or functional sense of redundancy and show that functional redundancy in writing need not be a contradiction in terms. I believe a discussion of redundancy should include its opposite, ellipsis, so I will define both terms, emphasizing the beneficial sense of each, and then show how they appear in both reading and writing. In the latter part of the article, to illustrate the pervasiveness of redundancy and ellipsis, I will discuss examples of each in document design and in figures of speech. My attention will mainly be on technical writing, but the principles I will discuss may apply to other genres, too.