The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) Tutorial  

The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) is intended to be a replacement for HTML. XHTML has a stricter syntax than HTML and is the official recommendation. of the W3C. XHTML was required due to the poor standard of some HTML documents due to the forgiving nature of browsers. This tutorial discusses the issues in making your documents XHTML compliant.

Lemon, Gez. Juicy Studio (2009). Design>Web Design>XHTML

A PageMaker to PDF: Converting Your PageMaker Files  

A three-page manual for creating Acrobat PDF files from page-layout files.

Carpenter, Amy. TECHWR-L (2009). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe PageMaker

A Style in Technical Writing   

This course is designed to teach you to: recognize the variety and characteristics of styles of technical communication; adapt your writing style for different aims and audiences; revise efficiently and appropriately; and articulate reasons for revisions in your writing.

Dragga, Sam. Texas Tech University (2009). Articles>Information Design>Visual>Technical Writing

Principles of Technical Writing

Technical writing is nonfiction writing meant to make the complex simple. It informs, instructs, and persuades. And it can take many forms -- manuals, references, instructions, correspondence, reports, and proposals, among others. Whatever form is used, technical writing's focus is to ensure that readers can make informed choices, understand complex information, and follow complex procedures. In this class, technical writing is treated rhetorically: We will build on lessons of rhetorical analysis, organization, and style learned in previous classes, but we will apply those lessons to concrete real-world problems.

Spinuzzi, Clay. University of Texas (2009). Academic>Courses>Writing>Technical Writing

Interpretative Management in Business Meetings    

Middle managers interpret experiences and observations of employees and relate them to organizational contexts, practices, and strategies. By analyzing authentic verbal communication between middle managers and employees, this article will draw five conclusions about how interpretational work support organizational goals and values: 1. Middle managers and employees collaborate in interpreting tasks in relation to organizational context; 2. This interpretative work is based on language acquisition: learning the vocabulary of the organization; 3. The managers articulate the process, explicitly defining reality and influencing language use; 4. Employees show expectation of having their experiences interpreted by managers; 5. Employees may challenge managers with competing interpretations. This article will contribute to the study of leadership communication by combining organization communication theory and conversation analytic methodology. The article shows important ways in which middle managers "do leadership": by contextualizing employee actions and bringing employee perceptions in accordance with executive-level perceptions of organizational practices.

Nielsen, Mie Femø. JBC (2009). Articles>Academic>Business Communication>Organizational Communication

Same Token, Different Actions    

Using a conversation analytic approach, this article presents a systematic analysis of the interactional use of the particle ok in the institutional setting of German business meetings. Through an examination of talk-in-interaction with a thorough description of relevant embodied actions, the author analyzes how meeting participants co-construct social roles by employing different uses of free-standing ok. More specifically, the author focuses on two different uses of free-standing ok in business meetings: ok with averted eye gaze and ok with maintained eye gaze. The author addresses the question of how the chairperson uses free-standing ok to accomplish different actions and to perform "doing-being-facilitator." By describing where the chairperson looks while producing ok, I also discuss how the chair manages both the coordination of face-to-face interaction and the practical task of facilitating the progress of a meeting.

Barske, Tobias. JBC (2009). Articles>Management>Linguistics>Business Communication

"So What Shall We Talk About": Openings and Closings in Chat-Based Virtual Meetings    

Using the framework of conversation analysis, the author examines the structure of interaction in computer-mediated team meetings, focusing on the openings and closings of the team's four virtual meetings. The author describes how the medium, quasisynchronous chat (QSC), disrupts the temporal flow of conversation and makes beginning and ending these informally structured meetings difficult. The author finds that the team, as a result, evolved a two-stage process for both opening and closing the meetings, which allowed them to make consistent use of certain linguistic and conversational devices to mark possible transition points for openings and closings. The author discusses how these virtual meetings compare to face-to-face interactions and some possible implications for the use of QSC for virtual team meetings.

Markman, Kris M. JBC (2009). Articles>Collaboration>Online>Teleconferencing

Staging a Team Performance    

Drawing on insights from Goffman's dramaturgical approach to interaction, this article demonstrates how meetings are team performances routinely concerned with sustaining or challenging interpretations of power relations. The data for this article were collected at a British embassy, relying on participant observation, audio recordings of weekly gatherings of Heads of Section, and interviews with the people that attended the meeting. The analysis focuses on the double role behavior of the Ambassador as the director and central player of a team performance and the conflicting ideologies these shifting roles entail.

Van Praet, Ellen. JBC (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Collaboration>Case Studies

Beyond Taxonomies of Influence: "Doing" Influence and Making Decisions in Management Team Meetings    

Studies of influence in organizational settings have tended to concentrate on defining categories of influence based on self-reports and questionnaires. This has tended to decontextualize and generalize the findings and therefore overlooks the inevitably temporally and locally situated nature of all social activity. Using conversation analysis as a methodology and videotaped data of naturally occurring talk, this article seeks to go beyond such taxonomies of influence. More specifically, this article seeks to provide a fine-grained analysis of how subordinates, as well as superiors, can influence decision-making episodes of talk. It is also argued that the results of such research can be fed back into practice and ultimately can be of help in allowing better decision-making practices.

Clifton, Jonathan. JBC (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Management>Organizational Communication

Emotions in Organizations: Joint Laughter in Workplace Meetings     

Humor and laughter are emotion-involving activities that can be jointly constructed in interaction. This article analyzes instances of joint laughter in leader-member meetings where laughter may or may not be associated with humor. The method applied is conversation analysis in which the focus lies on laughter's role in the microlevel organization of interaction. The results show that the instances of laughter do not occur in accidental locations but are clearly connected to specific activities. First, humor and laughter can be strategically used by team leaders to create collegiality and a good working atmosphere in their teams. Second, laughing together is connected to closing down a topic or a phase in a meeting in a way that displays mutual understanding. Third, shared laughter initiated by team members appears to be a resource that can be used to reduce tension in challenging situations such as the accomplishment of difficult tasks or the treatment of delicate topics. Finally, laughing together can be used to do remedial work in problematic or conflicting situations. Ultimately, joint laughter appears to be a resource that can be used to improve the task performance and, through this, the achievement of the goals of the organization.

Kangasharju, Helena and Tuija Nikko. JBC (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Organizational Communication>Emotions

Rethinking Loci Communes and Burkean Transcendence    

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.

Olson, Kathryn M. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Rhetoric>Civic

Time and Exigence in Temporal Genres    

Genre use entails a rhetorical response to an exigence in the writer's context. In one category of genres, which the author calls temporal genres, linear time constitutes a major exigence to which writers must respond. Temporal genres, such as annual reports and status reports, call for writers to publish texts because a certain amount of time has passed, even if they are not yet ready to do so. The first annual report of the Privacy Office of the Department of Homeland Security reveals an ineffective ethos and discontinuities between the mission of the office and that of the department. But the second annual report reveals a more effective ethos and greater harmony between the missions. This study shows how the requirement to report can force writers to decide existential issues of identity and mission.

Markel, Mike. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2009). Articles>Business Communication>Genre

Squaring the Learning Circle: Cross-Classroom Collaborations and the Impact of Audience on Student Outcomes in Professional Writing    

Student compositions traditionally are written for the teacher. Yet instructors of professional communication genres have discovered that students' motivation may be enhanced when they write assignments for audiences of peers within the classroom or professionals outside the campus. Yet client-based projects require writing students who have never yet written for an external audience to make a leap beyond the classroom. To bridge the gap between writing for classroom peers and writing for professional clients, this article describes a third and intermediate choice of audience, namely, external peers in cross-classroom collaborations that occur via telecommunication. The author places this intermediate-audience strategy within the larger conversation about the impact of audience on student writing outcomes, applies the strategy to professional writing pedagogy, and reports the results of a small pilot study that provide some preliminary support for the strategy.

Ward, Mark. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2009). Articles>Education>Business Communication>Collaboration

Methods and Results of an Accreditation-Driven Writing Assessment in a Business College    

This article describes a pilot effort for an accreditation-driven writing assessment in a business college, detailing the pilot's logistics and methods. Supported by rubric software and a philosophy of "real readers, real documents," the assessment was piloted in summer 2006 with five evaluators who were English instructors and four who worked or taught in business environments. The nine evaluators were each given 10 reports that were drawn from a sample of 50 reports completed in a writing-intensive course. They created 88 individual assessments using a 10-category rubric. While the overarching purpose of the pilot was to determine the effectiveness of the methods used, the results may also be of interest to those involved with the assessment of writing.

Warnock, Scott. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2009). Articles>Education>Assessment>Methods

User Interviews - Analysis Simplified

You’ve conducted your user interviews, but now you need to make sense of all that information you’ve gathered. These best practice tips will help you analyse the results.

Gray, Alistair. Webcredible (2009). Articles>Usability>Interviewing>Methods

Return of the Mobile Style Sheet

If you’re just getting started with mobile design, you may face a number of hurdles, including the cost or technical challenge of designing and maintaining a second site—or a simple lack of understanding of how people on the go might use your site. This article discusses a first step toward mobile design that uses CSS to maximize interoperability across platforms. By starting simple, you can provide a decent initial experience, solicit user feedback, and iterate toward a more mobile-friendly design.

Hazaël-Massieux, Dominique. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Wireless Web>CSS

Semantics in HTML 5

HTML 5, the W3C’s recently redoubled effort to shape the next generation of HTML, has, over the last year or so, taken on considerable momentum. It is an enormous project, covering not simply the structure of HTML, but also parsing models, error-handling models, the DOM, algorithms for resource fetching, media content, 2D drawing, data templating, security models, page loading models, client-side data storage, and more. There are also revisions to the structure, syntax, and semantics of HTML.

Allsopp, John. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>HTML5

Ten Best Intranets of 2009

Intranets are getting more strategic, with increased collaboration support. Team size is growing by 12% per year, and platforms are becoming integrated. Improving usability increased use by 106% on average.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Web Design>Intranets>Usability

Obsessed with Possessives

We see it everywhere: our schools, our places of business, even in notes stuck on our refrigerator. Yes, my friends, I’m talking about apostrophe abuse. The Obama administration, faced with two wars and an economy teetering on the edge of disaster, is unlikely to make this a priority. So it’s our duty as professional communicators to stamp it out.

Wenger, Andrea. Carolina Communique (2009). Articles>Communication>Diction>Grammar

A Question of Trust

Last month, Forrester Research released results from a survey on how much consumers trust different sources for information. They didn't include online Help or knowledge bases in the survey, so we don't know how well or badly they would have come out in the survey.

Cherryleaf (2009). Articles>Documentation>Online>Help

Technical Writer as Playwright

Help is read in snippets. Avoid ambiguous parts of speech and make each snippet a good little play that you can easily imagine being acted out on stage.

Hughes, Michael A. User Assistance (2009). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing

Good Designs Have Strong Contrast

Push contrast more than you might be naturally inclined. If you don’t, you end up with conflict. The next time you eat at a restaurant, look closely at the menu. A good menu has a high degree of contrast between sections.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Document Design>Graphic Design

How Do You Manage Your RSS Feeds?

Some feeds are only skim worthy, while others I read word-for-word. Still, 90 feeds is really more than I can realistically keep up with. The question of which feeds to unsubscribe from plagues me. How long does one subscribe to a feed before deciding it's not worthwhile?

Loring, Sheila. Scriptorium (2009). Articles>Information Design>XML>RSS

Ten RoboHelp Tips You Won't Want to Miss

I've been using RoboHelp for nearly a decade now. I started off with an older Word-based version to create WinHelp, and now I work with the HTML version to create WebHelp for locally installed and server-based products. Here are a few RoboHelp tips that I've found useful in my day-to-day help authoring responsibilities.

HelpScribe (2009). Articles>Documentation>Software>Adobe RoboHelp