http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Rhetoric A listing of the most recently indexed works about 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/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/35180.html http://tc.eserver.org/35180.html Genre studies and genre approaches to literacy instruction continue to develop in many regions and from a widening variety of approaches. Genre has provided a key to understanding the varying literacy cultures of regions, disciplines, professions and educational settings. Genre in a Changing World provides a wide-ranging sampler of the remarkable variety of current work. The twenty-four chapters in this volume, reflecting the work of scholars in Europe, Australasia, North and South America, were selected from the over 400 presentations at SIGET IV (the Fourth International Symposium on Genre Studies) held on the campus of UNISUL in Tubarão, Santa Catarina, Brazil in August 2007 — the largest gathering on genre to that date. The chapters also represent a wide variety of approaches including rhetoric, Systemic Functional Linguistics, media and critical cultural studies, sociology, phenomenology, enunciation theory, the Geneva school of educational sequences, cognitive psychology, relevance theory, sociocultural psychology, activity theory, Gestalt psychology, and schema theory. Sections are devoted to theoretical issues, studies of genres in the professions, studies of genre and media, teaching and learning genre, and writing across the curriculum. The broad selection of material in this volume displays the full range of contemporary genre studies and sets the ground for a next generation of work. 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/34667.html http://tc.eserver.org/34667.html This project examines commonplace notions of text and intertextuality, the idea that “writing is recursive,” the disciplinary identification and preoccupation with composition rather than writing, and the historical privileging of pedagogy over (and often in lieu of) curriculum development. In tracing these commonplaces, I also work to establish new directions for our research that are sometimes grounded in our own, often overlooked disciplinary theory, while also moving outside of the humanities in search of cross-disciplinary collaboration. 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/34495.html http://tc.eserver.org/34495.html As the internet and television bring us instant information and access to millions of resources worldwide—some more trustworthy than others—separating fact from fiction requires a bit of skill ... and luck. Illustrator Lonnie Busch recognizes this conundrum, as depicted in his illustration below. Using a palette that combines warm, rich shades along with cooler highlights, Busch is able draw the viewer into the action. 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/34189.html http://tc.eserver.org/34189.html Have you ever even tried to create your own CSS graph? If you have, you will know how hard it is. Using Flash is one way to go, but you just can’t beat a beautifully crafted CSS Graph. Have a look at these tutorials and techniques. 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/34106.html http://tc.eserver.org/34106.html An interactive presentation of a variety of visualization techniques used by graphic designers, technical illustrators and document designers to convey information. 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/32982.html http://tc.eserver.org/32982.html Successful visual designers well know the audiences they are designing for, and realize that their audiences exist at multiple levels. 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/32811.html http://tc.eserver.org/32811.html A collection of online resources about writing grant proposals, particularly those useful to nonprofit organizations. 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/32773.html http://tc.eserver.org/32773.html Whether it's gestures in an oral conversation, type on a page, or flickering images on a screen, each medium of communication includes visual elements. Such elements long have been recognized as rhetorically significant, but the cultural proliferation of digital technologies has heightened interest in the visual dimension of rhetoric. As both consumers and producers, we engage daily with a variety of textual and graphical elements. Text and Image will encourage critical consideration of such encounters. We will examine the affordances and constraints of various forms from the perspectives of both reception and production. Our course assignments will ask you to respond to existing theories and examine them in praxis by producing a variety of image/text artifacts. http://tc.eserver.org/32718.html http://tc.eserver.org/32718.html As Web 2.0 style passes way, it’s time for something new. Few weeks ago we’ve written about the hand-drawing style in modern web-design. And as Web 2.0 style is all about glossy and shiny look, another option would be something rather crude, radical and provoking. Such as the grunge style — dirty look with irregular, nasty, sometimes even ugly and crooked visual elements. Will it establish itself as a trend? Probably not. However, it may be used once some creative and unconventional design approach is needed. 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/32665.html http://tc.eserver.org/32665.html The rich contextual narrative contained in a story makes it a far more effective way of learning than by reading any procedure, best practice, or most other knowledge transfer media. What makes stories so compelling? While we have been taught that people process information, they actually learn by processing patterns. The patterns held in stories hold far more contextual meaning than we intentionally convey, and stay longer with those being told the stories. Will we ever wean customers from calling the help desk? Should we start our manuals with "once upon a time ...?" Is the answer to usability to create a giant template for all Web applications? Which patterns work, and why don't my patterns ever seem to be ones that stick? 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/32337.html http://tc.eserver.org/32337.html Color is an intrinsic visual attribute of form that functions as language and message. The purpose of this study was to investigate objectively structured color combinations as a means to communicate visual order for the purpose of reinforcing information hierarchy. Controlling the visual relationships of hue, value and chroma contrast can significantly assist a person's cognitive ability to assign importance and dominance to a controlled color structure. This research study provided significant findings supporting the hypothesis that intrinsic color structures can be formulated objectively; represent a visual hierarchy; and be perceived in an understandable order. Chi-square analysis for 99 participants was calculated for task effectiveness. To analyze task efficiency, three distinct ANOVA calculations were made for time variations. The documented findings of this study presented explicit evidence that addresses specific mechanisms for objective color ordering. The natural inferences of the study support the proposition that there is a natural relationship between objective color ordering principles and human perception. 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/32214.html http://tc.eserver.org/32214.html Today's business climate of outsourcing, in-sourcing, virtual teams, and ROI-driven objectives can leave a manager at any level feeling powerless. Yet, we often see examples of those who can elicit unwavering support from their teams, driving highly effective projects, and getting the best performance from employees despite ever-increasing workloads. What is it about these individuals that makes them stand out as great leaders? http://tc.eserver.org/32152.html http://tc.eserver.org/32152.html English 470 will explore some of the major theories of rhetoric and writing which shape the ways that we use language in social, educational, political, and professional situations. We will examine various definitions of rhetoric, key rhetorical concepts and debates, theories of writing, the impact of new technologies on rhetoric and writing, and philosophical questions, among others. Our trajectory for the course can be mapped across several different heuristics. We can say that we will begin with oral traditions of rhetoric, move to written traditions, and then to electric or online instantiations of rhetoric. Another way to think about the structure of the course is philosophically: we start with ancient concepts of language and thought, then move to modernist conceptions, and finish with postmodern ideas about the place of rhetoric in the world. While we won't be able to cover every historical period and every rhetorical concept, you should leave the class with an understanding of what rhetoric is, when, where, and how it can be deployed, and why rhetoric is important. The ultimate goal of the course is for students to understand rhetoric as a productive art that offers transformative possibilities. http://tc.eserver.org/32104.html http://tc.eserver.org/32104.html iLT is designed to inspire its readers, to make people more aware of the typography that is around them. We really cannot escape typography; it's everywhere: on road signs, shampoo bottles, toothpaste, and even on billboard posters, in books and magazines, online...the list is endless, and the possibilities equally so. 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/31986.html http://tc.eserver.org/31986.html A website devoted to exploring accessibility at the intersection of technology and rhetoric. The cornerstone of the site is, at least for now, a study of accessible podcasting. 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/31773.html http://tc.eserver.org/31773.html Give yourself a hand. Your presentation starts with your handshake. Make it firm, business-like, and brief. Your hand should be thumb up with fingers straight. The interviewer isn’t going to kiss your hand or lead you into a waltz. 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/31678.html http://tc.eserver.org/31678.html An illustrated to Jean-luc Doumont's theory of high-context and low-context cultures and the contrast between their visual rhetorics. 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/31509.html http://tc.eserver.org/31509.html When surfing the web these days, you often come across web sites that suffer from stagnation—they look old, obsolete or appear to have been designed by an amateur. Your web site needs continuous improvement to capture and engage your visitor’s attention. If not, he or she can easily click away to your competitor’s site. Here are twelve steps to help prevent stagnation. 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/31362.html http://tc.eserver.org/31362.html In a continuation of his January column, Hart sheds some light on page layout and design—and gives color to a seemingly “black-and-white” concept. 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/31232.html http://tc.eserver.org/31232.html It sees you when you’re sleeping. It knows if you’re awake. 'It' is the world, and it knows if your company has been naughty or nice. The digital revolution has put a photographic device, be it a camera or camera-phone, in the hands of virtually everybody everywhere—so you can be sure someone besides Santa is constantly watching your company’s behavior. For that and other good reasons, corporate photography is looking very green this season. 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/31220.html http://tc.eserver.org/31220.html Corporate photography was once the realm of adults only. Just a few years ago, it was surprising to see a picture of anybody under 40 years old in an annual report or capabilities brochure, much less someone under the age of 12. But nowadays, photos of children are showing up more and more often in all kinds of corporate publications, and as you might suspect, photographing children requires a totally different approach than shooting the CEO. http://tc.eserver.org/31235.html http://tc.eserver.org/31235.html As business communicators, our goal is typically to influence opinion or change behavior in order to achieve business objectives. To accomplish this, we must get people to interact with our message. A page of 12-point Times New Roman text is seldom compelling, so what you are left with to persuade people to read your publication is graphic design. http://tc.eserver.org/31102.html http://tc.eserver.org/31102.html It is now possible to replicate Google Maps' functionality with open source software and produce high-quality mapping applications tailored to your design goals. Paul Smith shows how. 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/31012.html http://tc.eserver.org/31012.html Corporate annual reports typically include a narrative section and a financial section. The narrative section is not scrutinized by auditors as the financial section is, yet many readers rely heavily on its graphs to estimate the firm's financial situation. However, the graphs often misrepresent the financial data. To better understand annual report graphs' important role, this article examines more than 25 years of literature related to these four areas: (a) the ways financial graphs are prepared, used, and misinterpreted; (b) differences by country; (c) regulatory influences for accountants; and (d) the parts formatting and media selection decisions play in communication interpretation and persuasion. Across the literature, the author notes consensus that annual report graphs are widely used in many countries and that there is rampant disregard for the guidelines for their accurate, non-misleading presentation. The article concludes with seven proposed directions for future research. 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.