Why a Good Title Makes a White Paper

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

Stelzner, Michael A. WhitePaperSource (2006). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric>White Papers

Why and How Our Institutional Home Matters: Strategic Program Planning in a Specific Setting  

My presentation will address the conference question of how institutional setting affects program focus and development. The answer, at least as we understand it so far, turns out to be fairly complex. In our case, for example, the recent changes to our Technical Writing degree have been directly responsive to rapid changes in the field of technical communication, in evolving technologies, and in the importance of information systems and web-related writing and design for technical communicators, At the same time, it is clearly the case that an equally strong influence has been the internal pressures we feel as we find ourselves competing with other departments at CMU for students who had once been a kind of private preserve, And this pressure involves more than competition for students. An equally important value at stake is our perceived status and role within our department and our university.

Schnakenberg, Karen R. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Rhetoric

Why Do Business Cases Fail? What Can You Do About It?

A business case may predict excellent results yet still fail to 'make the case.' We see project managers, IT directors, sales people, and others who have just had the painful experience: they predicted great cash flow, high ROI, and short payback - and still got a thumbs down from top management.

Solution Matrix (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Rhetoric>Business Case

Why Write Instructions That No One is Going to Read?

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

HelpScribe (2008). Articles>Documentation>Rhetoric>Technical Writing

Wi-Fi Rhetoric: Driving Mobile Technologies   

I argue that the wi-fi industry promises mobility, security, and entertainment not by emphasizing the open-spectrum technologies upon which they are based but through strategies that anticipate and recycle generic consumer values. These values—obtained by quantifying and interpretting consumer behaviors or "choices"—are represented by a universal product image that obfuscates difference, contradiction, and conflict in order to distribute products efficiently to a mass audience.

Moeller, Ryan. Kairos (2004). Articles>Rhetoric>Wireless Web

The Wonder of Writing Across the Curriculum    

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

Young, Art. LLAD (1994). Articles>Rhetoric>Writing Across the Curriculum

Words into Pictures: Applying Visual Thinking to Online Documentation  

How can writers enhance their visual literacy in order to create effective online documentation? By partnering multimedia production expertise with technical writing expertise, DVS Communications and Bell-Northern Research (BNR) have co-developed an introductory course 'Words into Pictures' that stimulates visual thinking capabilities. This paper describes the main components of the course and illustrates its contribution to the success of BNR's online information system CADHELP.

Couse, Mary M., Malcolm W.J.F. Graham and Louis W. Stokes. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Documentation>Online>Visual Rhetoric

Write a Strong Close

If the average business letter starts poorly, then it invariably finishes poorly. Your closing paragraph should bring your letter to a polite, businesslike close. Typical final paragraphs in business letters invite the reader to write again or use overused and meaningless phrases that detract from the impact of the letter.

Newman, Judith M. LupinWorks. Articles>Business Communication>Correspondence>Rhetoric

Write Endings to Lock the Box

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

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

Writers and Their Maps: The Construction of a GAO Report on Sexual Harassment      

This article examines a 1994 General Accounting Office (GAO) report on sexual harassment at U.S. service academies to determine how power structures affected the report writers’ rhetorical choices. Employing postmodern mapping theories, the article identifies what is valued and devalued in the report’s contents. Then it describes Congress’s reaction to the report and speculates on the report’s impact on public discourse and subsequent social action. It offers postmapping theory as a way of understanding the relationship between discourse and power in policy reports.

Cargile Cook, Kelli. Technical Communication Quarterly (2000). Articles>Rhetoric>Reports>Sexual Harassment

Writers Who Love Words Too Much  

Cautions writers against a variety of linguistic sins.

Belding, Janet R. Intercom (2002). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

Writing a Successful Speech

At some point in your career, you will find it necessary to do a speech or presentation. Sound scary? Something you're not sure you can do? Let's take a look at how to write a successful speech that will get the results you want.

Turner, Gordon. STC Williamette Valley (2002). Articles>Rhetoric>Presentations

Writing and Designing for the Web (573G)

This class focuses on effective writing and design for online environments--with particular emphasis on the Web. While grounded in relevant theory, this course has a workshop format, with an emphasis on hands-on, collaborative learning.

Krause, Tim. Metropolitan State University (2005). Academic>Courses>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric

Writing and Presenting Your Thesis or Dissertation

A practical Guide to assist in the crafting, implementing and defending of a graduate school thesis or dissertation. Authored by S. Joseph Levine, Michigan State University (levine@msu.edu).

Levine, S. Joseph. Learner Associates (1998). Academic>Writing>Rhetoric

Writing Cinematically

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

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

The Writing Consultant as Cultural Interpreter: Bridging Cultural Perspectives on the Genre of the Periodic Engineering Report      

The periodic engineering report can become a source of conflict and frustration when North American engineers collaborate with colleagues abroad. To overcome such difficulties, technical companies may hire writing consultants, who then take on the additional role of cultural interpreters, helping the partners bridge differences in both the practice of engineering and the language and culture of each country. As such a writing consultant, I worked with a Canadian engineering company, its Russian contractors, and a Russian translator to analyze the sources of difficulties in their reports. The language of the reports was English, but differences in tone as well as reader expectations about organization, format, and appropriate content caused misunderstandings among the collaborators. Contrastive rhetorical analysis helped to identify problems in both the conception of the report as a document and the translation of particular text.

Artemeva, Natasha. Technical Communication Quarterly (1998). Articles>Rhetoric>Reports

Writing, Editing and Designing: a Unified Process

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

Writing that Works (2003). Articles>Writing>Editing>Visual Rhetoric

Writing for Decisionmakers: Using Evidence and Structure to Persuade  

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

Fruitman, Michael P. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Writing>Proposals>Rhetoric

Writing for Non-Readers  

This paper shows how drawings, images and icons can be effectively used to help technical writers reach those readers who are often reluctant to read written instructions. It also describes some of the positive results of effective visual communications on documents undergoing translation. Finally, it gives background information on the importance of visual communication and lists some basic rules for producing effective instructional pictures.

Zanon, Michela. STC Proceedings (2002). Articles>Rhetoric>Visual>Visual Rhetoric

Writing for Results  

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

Maggiani, Rich and Allison Brochu. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

Writing in a Culture of Simulation: Ethos Online    

The MUD Bot Julia and the Turing test can help us understand some things about writing in new technological environments. These environments belong to what Sherry Turkle has called our “culture of simulation” (Turkle, 1997). She takes the term simulation from postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard, who maintains that the proliferation of signs in contemporary society has “imploded” the distinction between the real and the simulated: the world of signs has become “hyperreal,” overwhelming the physical world and replacing it as our primary experience.

Miller, Carolyn R. North Carolina State University (2002). Articles>Rhetoric>Online

The Writing Instructor  

The Writing Instructor is a blind peer-reviewed journal, publishing in print since 1981 and on the Internet since June, 2001. Its distinguished editorial board consists of over 150 scholars- teachers- writers representing over 75 universities, community colleges, and K-12 schools.

TWI. Journals>Education>Writing>Rhetoric

Writing, Literacy and Technology: Toward a Cyborg Writing  

Like Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Lyotard, and others, Haraway calls for a conception of writing (“cyborg writing,” in her terms) that resists authoritative, phallogocentric writing practices, that foregrounds the writer’s own situatedness in history and in his or her writing practice, and that makes visible the very “apparatus of the production of authority” that all writers tend to submerge in their discourse. This is not to say that writers must “eschew” authority, but that in a truly ethical and postmodern stance they must reveal how authority is implicated in discourse. And because writing is inseparable both from its own embodied situatedness and from systems of liberation and domination, “literacy” should be a central concern of us all.

Olson, Gary A. JAC (1996). Articles>Rhetoric>Technology

Writing Persuasively  

Just what IS 'persuasive writing' and how does it differ from any other kind of writing? If you ever have to use the written word to convince someone of something, then you will need to know how to write persuasively.

Brochu, Allison G. and Mary O'Neill. STC Orange County (1998). Presentations>Rhetoric