Technical and Professional Writing Commons^™

40. Technical Editing, Jonathan Arnett

Sexy Technical Communications

This chapter focuses on editing technical documents. In particular, this chapter will address some of the most common types of technical editing you can do, as well as processes, resources, and techniques you can use. Overview of technical editing General procedure for editing Contracts Levels of edit Editors' resources Strategies for writing comments Strategies for marking up technical materials Hard-copy editing marks Special ideas for editing visual materials Special ideas for editing websites

42. Standard Operating Policies And Procedures, David Mcmurray, Tamara Powell

Sexy Technical Communications

This chapter introduces you to policies and procedure documents and to standard operating procedure documents. Click on the links, below, to see samples.

Hand-washing policies for health care personnel

Accounting policies and procedures

Standard operating procedures: pouring dental impressions

Technical Problem Based E-Language Instruction For Vocational Students, Eleni Papantoniou, Thanasis Hadzilacos

Eleni Papantoniou

We discuss an intervention in mother language instruction in a Greek Vocational Lyceum combining Web 2.0 tools with electronic writing pedagogy. During a full school year (2012-13), forty six 11th grade students with typically low literacy skills participated, randomly separated in control and experimental group. The latter systematically dealt with Technical Problem Solving and completed online (Edmodo) increasingly complex writing tasks. Encouraged to reflect on and solve technical problems, they activated language skills for communicating their solutions through the synthesis of technical text-genres. Meanwhile the control group followed the conventional teaching method using the usual literary texts. Pre and post-test …

“Uh Oh. Cue The [New] Mommy Wars”: The Ideology Of Combative Mothering In Popular U.S. Newspaper Articles About Attachment Parenting, Julia Moore, Jenna Abetz

Papers in Communication Studies

Through critique of concordance, we argue that popular U.S. newspaper articles about attachment parenting perpetuate the ideology of combative mothering, where mothers are in continuous competition with one another over parenting choices. Specifically, article writers construct a new, singular metaphorical mommy war between pro-attachment parenting and anti-attachment parenting proponents by prepackaging attachment parenting and its debate, advocating for attachment parenting through instinct and science, and rejecting attachment parenting because of harm to children, relationships, and mothers. A minority of articles, however, avoided reifying this pro-/anti-attachment parenting mommy war by exploring the complexities of parenting beyond prepackaged philosophies. We explore the …

Agro/Hort 403/803: Scientific Writing And Communication—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Inquiry Portfolio, Brian M. Waters

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

Scientific writing is a skill that is useful for science students, since many of them will write about their research in a thesis, dissertation, or in journal articles. The goal of my course is to provide students with practice and training in scientific writing so that after they take the course they are confident and ready to write drafts independently. The class uses many learning activities, such as reading, writing, peer reviewing, revising, and class discussions. However, the first two iterations of the course did not have built-in ways to practice sentence and paragraph editing, or to gauge quality of …

The Role Of Occupational Branding In The Professionalization Of Technical Communication, Chelsea Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the relationship between professional identity and professional status by exploring the quest for professionalization within technical communication. An established professional identity is crucial to an occupation's professionalization process, as it enables members of a given field to create a common sense of being and facilitates a recognizable personal and collective identity. Such recognition is vital to an occupation's rise to professional status, as it creates a distilled image of the ideal practitioner for outsiders and forms the basis upon which claims of expertise may be made. By constructing the meaning surrounding their profession, members are able to …

The Why, How, And Best Practices Of Creating, Editing, And Maintaining A Professional Blog, Elizabeth Haas

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Write Stuff - Winter 2016 (Vol. 13, No. 1), Research Medical Library

Write Stuff 2016

• Publishing patient information in case reports
• Changes to NIH grant policies, grant application forms and instructions, and SF424 guidelines
• Microsoft Word 2013: Tips for using Comments, Change Tracking, and other features
• Citing unpublished material in a research paper
• Winter and spring schedule for the Research Medical Library webinar program
• Unusual terms used in scientific writing and publishing: Uniform requirements/ICMJE recommendations

Extending Writing In The Disciplines (Wid) To Train Mechanical Engineering Gtas To Evaluate Student Writing, Nancy Barr

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Beyond first-year composition, the undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum provides few opportunities for students to develop technical writing skills. One underutilized path for students to strengthen those skills is the required sequence of laboratory courses, where students write reports that are evaluated by graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), many of whom speak English as a second language. Historically, engineering GTAs have not been trained in formative assessment techniques to help students improve their technical writing skills. This dissertation details a comprehensive study of a GTA training program implemented in a large mechanical engineering department. Situated within the field of Writing Across the …

"Unblackboxing" Technology Through The Rhetoric Of Technical Communication: Biometric Technology And Ghana's 2012 Election, Isidore Dorpenyo

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

In this project, I seek to “unblackbox” technology; by which I mean, I seek to, in the words of Latour, “open up” or “debug” the biometric technology used by Ghana for its 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. Through the process of “unblackboxing,” I demonstrate the value of technical communicators to technology studies by analyzing technical documents that accompanied the biometric verification device which was adopted and used by Ghana to conduct its 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. I argue in this dissertation that technical documentation does not merely accommodate users to technologies, but also it provides avenues to articulate broader …

Personas: A Strategy For More Inclusive And Usable Reproductive Health Tracking Technologies, Anna R. Paul

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

In this report, I argue for the inclusion of personas in the development process of technologies that are designed to allow users to collect and track their health information. Personas provide a profile of a user and their needs, goals, and contexts. This tool can help designers to better understand their users, in order to create better, more usable end products. I examine one particular self-tracking technology, smartphone applications that allow users to record information about their menstrual cycles. Many of the most popular period tracking applications available today only meet the needs of a narrow user group, resulting in …

Sexy Technical Communication, Tamara Powell, Jonathan Arnett, Monique Logan, Cassandra Race, Tiffani Reardon

2016 Faculty Bookshelf

Sexy technical writing…we’ve got to be kidding, right? But no, we aren’t. Good technical writing is powerful and clear and gets the job done. It brings people together and solves problems. Good technical writing purrs and hums like that BMW you plan to be driving someday.What’s not sexy about that? On the other hand, poor technical writing skills may lead to a lifetime of asking people if they want fries with that…or worse, selling vacuum cleaners door to door. There’s no need to ask what’s not sexy about that!

WE – your textbook authors – are a team of dedicated …

Delimitación Y Desarrollo De Las Lenguas De Especialidad: Actuales En La Definición De Los Géneros Discursivos En Las Lenguas Con Propósitos Específicos, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

This article presents a theoretical review of the evolution of Languages for Specific Purposes and explores its future development. The first part of the article defines Languages for Specific Purposes. The second part presents its objective in which it reviews the different evolutionary stages of this approach since it began in the early 20th century. Lastly, the article concludes with a review of its current problems and discusses the possible changes in the future.

Are We Prepared For The Future? A Case Study On The Education Of Journalists, Victoria Black

Senior Theses

Throughout my college experience at the University of South Carolina as a journalism major, I heard about one thing for four years – senior semester. Senior semester for journalism majors is a set number of classes the student must take his or her senior year, either the last or second to last semester before graduation. It includes four specific classes on reporting, producing, writing and web management. But there is a catch. The four classes do not meet for specific class periods. Students in senior semester meet Monday through Friday from 8:45am to 6:00pm, producing a 4:00pm newscast every day. …

Technology Pedagogy And Content In Web-Based Language Instruction For Secondary Vocational Students, Eleni Papantoniou, Thanasis Hadzilacos

Eleni Papantoniou

Students in vocational schools in Greece are less motivated and have low performance in courses demanding academic skills, like language learning with reading and writing tasks (e.g. essay writing). If they were asked, they would say that they prefer to do things rather than study or get involved in traditional classroom language activities. School cannot provide them with language materials and methodology adjusted to their needs. Language teaching and learning is an academic task-oriented subject and teachers find it extremely difficult to arise their students' interest. So, from this point of view there is a gap between need and supply. …

The Structure Of Play: An Exploration Of The Instructional Design Of Rift, Carly Finseth

Carly Finseth

This paper uncovers and explores the specific instructional approaches that role-playing games (RPGs) use to engage and teach their players. The goal of this research was to go beyond the theoretical understandings of gaming as rhetorical, social, and cultural experience and instead identify a practical, applications-based approach to understanding games as instructional design artifacts. Through in-depth case study research, I ultimately unearthed a set of heuristics that can be used in future studies about games and learning including how to study video games as instructional documentation and how to construct a higher education classroom as a game.

I Want All The Words! How Gestalt Principles And Plain Language Can Help You Become An Effective Document Designer, Jennifer M. Turner, Jessica Schomberg

Library Services Publications

Librarians across library types and departments frequently provide training materials to each other, library technicians, and student workers. For these materials to be effective, they must contain accurate information and should also follow guidelines for usable document design. Good design makes documents easier to use, helps documents stand out from other pieces of information, and lends credibility to document creators. A few simple tips, such as following Gestalt principles and using plain language, can improve document usability. The presenters will demonstrate how making these and other changes will improve the accessibility and functionality of library training materials. They will also …

Enc 2210 Technical Writing For Health Science, Johanna Hillen

Service-Learning Syllabi

No abstract provided.

The State Of Writing In The Health Sciences Major At Jmu: Survey And Interview Instruments, Lucy Bryan Malenke

Lucy Bryan Malenke

I used these survey and interview instruments in an IRB-approved investigation of the state of writing in the Health Sciences major at James Madison University, which took place during the Spring 2015 semester. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to assist the University Writing Center in developing and facilitating evidence-based responses to the discipline-specific writing needs of Health Sciences students. The 20 study participants were faculty members who taught in the Health Sciences major. Each took an online Qualtrics survey and participated an in-person follow-up interview with a predetermined set of questions. The instruments explored participants’ pedagogical practices, attitudes …

Communication Risk And Strategy In Temporary Organizations, Shelley R. Mcivor

Theses

Communication is a critical and emerging metric for successful outcomes in the high-stakes field of project management. Professional management societies have quantified financial losses caused by ineffective communication. Consulting project management exemplifies a maximum communication risk environment - misunderstanding threatens project finances, strict deadlines, and technical benchmarks - exacerbated by the complexity of a temporary organization structure.

The context of work in a temporary organization adds layers of ambiguity to project communications - an ill-structured domain in technical communication terms. Formal study of communication in temporary organizations is relatively new. Recent studies are derived from engineering and business management perspectives. …