Technical Communication Quarterly (TCQ) is a peer-reviewed journal, published four times a year by the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, which publishes research focused on technical communication in academic, scientific, technical, business, governmental, and related organizational or social contexts.
#29235
A Prototype Theory Approach to International Website Analysis and Design 
As global online access grows, Web site designers find themselves creating materials for an increasing international audience. Cultural groups, however, can have different expectations of what constitutes acceptable Web site design. This article examines how prototype theory can serve as a methodology for analyzing Web sites designed for users from different cultures. Such analyses, in turn, can help individuals create more effective online materials for international audiences.
St. Amant, Kirk R. Technical Communication Quarterly (2005). Design>Web Design>Methods>International
#13895
This article presents a close reading of one chapter of the only guidebook written for physicians about the clinical management of breastfeeding. The medical discussion of the psychological aspects of breastfeeding articulates conflicting ideological views of women and their place in society, demonstrating how medicine reflects and contributes to a cultural context that is ambivalent about women's changing roles and the transformation of their practices as mothers. At stake is medicine's role in regulating maternal behavior.
Hausman, Bernice L. Technical Communication Quarterly (2000). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical
#29237
Rearticulating Civic Engagement Through Cultural Studies and Service-Learning
Although service-learning has the potential to infuse technical communication pedagogy with civic goals, it can easily be co-opted by a hyperpragmatism that limits ethical critique and civic engagement. Service-learning's component of reflection, in particular, can become an uncritical, narrow invention or project management tool. Integrating cultural studies and service-learning can help position students as critical citizens who produce effective and ethical discourse and who create more inclusive forms of power. Rather than being tacked on, cultural studies approaches should be incorporated into core service-learning assignments.
Scott, J. Blake. Technical Communication Quarterly (2004). Articles>TC>Cultural Theory
#29210
Reflections on Technical Communication Quarterly, 1991-2003: The Manuscript Review Process 
This article traces the development of Technical Communication Quarterly (TCQ), beginning with the first issue in the winter of 1991, through the 2003 issues. As co-editor of TCQ, charged with the manuscript review process, I shepherded more than 350 manuscripts through evaluation and about one-fourth of those through publication. In this article, I explain that process and how it changed when The Technical Writing Teacher became TCQ and what features our reviewers now believe make a successful TCQ article.
Lay, Mary M. Technical Communication Quarterly (2004). Articles>Research>Publishing>History
#13931
A common genre of corporate promotional materials in Finland is a video that introduces a company to various audiences, including customers, shareholders, and visitors to the company's offices. The video uses visuals, sounds, and text to establish the company's identity and credibility as well as informing the audience about company products. The video appeals to deep-seated cultural values to promote its message. This study applied theories of both advertising and semiotics to analyze the first minute of a video produced for a Finnish company that manufactures log buildings and wraps its image around a concept of leisure.
Yli-Jokipii, Hilkka M. Technical Communication Quarterly (1998). Articles>Writing>Marketing>Scandinavia
#29211
Reshaping Technical Communication: New Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century
A discussion of future directions for the fields of technical and professional communication.
Bridgeford, Tracy. Technical Communication Quarterly. Articles>TC
#13902
A case study of an experienced professor's comments on a design report in a first-year engineering class was conducted over the period of an academic year. When compared with the commenting styles of technical writing teachers, the engineering professor's comments were found to be highly directive, and thus at odds with the preference for facilitative comments that prevails in composition studies. However, differences in genre conventions explain much of the discrepancy.
Miller, Paul, Jaye Bausser and Audeen Fentiman. Technical Communication Quarterly (1998). Articles>Education>Engineering>Technical Writing
#18641
A Response to the Special Issue on Ethics
Whatever one claims to have said in oneï¿s narrative, whether ethical explication or narrative self-building, is not always under the selfï¿s control. The practice of self-knowledge argued for here is more accurately self-formation, a will to power over the self. What these authors propose is a valuable and powerful act of self-making through representation. This formation of narrative self-representation connects actions with identity, forging identity from fragmented memory. It requires an attempt to tell oneï¿s story as honestly as possible, and to resist narrating oneï¿s self as one desires to be seen. In the process, these authors assert, our self learns how to see itself through the lens of retrospection.
Salvo, Michael J. Technical Communication Quarterly (2001). Articles>TC>Ethics
#29209
Results of a Survey of ATTW Members, 2003
This article presents the results of an April 2003 electronic survey of ATTW members. Results and interpretations are categorized as follows: a professional profile of respondents; member observations about ATTW and its activities (member participation, appraisal of benefits, and preferred topics for TCQ); and current issues and views of the field's future.
Dayton, David and Stephen A. Bernhardt. Technical Communication Quarterly (2004). Articles>TC>Academic>Surveys
#29243
The Rhetoric of Misdirection in Corporate Privacy-Policy Statements
U.S. businesses wish to continue to profit by collecting personal information from their website visitors, yet they fear that the practice both alienates visitors and exposes them both to legal problems from U.S. authorities and business sanctions from data-privacy authorities in Europe and Canada. This dilemma is reflected in the typical corporate privacy-policy statement, which is full of misleading and deceptive rhetoric intended to cover up the gap between the company's privacy policy and the image it wishes to project.
Markel, Mike. Technical Communication Quarterly (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Legal>Privacy
#13845
This article argues for a social perspective of the new technical communication service course, a conclusion supported by several premises: the technical communication profession wants and needs accountability, accountability is demonstrated by evaluation, assessment requires that we define literacy, evaluating technical communication literacy requires portfolio evaluation, portfolio assessment supports the social perspective of learning, and the social construction concepts imply teaching strategies. The argument proceeds from a case study that demonstrates reliability, stability, and validity in its technical communication service course assessment, tasks, and instructor community. This article demonstrates that portfolios can help us both conceptualize and evaluate the new technical communication service course.
Coppola, Nancy W. Technical Communication Quarterly (1999). Articles>Education>WPA>Assessment
#13853
Shaping Local HIV/AIDS Services Policy through Activist Research: The Problem of Client Involvement 
This article argues that professional writing researchers can help shape public policy by understanding policy making as a function of institutionalized rhetorical processes and by using an activist research stance to help generate the knowledge necessary to intervene. My goal is to argue for what activist technical writing research might look like, lay out an understanding of institutions that is helpful for influencing public policy, and illustrate the promises and the problems of both positions by using the case of a study focused on local HIV/AIDS policy making. According to this way of thinking, professional writing researchers can impact policy by helping change the processes by which policy gets made.
Grabill, Jeffrey T. Technical Communication Quarterly (2000). Articles>Rhetoric>Biomedical
#13903
Social and Cognitive Effects of Professional Communication on Software Usability
We designed and piloted a technical communication course for software engineering majors to take concurrently with their capstone project course in software design. In the pilot, one third of the capstone design course students jointly enrolled in the writing class. One goal of the collaborative courses was to use writing to improve the usability of students' software. We studied the effects of writing on students' user-centered beliefs and design practices and on the usability of their product, using surveys, document analyses, expert reviews, and user test results. When possible, we compared the usability processes and products of teams who did and did not take the writing class. Our findings suggest that the synergy of this interdisciplinary approach effectively sensitized students to user-centered design, instilled in them a commitment to it, and helped them develop usable products.
Mirel, Barbara E. and Leslie A. Olsen. Technical Communication Quarterly (1998). Design>Software>Usability>Rhetoric
#29212
The State of Research in Technical Communication
There have been many attempts to assess the state of research in our field. This article is our attempt to both (1) synthesize recent analyses, opinions, and conclusions concerning the status of technical communication research and (2) propose an action plan aimed at redirecting our field's agenda for its research. We explore these questions: What are the recent research trends in our field? What is and is not promising about our recent approaches to research? Where do we need to go next? What are the critical components for a new agenda for our research?
Blakeslee, Ann M. and Rachel Spilka. Technical Communication Quarterly (2004). Articles>Research>TC
#29213
STC's First Academic, Salary Survey, 2003
This article reports United States salary data from the April 2003 survey of Society for Technical Communication members who identify themselves as educators. It provides analysis of salary data based on type of institution, rank, tenure status, experience, education level, sex, and age. It also reports on benefits, administrative responsibilities, job satisfaction, and program size.
Harner, Sandi. Technical Communication Quarterly (This article reports United States salary data from the April 2003 survey of Society for Technical Communication members who identify themselves as educators. It provides analysis of salary data based on type of institution, rank, tenure status, experience, education level, sex, and age. It also reports on benefits, administrative responsibilities, job satisfaction, and program size.). Careers>Academic>Salaries
#30156
Supra-Textual Design: The Visual Rhetoric of Whole Documents
Supra-textual design encompasses the global visual language of a document and operates in three modes: textual, spatial, and graphic. The rhetoric of supra-textual design includes structural functions that provide global organization and cohesion and stylistic functions that affect credibility, tone, emphasis, interest, and usability. Supra-textual rhetoric extends to other documents through conventional codes and through sets and series. Because writers may not control the end product of supra-textual design, intention may also be a rhetorical factor.
Kostelnick, Charles. Technical Communication Quarterly (1996). Articles>Document Design>Rhetoric>Visual Rhetoric
#13840
Taking a Political Turn: The Critical Perspective and Research in Professional Communication
This article examines the critical perspective as an alternative to our current descriptive, explanatory research focus. The critical perspective aims at empowerment and emancipation. It reinterprets the relationship between researcher and participants as one of collaboration, where participants define research questions that matter to them and where social action is the desired goal. Examples of critical research include feminist, radical educational, and participatory action research. Adopting the critical perspective would require that scholars in professional communication rethink their choices of research questions and sites, their views of the ownership of research results, and the types of funding they seek for research initiatives.
Blyler, Nancy. Technical Communication Quarterly (1998). Articles>TC>Writing>Rhetoric
#29246
In light of growing interest in technical communication around the world, cross-cultural teaching opportunities may challenge basic assumptions about teaching and learning for both teachers and students. A faculty-development project in the People's Republic of China illustrates various ways facilities, educational practices, and worldviews from each side of the exchange require significant compromise. A negotiated, student-centered classroom environment may be a significant strategy for instruction in such settings.
Dautermann, Jennie. Technical Communication Quarterly (2005). Articles>Education>Technical Writing>China
#29233
Teaching Hypertext Composition
Composing hypertext documents can be an enriching path into the world of technical communication. In learning to produce hypertext, students are introduced to an important form of written composition that encompasses not only text generation, but also visual communication and information architecture. In this article, I provide a rationale for teaching hypertext composition and then some specific curricular suggestions in two parts, one for teaching beginners, and one for teaching more advanced students.
Gordon, Jay L. Technical Communication Quarterly (2005). Articles>Writing>Hypertext>Education
#29241
This article argues that technical communicators are uniquely poised to function as public intellectuals. To demonstrate this point, the author offers the example of her work on a major AIDS prevention program report. Situating this work within the history of technical communication, the current discussion of rhetorics of risk, and the writing classroom, the author argues that technical writers don't have simply the opportunity to engage in textual activism; in many cases they have no alternative.
Bowdon, Melody. Technical Communication Quarterly (2004). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Case Studies
#13900
Technical Communication from 1850-1950: Where Have We Been?
As the discipline of technical communication undergoes increasing scrutiny by scholars and teachers and as the discipline continues to evolve with advancements in technology, we should pause to consider some foundational, historical issues that led to the formation of a technical communication pedagogy in the first place. This piece evaluates shifts in an engineering curriculum from roughly 1850 to 1960 that made possible the development of a technical communication curriculum.
Kynell, Teresa. Technical Communication Quarterly (1999). Articles>Education>History
#13921
Technical Communication from 1950-1998: Where Are We Now?
The changes in technical communication education between 1950 and 1998 have led to disciplinary maturity: the development of academic programs and of a body of innovative research. This disciplinary maturity parallels the professional identity and growth of numbers of technical communication practitioners. As a thriving multidiscipline with many direct research and pedagogical connections to the workplace, technical communication can uniquely influence workforce values, providing a new, evolving disciplinary model for higher education. However, technical communication’s disciplinary maturity also means a movement away from practice and from the service course, the foundations of technical communication as a discipline and the sources of its workplace influence.
Staples, Katherine E. Technical Communication Quarterly (1999). Articles>TC>History
#13896
Technical Communication in the 21st Century: Where Are We Going?
Instead of offering a predictive “history” of the future, this essay explores how we arrive at our attitudes toward the future and the effects of such attitudes toward current practice. We greet the future with attitudes prepared by myths, master narratives that guide our vision of who we are and what we are becoming. One key myth in our discipline, the myth of immediate communication, proves an unreliable guide to the future. Readings in science fiction serve to demonstrate how a critique of the immediacy myth might proceed. The essay argues for a critically informed, open-minded approach to the future, an approach that encourages an honest self-criticism within the discipline.
Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. Technical Communication Quarterly (1999). Articles>TC>History
#13917
Technical Communication on the Web: A Profile of Learners and Learning Environments
The number and variety of distance education courses have increased dramatically in recent years with the advent of new delivery technologies. Third-generation distance delivery methods such as interactive, Web-based instruction also have led to new levels of access for students. This article presents demographic information about students taking online courses at two institutions. In addition, it discusses some of the changes in learning environments that may accompany the move to the virtual classroom. Finally, it points out some potential problems in delivering courses with new technologies.
Schneider, Suzanne P. and Clark G. Germann. Technical Communication Quarterly (1999). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online
#13834
Technical Communication Quarterly
The website of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing's peer-reviewed scholarly journal. For ATTW members the site contains PDF versions of articles from the 1997-2001 volumes.
