#25067
This is an exploratory study of reading and writing within a particular discipline. It is also an investigation of critical thinking and an examination of engagement and resistance in using language to learn about new concepts. I looked at how college history students wrestled with and sometimes worked around issues of theory, specifically theories of the causes of the Civil War. Using analysis of think-aloud protocols, I investigated how students comprehended theoretical writing about the Civil War and how they used the theoretical material to take a position in writing about these same issues. My main purpose in this article is to examine the cognitive moves students make, their ways of thinking, when working with theory, an activity which many educators today are touting as particularly important in developing students’ critical thinking abilities. I am especially interested in the stances students take toward their subject matter which promote critical reasoning, that is, which lead to engagement, as well as approaches which circumvent or stand in the way of such thinking, that is, which lead to resistance.
Durst, Russel K. LLAD (1994). Articles>Writing>History
#31531
Communicating With External Audiences During War Time
On 19 March a war with global implications began between a U.S.-led coalition and Iraq. Although some organizations will be affected by this war more than others, the articles below will help any communicator address certain immediate internal and external organizational war-related communication issues.
Shapiro, Nick. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>History
#29033
Communicative Practices in the Workplace: A Historical Examination of Genre Development 
Although studies of actual communication practices in the workplace are now commonplace, few historical studies in this area have been completed. Such historical studies are necessary to help researchers understand the often com-plicated origins of genre conventions in professional discourse. Historical research that draws on contemporary genre theory helps address this void. A genre perspective is particularly valuable for helping researchers trace a given type of document s emergence and evolution. This perspective also provides a way of accounting for the connections between communicative practices and the other activities that occupy the attention of workplace organizations. To illustrate what this perspective brings to historical research in professional communication, I examine the development of communicative practices at a national production company that relied on texts to mediate its organizational activities across geographically dispersed locations.
Zachry, Mark. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2000). Articles>Business Communication>Workplace>History
#10503
Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979-1994: A History
During the Fall of 1997, the authors participated in Electronic Discourse and Pedagogy, a course offered by Dr. Kris Blair at Bowling Green State University . One objective of this course called individuals (or groups) to lead facilitations based on assigned readings throughout the semester. These facilitations/presentations were to be informal and interactive. It was here that the authors presented the following timeline which was intended to accompany and expand the work done by Gail E. Hawisher, Paul LeBlanc, Charles Moran, and Cynthia L. Selfe in Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979-1994: A History. This original facilitation involved a detailed discussion on the past, the present, and the future of computers in the classroom, as well as a road-trip to the LinguaMoo Mooloqium for moderated group activities. In preparation, the authors of this timeline compiled information from the text and used this information as a springboard for research which has come to be present
Wilferth, Joe and Paul Cesarini. University of Texas (1998). Academic>Computing>History
#29050
This study suggests that documentation is a complex technical communication genre, encompassing all the texts that mediate between complex human activities and computer processes. Drawing on a historical study, it demonstrates that the varied forms given to documentation have a long history, extending back at least to the early days of commercial mainframe computing. The data suggest that (1) early forms of documentation were borrowed from existing genres, and (2) official and unofficial documentation existed concurrently, despite efforts to consolidate these divergent texts. The study thus provides a glimpse into the early experimental nature of documentation as writers struggled to find a meaningful way to communicate information about their organization s developing computer technology.
Zachry, Mark. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2001). Articles>Documentation>History
#26139
Corporate Pages 2002-2004 (Part 1)
In 2002 I saved nine sample web pages from corporate web sites, for teaching purposes. On 1 June 2004 I took another look at those pages or their current equivalent. No way is this a systematic study or even a random sample. But the results are interesting and do reflect trends in corporate web sites.
McAlpine, Rachel. Quality Web Content (2005). Design>Web Design>History
#22681
Could Stravinsky Have Made Fonts? or: Fear and Loathing in A Minor
Is something being lost in the translation to a digital world?
Rakowski, David. Typofile (1996). Design>Typography>History
#22910
Review: Counterfeit Capital: Searching for a Silver Lining in Bernadette Longo's Spurious Coin
Dr. Bernadette Longo, Ph.D., uses the metaphor of devalued currency to trace some of the roots in technological history for technical writing's lack of intellectual and cultural capital. She ingeniously incorporates early threads of management and industrial technology, like the formation of the railroad, in an attempt to contextualize her research. Academics must view Longo's text, Spurious Coin, as just one branch of what must be a webbed tree of intersecting social attitudes towards knowledge definition and science. In understanding the gaps in Longo's narrative, people interested in technical writing might find her book to act as a launch pad for better defining the questions guiding their own research. In this review, I will focus on some of the important gaps I see in Longo's research methodology as she historically situates the emergence of engineering as a discipline and then as the determining factor in technical communication's subjugated position within the academy and industry.
Trim, Michelle. Journal of Computer Documentation (2001). Articles>Reviews>Documentation>History
#31289
Every company has a story to tell, a story about people and passion, about vision and hard work. A corporate history tells these stories—but it is also a sophisticated marketing tool that presents your message and history in a professional, concise format. These historical "portfolios" are designed to attract and impress prospective customers and stockholders, and to create loyalty and a feeling of camaraderie among past and present employees.
Tyline King, Heidi. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Business Communication>History
#29560
CSS is ten years old this year. Such an anniversary is an opportunity to revisit the past and chart the future. CSS has fundamentally changed web design by separating style from structure. It has provided designers with a set of properties that can be tweaked to make marked-up pages look rightand CSS3 proposes additional properties requested by designers.
Lie, Hakon. List Apart, A (2007). Design>Web Design>CSS>History
#15108
December 1, 1999, through February 29, 2000 
This report covers specifications, standards, and amendments received from December 1, 1999, through February 29, 2000.
Bach, Claudia. Intercom (2000). Articles>History>TC
#15109
December 1, 2000, through February 28, 2001
This report covers specifications, standards, and amendments received from December 1, 2000, through February 28, 2001.
Bach, Claudia. Intercom (2001). Articles>History>TC
#29065
The Design Elements of Medieval Books of Hours
The commonsense principles of modern document design are direct descendants of the principles used in the Books of Hours, a hybridized religious instruction manual created in the commercial scriptoria of the 13th century. This article analyzes the design of Books of Hours and discusses how these medieval documents fit within the four design criteria (supertextual, extra-textual, intratextual, and intertextual) put forth by Kostelnick and Roberts [1]. The analysis reveals the early user of good document design features as the medieval scriptoria worked to address the audience and task requirements of the Books of Hours.
Webb, Mary and Michael J. Albers. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2001). Design>Document Design>History
#29199
Digitising History: A Guide to Creating Digital Resources from Historical Documents
This guide is intended as a reference work for individuals and organisations involved with, or planning, the computerisation of historical source documents. It aims to recommend good practice and standards that are generic and relevant to a range of data creation situations, from student projects through to large-scale research projects.
Townsend, Sean, Cressida Chappell and Oscar Struijvé. AHDS (1999). Books>Publishing>Online>History
#10122
This paper discusses some of the founding work in the field of probabalistic mathematics (that of Jakob Bernoulli, the seventeenth-century Swiss scientist). By discussing similarities between Bernoulli's formulation of the mathematics to evaluate the probability of any given event and the forensic (or courtroom) rhetorics which Bernoulli had studied in school, this paper suggests that the foundations of probabilistic mathematics might well be rooted in part in forensic rhetoric. This is important to technical communication because it historicizes the origin of positivism in mathematical technical discourses.
Palmer, Terri. EServer (2001). Presentations>Lectures>Rhetoric>History
#10385
Doctoral Research in Technical, Scientific and Business Communication, 1989-1998
This article is an update of the article by Rebecca S. Kelly and me in an earlier issue of Technical Communication (Rainey & Kelly 1992). My purpose here is the same as we had then: …we focus on making known the wide variety of doctoral research in professional communication emanating from many academic institutions. Specifically, we look at doctoral research in professional communication with a view to learning what academic institutions sponsor it, what methods researchers employ, and what topics doctoral candidates explore. (553) In this article, I use 'professional communication' to mean technical, scientific, and business communication.) In what follows, I first summarize the findings of this current search and then discuss the method of collecting information. Next, I identify the academic institutions that have doctoral programs in technical, scientific, and business communication, what methodologies the researchers use, and what topics they have researched in the period since 1989.
Rainey, Kenneth T. Technical Communication Online (1999). Academic>Education>Graduate>History
#31201
Dolly Dahle and the Business of Technical Communication
Presents a biography of Dorothy ("Dolly") Dahle, a successful businesswoman in the 1950s.
Malone, Edward A. IEEE PCS (2008). Articles>History
#29532
Drawing to Learn Science: Legacies of Agassiz
The use of visual representation to learn science can be traced to Louis Agassiz, Harvard Professor of Zoology, in the mid-19th century. In Agassiz's approach, students were to study nature through carefully observing, drawing and then thinking about what the observations might add up to. However, implementation of Agassiz's student-centered approach has struggled with the conflict between science as a form of developing "mental discipline" in which mastery of scientific facts is the goal and science learning as a socially situated activity with an emphasis on the process of learning, not merely its products. Present-day attempts to have students draw to learn science often succumb to these same conflicts, limiting their full realization.
Lerner, Neal. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2007). Articles>Scientific Communication>Technical Illustration>History
#25082
Durability of Usability Guidelines
About 90% of usability guidelines from 1986 are still valid, though several guidelines are less important because they relate to design elements that are rarely used today.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Usability>History
#31053
Current developments in high-definition technological systems for home viewing link definitively with early Home Cinema, as practised from the late 1890s, as an alternative to public spectatorship. The traditions of Home Cinema, in encompassing degrees of informality, interaction and control within domestic exhibition, served to lay foundations for a televisual experience which, today, having come full-circle, is defining itself once more as `Home Cinema'.
Chalke, Sheila. Convergence (2008). Articles>Multimedia>Video>History
#31937
Echoes from the Past: DITA, Help, Single-Sourcing Tools — Looking from the 60s to Today
The historian of technical communications, R. John Brockmann, researched efforts to document products going back centuries. He finds that some of today’s hottest new documentation ideas were present in the work of those creating, documenting, and selling the technology of manufacturing just after the revolutionary war.
Ng, Daniel. I'd Rather Be Writing (2008). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>History
#19560
Editing Sure Has Changed. Or Has It?
It has always been part of the editor's traditional task to search for the mot juste. This was especially true in technical fields: words could not be expected to guide readers if they were not accurate, and the mechanics of production made it costly to change words once they were published. Today, however, particularly in fields where much of what is published can become obsolete within months or weeks, fewer and fewer research organizations employ a full-time copy editor to refine the wording of their texts. Instead, to keep pace with the need for current information, our offices are being equipped with the latest tools for electronic text production.
Bodzin, Gene. Writer's Block (1995). Articles>Editing>History
#19969
Editing: An Arcane Strategy for New Millennium Technology?
This paper discusses the relevance of editing to documentation produced in the new millennium. It also points out the importance of editing, for clarity of communication as well as for intent. Editing is approached first from the historical perspective provided by the history of written communication. This is followed by a brief discussion of the types of editing functions most often used prior to publication.
Block, Anne L. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Editing>History
#26682
The Effect of Changes in Publishing Technologies on Labor and Documentation
Online publishing technologies is an ever-changing, morphing animal that cannot necessarily be predicted, but perhaps we can work to harness it. As publishing technologies change, so too will the style in which the readability of those documents change as they are shaped and designed to meet new formulas and needs. Likewise, as the readability and accessibility of documents change, so too must the interaction and intervention of the technical communicator change to ensure readable, articulate, navigable documentation, as well as preserve an author-reader relationship and also to preserve the role of the technical communicator.
Comstock, Jeanie. Orange Journal, The (2004). Articles>TC>Publishing>History
#29013
The Effects of Print and Other Text Media Developments Upon the Law in America
The law has long been shaped by the technical aspects of compiling, writing, storing, and accessing textual verbiage. Text media technology affects all areas of the law, from its intellectual basis to its promulgation, dissemination and enforcement. From America's Colonial period, the operative state of the art of printing has accordingly shaped the development of the law in America, and has caused it to grow in a different direction from the law of England. Since the Colonial period, the state of the art of text media technology has made quantum evolutionary leaps forward, impacting American law in the process. Artifacts of these text media technologies are to be found in the statutes, legislative histories, judicial decisions, and other legal materials. Modern technology has accelerated the pace of text media technology development, and has impacted the law accordingly. Current developments continue to impact the law on an ongoing basis, and future developments in text media technology can be expected to leave their impact upon the law.
Ryesky, Kenneth H. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (1999). Articles>Publishing>Legal>History
