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.

Clark, Roy Peter. Poynter Online (2004). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

Reveal Character Traits

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

Clark, Roy Peter. Poynter Online (2004). Articles>Writing>Journalism>Rhetoric

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.

Boelter, Walter H. Orange Journal, The (2003). Articles>Documentation>Rhetoric>Technical Writing

Rhetorical Community: The Cultural Basis of Genre    

Our understanding of genre as social action afflicts the typical first-year college writing program in the United States. It turns what should be a practical art of achieving social ends into a productive art of making texts that fit certain formal requirements.

Miller, Carolyn R. North Carolina State University (1994). Articles>Education>Writing>Rhetoric

Rhetorical Figures in Headings and Their Effect on Text Processing: The Moderating Role of Information Relevance and Text Length      

Professionals involved in the creation of text-based communication face a number of challenges. These include overburdened and often uninterested users juxtaposed with the writer’s desire to communicate relevant topical information. Uninvolved users are likely to ignore the message. This may be exacerbated by increases in text length designed to increase the amount and/or detail of information to be communicated. An experiment was conducted to examine the effect of rhetorical figures in text headings as to how users read and process the text (hereafter, readership, as used in marketing). To the extent that higher levels of text readership increase user knowledge and skills, enhance topic-related attitudes, and facilitate beneficial topic-related behaviors, higher readership should yield desirable communication outcomes. Headings with rhetorical figures were hypothesized to enhance readership, particularly under conditions generally associated with relatively low readership, namely, lower perceived information relevance and longer text. Results generally support rhetorical figures’ abilities to enhance readership, especially with longer texts.

Huhmann, Bruce A., David L. Mothersbaugh and George R. Franke. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication (2002). Articles>Rhetoric>Writing

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.

Remley, Dirk. Association for Business Communication (2008). Articles>Education>Writing>Rhetoric

A Scheme for Representing Written Argument  

A scheme for representing argument is a formalism used to describe the structure or pattern within argumentative discourse. The value of any such scheme lies in its ability to focus attention on certain aspects of perceptually complex argument and direct interpretation and use of these aspects in detail. Formal logic, beginning with the syllogism, represents a large class of argument schemes. So too do the schemes of classical rhetoric.

Kaufer, David S. and Cheryl Geisler. JAC (1991). Articles>Rhetoric>Writing

Seek Original Images

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

Clark, Roy Peter. Poynter Online (2004). Articles>Writing>Diction>Rhetoric

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.

Dalvi, Meghashri. Indus (2007). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

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.

Fryer, Elizabeth Evans. Intercom (2004). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

Seven Steps to Writing White Papers More Efficiently

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

Gandia, Ed. WhitePaperSource (2006). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>White Papers

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.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Intercom (2001). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Tropes

The Structure of Advanced Composition  

Every advanced composition course I taught had five elements: audience, purpose, voice, organization, and polish. 'If we teachers,' I thought, 'can visualize advanced composition as a structure with five components we should be able to teach any upper level writing course, no matter what the specific content, with confidence.' The purpose of this article is to explain the five components essential to advanced composition and to illustrate their general applicability with examples from technical writing, business writing, journalism, and academic writing.

Halpern, Jeanne W. JAC (1980). Articles>Rhetoric>Writing

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.

Giles, Timothy D. and Brian Still. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2005). Articles>Writing>Assessment>Rhetoric

Taking a Political Turn: The Critical Perspective and Research in Professional Communication      

This article examines the critical perspective as an alternative to our current descriptive, explanatory research focus. The critical perspective aims at empowerment and emancipation. It reinterprets the relationship between researcher and participants as one of collaboration, where participants define research questions that matter to them and where social action is the desired goal. Examples of critical research include feminist, radical educational, and participatory action research. Adopting the critical perspective would require that scholars in professional communication rethink their choices of research questions and sites, their views of the ownership of research results, and the types of funding they seek for research initiatives.

Blyler, Nancy. Technical Communication Quarterly (1998). Articles>TC>Writing>Rhetoric

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.

Nihmey, John. Writer's Block (1995). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

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.

Medved, Jane E. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

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.

Plung, Daniel L. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2006). Articles>Education>Writing>Rhetoric

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.

Stolley, Karl. Purdue University (2006). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Online

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.

Murphy, Stephen W. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

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?

Canavor, Natalie and Claire Meirowitz. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Rhetoric>Technical Writing

Three Steps to Great Copy

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

Usborne, Nick. ClickZ (2001). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

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.

California State University (2002). Articles>Rhetoric>Writing

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.

Anderson, Jack R. and Jeffry A. Rybak. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Minimalism

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.

Writing that Works (2006). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>Minimalism