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At a time when agri-food biotechnologies are receiving a surge of investment, innovation, and public interest in the United States, it is common to hear both supporters and critics call for open and inclusive dialogue on the topic. Social scientists have a potentially important role to play in these discursive engagements, but the legacy of the intractable genetically modified (GM) food debate calls for some reflection regarding the best ways to shape the norms of that conversation. This commentary argues that agri-food scholars interested in promoting a more constructive agri-food biotechnology discussion could do so by blending key insights, as well as guarding against key shortcomings, from the fields of science communication and science and technology studies (STS). Science communication's collaborative and translational approach to the public understanding of science has proven pragmatically valuable to scientists in academia, government, and private industry, but it has too often remained wedded to deficit model approaches and struggled to explore deeper questions of public values and corporate power. STS's critical approach has highlighted the need for multi-stakeholder power-sharing and the integration of diverse knowledge systems into public engagement, but it has done little to grapple with the prevalence of misinformation in movements against GM foods and other agri-food biotechnologies. Ultimately, a better agri-food biotechnology conversation will require a strong foundation in scientific literacy as well as conceptual grounding in the social studies of science. The paper concludes by describing how, with attention to the structure, content, and style of public engagement in the agri-food biotechnology debates, social scientists can play a productive conversational role across a variety of academic, institutional, community-level, and mediated contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heath pandemic pushed organizations to work virtually. As a result, virtual workplace has become the new norm for many people, especially those in the technology field. Working in a virtual workplace is different from the traditional workplace. It requires a different skill set. Yet, there are very few undergraduate courses teaching virtual workplace strategies and technical communications. This paper utilized an online content analysis of online websites to examine the status of remote IT jobs in the United States, and to examine the status of the number of undergraduate courses with a virtual workplace focus. Results reveal 38% of the IT jobs advertisements posting in the United States were for a remote, virtual or hybrid environment. Additionally, the research did not find a single course that entirely focused on virtual workplace strategies and technical communications. Finally, a proposed framework for a virtual strategies and technical communications course was constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews images of people of Asian descent wearing masks in popular press articles discussing mask shortages and argues that visual framing had the potential of fueling racial antagonism during the initial months of COVID-19's spread across the United States. Technical communicators need to include globalized perspectives in educational materials about masks as an advocacy strategy that can help communities and individuals to navigate the crisis situation and better protect themselves and those around them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses various issues related to the imposition of controls over the free flow of scientific information in the United States and its national security. The article makes specific reference to the views of Bobby Inman, deputy director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, in this regard. There are many reports and proposed regulations that ask to limit openness and free flow of scientific work due to certain national security concerns. Different reviews conducted by different agencies have affected the work of intellectuals including scientists, engineers, students along with university and industrial officials.

This article examines prescription drug labels (PDLs) via an actor-network theory analysis to demonstrate current challenges with technical communication (TC) scholars’ appropriation of actor-network theory. The authors demonstrate that the complexity of the PDL network requires a more nuanced deployment of actor-network theory notions of durability and synchronicity. Specifically, the authors suggest that diachronic approaches to networks enable a more comprehensive understanding in ways that synchronic approaches cannot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that technical and professional communication (TPC) programs and specialists need to contribute more to health humanities scholarship and program curricula. The article reviews the writing courses offered by baccalaureate health humanities programs and "to support further TPC engagement in these programs" offers core generalizations and strategies for managing their approval process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Recent changes in health care in the US have made it important for health information to become easier to access, understand, and use. Making medical decisions without adequate information can lead to poor health outcomes. Providers are being incentivized to improve the quality and value of patient-centered communication and care. Technical communication practitioners can collaborate with interdisciplinary professionals to help these initiatives succeed. Method: A patient education software application was developed with an interdisciplinary collaboration between a medical animation company, a surgery clinic, and an academic researcher who is also a technical communication practitioner. User-centered design principles were employed in the development of the application. Interviews were conducted to reveal insights about the application's influence on the language participants used to discuss the procedure. Results: Participants who used the software application to learn about the procedure were able to consistently recognize and recall more informational and procedural knowledge than participants who did not use the application. Conclusion: Collaborations similar to this can enhance the design, creation, development, and assessment of technical communication materials in patient education settings to help improve the odds that patients will understand more about their health and be able to make better decisions and can contribute valuable information to the technical communication curriculum. Best practices in technical communication can inform user-centered design, development, and assessment of educational materials in a variety of settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main justifications for a patent system is that patents disclose useful technical information that others can learn from. However, patents are not performing this function well. The average patent is written in legalese, uses vague language, and is hard to connect to commercial activity. Legal scholars have responded with calls to improve the patent document through better writing, more examples, and better enforcement of patent doctrines. The courts have sought to ensure that patent specifications are robust and justify the grant of a monopoly. This follows from the Supreme Court's characterization of technical teachings within a patent as the "quid pro quo" for the patentee's exclusive rights. The problem with these approaches is that they focus exclusively on patent content, and overlook the many ways in which patent context matters to the dissemination of technical information. A review of the ways in which patents truly promote the progress reveal that patent information beyond, not just within, a patent's four corners, can shape the extent to which the subject invention of the patent spreads beyond the inventor. Whether a patent is in force, is commercially important, is subject to licensing or other commitments, or is held for defensive or offensive reasons, for example, can determine whether and how the teachings within the patent spread. In this Article, I argue that we need to rethink the concept of patent disclosure. Rather than focusing only on the content of the patent, we should keep in mind the context of the patent, and how the greater availability of contextual information about the patent can promote the progress. This contextual information represents not only the final "product" of a patent as issued, but the "process" by which it is made and used, the timing and terms on which it is provided to the world, and the publicly reported transactions in which the patent is involved. Making contextual information more accessible would do much to reinvigorate the disclosure function of the patent system, in many cases, using already existing information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading historical intelligence community documents primarily through the lens of Kenneth Burke's essay “Semantic and Poetic Meaning,” this article explores the history and stakes of the intelligence community's ongoing commitment to a problematic model of language use. The essay argues that the intelligence community's pursuit of a “mathematical” ideology of language is an attempt to render language “neutral” and to divorce rhetoric from ethics in ways that Burke anticipated, and with negative consequences for the generation of written intelligence reports and national policy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes the ways in which identical and divergent perceptions of the carcinogenicity of diesel-engine emissions emerged in the United States and West Germany between 1970 and 1990. Therefore, it reviews how automakers, policymakers, experts, and the media negotiated which exhaust emissions were either eco-friendly or hazardous. Communicating complex technological and scientific facts to the public, these actors translated the information into easily comprehensible terms. In the United States, this simplification forged the perception that diesel cars' particulate emissions were cancer-causing between 1977 and 1981; a similar change occurred in Germany between 1984 and 1987. Consumers reacted and shied away from purchasing diesel vehicles. While Americans continued to stigmatize diesel cars, Germans re-embraced the technology by the late 1980s. Consequently, new "clean" diesels were introduced, and the discourse on exhaust emissions shifted from health-hazardous particulates to the ecological problem of the greenhouse effect, casting the fuel-efficient diesel in an entirely new light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper updates Harner & Rich's 2005 survey of undergraduate degree programs in technical and professional communication (TPC) in the U.S. and provides information about the current number of degree programs, locations of degrees programs, and curricula, both required and elective. Method: We used course catalogs to analyze the curricula of 65 programs that offer majors in TPC. We employed qualitative inquiry methods based primarily on textual analysis and the deployment of codes to assign a summative attribute for course types. Results: We located 185 undergraduate programs in TPC in the U.S. that offer majors, concentrations, emphases, tracks, and specialization, a 131% increase from the 2005 study, and restricted our analysis to 65 programs that offered majors in TPC. Degree programs no longer are predominately housed in English departments. The most significant gain is to the number of programs housed in Technical Communication Programs. 'The majority of programs require 30-36 hours of credit. A set of "core courses" are emerging in the field-wide curricula. There is a significant increase in the number of programs requiring document/information design, Web, internship, and capstone courses. In contrast, few require literature courses. Conclusion: Curricular data show an emerging consensus on the core courses and elective courses within undergraduate curricula. In addition, for the first time, the field has data to assess trends over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the emerging risk communication challenges linked with shale gas development in the U.S. and Europe. These challenges are contested risk information, changing information needs and risk perceptions, and communicating risk-benefit tradeoffs of natural gas development. It provides a background of shale gas development which requires novel technologies that use large amounts of water, sand, and chemical under high pressure.

Purpose: This paper provides a current overview of graduate and undergraduate academic certificates in the U.S. It details information about the current number of certificates, requirements, and courses, both required and elective. Method: The study employed qualitative inquiry methods based primarily on textual analysis and the deployment of codes to assign a summative attribute for course types. Results: The field presently offers 110 certificates, which represents a growth rate of 186% for graduate certificates and a growth rate of 191% for undergraduate certificates. Conclusion: Certificate curricular data show that, unlike other degree programs, there is still no consensus on what a certificate should be and what courses should be required. Questions are offered to help the field start conversations about certificates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current educational policies rely on educational assessments. However, the technical aspects of assessments are often unknown to policy makers, which is dangerous because sound assessment policy requires knowledge of the strengths and limitations of educational tests. In this article, we discuss the importance of informing policy makers of important psychometric issues that should be considered whenever tests are proposed for specific purposes. We discuss the types of information that are important to communicate to policy makers, how to best convey this information in a manner in which it can be understood, and how to be seen as a valuable source of information to education policy makers. We end with some specific steps organizations such as NCME can take to inform policy makers and advocate for valid educational assessment policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the requirement of social media and the marketplace of ideas for the purpose of communicating information at the time of emergencies and crisis in public health in the U.S. Organization like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. can disseminate the information during public health crisis through the help of social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Information on the development of emergency networks by the social media networks in the country is also presented.

This article reports on a case study that analyzed portfolios composed by technical communication undergraduate majors at a research university in the United States. Results showed that students, who are also practicing professionals in their field, exhibited information literacy (IL) outcomes more typical of the workplace than academia. The categories of research engaged in by students to complete course work included academic, applied, and experiential. These categories grounded the students' research in rhetorical and contextually situated practices. They indicate that it may be important to broaden the way that information literacy is articulated, taught, and learned to bridge the gap between academia and the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single sourcing through a content management system (CMS) is altering technical communication practices in many organizations, including institutions of higher education. Open source software (OSS) solutions are currently among the most popular content management platforms adopted by colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. The GPL license, ease of use, customizability, and the large, global user base of mature content management systems are among the reasons these organizations choose OSS to meet their CMS needs. This article reviews the literature on the effects of single sourcing on technical communication practice. It also explores issues of OSS adoption, both generally and in international contexts. Through a case study of an OSS CMS implementation at a mid-sized public college, the article examines important contributions technical communicators can make to the rollout of an OSS-based CMS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of a critical turn in technical communication research, discussions of software documentation continue to forward a singularly instrumental understanding of how these types of texts are composed and consumed. Using work on multiliteracies, I illustrate how analysis of the competing evangelisms of software that occur in programming culture unveils the ways in which documentation, like code, is ideologically encoded. Attention to the evangelisms of software facilitates critical literacy and, consequently, a richer rhetorical literacy. Such literacies are necessary for composing effective software documentation and identifying how the ideologies of software and its documentation intersect with the nationally-situated cultural values in which these technologies and texts are developed and used. To illustrate this complexity, I offer examples of the intersections between free and open source software evangelisms and the national-as-local contexts of the United States, Brazil, and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nuclear power industry is undergoing a renaissance, led by initiatives from the Obama administration and several states. In light of this development and the growing information economy, it is crucial that the public be well-informed, effective, and responsible regarding important technological issues. For this reason, undergraduate education, whether for technical or non-technical majors, must include an awareness of the complexity, ambiguity, and interestedness of the use of technical language and information. This is particularly important in communication involving public discourse and perceptions. I discuss here how I foster such awareness in my juniorlevel technical writing course for non-majors. We focus on the concept "safe" in relation to radiation and nuclear power. This is done in the overall context of making a recommendation for nuclear power as an energy source for the state of Florida for the next two decades, a realistic and urgent technical communication situation. Students see that standards and even the definitions of crucial terms shift depending on context and social circumstances, and that real-world choices involve trade-offs and balances between advantages and disadvantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the English language contributes to cross-boundary communication failure and establishes that there is an "English language problem" that has not been adequately addressed in preparing United States native English-speaking students for international technical communication tasks. For example, U.S. technical communication scholars are still grappling with the problems of using English in software internationalization and translating technical communication products across boundaries of national culture and language without privileging Western values and beliefs. The tendency is to assume American culture and American Standard English as the norm, and to identify cultural and linguistic differences as problems only when there is a communication failure or when non-native speakers of English translate product users' manuals and other documents for use by Americans. The article draws attention to the limitations of the current favored strategies for training native speakers in international audience analysis and calls for a revamping of the curriculum to allow for the integration of language-based methodologies. It suggests the incorporation of the World Englishes perspective into training programs to internationalize students' learning experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports my classroom-based qualitative research, conducted at a midwestern university, on the role of World Englishes in the ethos transformation of U.S. native English-speaking students. The 30 participants completed assignments that enhanced their understanding of how the English language affects discursive tasks in international audience adaptation. Efforts at internationalizing technical communication can benefit immensely from the inclusion of the World Englishes paradigm in training programs to account for students' language attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an increasingly globalized world, writing courses, situated as they are in local institutional and rhetorical contexts, need to prepare writers for global writing situations. Taking introductory technical communication in the United States as a case study, this article describes how and to what extent global perspectives are incorporated into writing. Based on an analysis of eight textbooks and a closer analysis of four of them, we illustrate the representation of technical communication and communicators as well as multiculturalism and multilingualism in these textbooks and point out the limitations vis-à-vis the cultural and linguistic complexity of global technical communication in today’s world. We conclude by considering implications for U.S. college composition as it continues to contribute to the international discourse of writing studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a globally networked learning environment (GNLE), 16 students at a university in Sweden and 17 students at a university in the United States exchanged peer-review comments on drafts of assignments they prepared in English for their technical communication classes. The instructors of both sets of students had assigned the same projects and taught their courses in the same way that they had in the previous year, which contrasts with the common practice of having students in partnering courses work on the same assignment or on linked assignments created specifically for the GNLE. The authors coded the students' 816 comments according to their focus and orientation in order to investigate the possible differences between the comments made by the L2 students in Sweden and those made by the L1 (English as a second language) students in the United States, the possible impact of peer reviewing online, and the influence of the instructors' directions on the students' peer-reviewing behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk communication has been explored in technical communication for over 15 years, but it has been largely confined to communicating the risk of industrial activity, medical risks, or environmental threats to the public. Using the framework previous risk communication has provided, this article applies those ideas to research science, specifically to stem cell research, where government opposition until recently has limited this research, preventing it from potentially providing organs for those who need a replacement or more effective treatments for other diseases such as diabetes or Parkinson's disease. Risk communication in the United States and Europe is contrasted to delineate the greater effort being made in Europe to construct stem cell research socially for the researcher and the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the content of press releases from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Science and Technology Centers (STCs) to determine how public information officers (PIOs) presented the outcomes of centers to journalists and the public. A total of 68 press releases were analyzed for type of news covered, visibility of centers and their funding agency, extent of inter-institutional cooperation in the issuance of releases, and players covered. Three-quarters of STC releases mentioned the center, but less than half mentioned the NSF STC program and one-quarter didn't mention the center name at all. PIOs covering the STCs mainly issued researchoriented press releases accredited to their own institution. There was a low level of inter-institutional cooperation, with 13% of press releases jointly issued. Compared to research results and institutional news, which together accounted for 82% of the news events, broader activities such as knowledge transfer, diversity enhancement, and education were much less visible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceived risk has been identified by the literature as a limiting factor in e-government adoption and success. However, there has been little effort spent examining how and why perceived risk comes to differ from actual probabilistic risk and the means by which the gap can be reduced. These questions were examined by applying the Social Amplification of Risk Framework to the case of e-government in the United States. Several factors that are known to exacerbate perceived risk were identified from the literature and shown to be in place in the United States. The presence of these factors suggests that more effective risk communication is required in order to realign perceived risk with probabilistic risk. Recommendations on how to improve e-government risk communication through technical and human means are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we compare two different perspectives on the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant proposal and funding process: that depicted by the genre-dominant NSF Web site and that articulated by several successful NSF-funded researchers. Using genre theory and play theory to map the respective processes, we found that a systems-based refocusing of audience analysis—namely, genre field analysis—allows researchers a more accurate understanding of their roles as agents within the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses a study which aims to demonstrate the rhetorical and stylistic preferences for medical information exhibited by Spanish speakers in the U.S. The study examines focus group data about Spanish speakers' preferences for health communication. It also contrasts known preferences of Mexican Spanish speakers with Spanish speakers in the country. In addition, the study provides recommendations from the data for communicating health information to Spanish speakers, including to present information with an authoritative tone and a more technical vocabulary.

This article documents the use of tipping points in climate change discourse to discuss their significance. We review the relevant literature, and discuss the popular emergence of tipping points before their adoption in climate change discourse. We describe the tipping point trend in mainstream US and UK print news media and in the primary scientific literature on climate change by replicating the methodologies of Oreskes [Oreskes, N., 2004. The scientific consensus on climate change. Nature 306, 1686] and Boykoff and Boykoff [Boykoff, M.T., Boykoff, J.M., 2004. Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press. Global Environmental Change 14, 125–136]. We then discuss the significance of climate change tipping points and their popular use in terms of generative metaphor. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses the use of digital media to improve communications in public-health protection. It refers to and discusses the successful use of these techniques in U.S. President Barack Obama's election campaign. Aspects discussed include the campaign website, its television channel, social networking sites including MySpace and Facebook, mobile phones, and unofficial media creations by Obama supporters. Campaign activities that were administered using each medium are delineated. It then discusses the implications that these techniques have for health communication.

Objective: To investigate how Spanish- and English-speaking adults interpret verbal probability expressions presented in Spanish and English (eg, posiblemente and possibly, respectively). Method: Professional translators and university students from Mexico and the United States read a series of likelihood statements in Spanish or English and then estimated the certainty implied by each statement. Results: Several terms that are regarded as cognates in English and Spanish elicited significantly different likelihood ratings. Several language equivalencies were also identified. Conclusions: These findings provide the first reported evaluation of Spanish likelihood terms for use in risk communications directed towards monolingual and bilingual Spanish speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Three of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships analyzed community perspectives on carbon capture and storage (CCS) through focus groups and interviews in five communities. These perspectives were analyzed in the context of each community’s history and its social and economic characteristics. The results were considered for their insights into specific concerns within each region, as well as to assess inter-region commonalities. In all cases, factors such as past experience with government, existing low socioeconomic status, desire for compensation, and/or perceived benefit to the community were of greater concern than the concern about the risks of the technology itself. This paper discusses the findings from the joint review of the focus groups and the potential lessons for application to CCS deployment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Working internationally and cross-culturally, a group of institutions of higher education in the US and the EC, under the leadership of the International Institute for Information Design (IIID) worked for four years (2003-2007) to develop a sustainable program of student and faculty exchange and develop core competencies in information design education. The program was jointly administered and funded by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) and the European Commission's Directorate General for Education and Culture. The results of that program are documented here, setting out the competencies developed and assessment of the student and faculty exchanges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

◆ Details scientific communication pedagogy at undergraduate and graduate levels from interview data ◆ Recommends development of new courses that address scientific communication training for contemporary business and government settings [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the fact that most Mississippians living on the gulf coast knew about the approach of Hurricane Katrina and had adequate time to evacuate, only one-third of that population left. Almost two-thirds of those who stayed indicated that they did so because they did not think the storm would be that bad (Harvard, 2006). Emergency risk messages that appeared in the most popular newspaper in the region attempted to communicate the grave danger of this massive storm. Unfortunately, these messages often relied on comparing the imminent threat to 1969's Hurricane Camille. If community members viewed Camille as causing few deaths or serious injuries, they would have little reason to accept evacuation as better than staying. This study analyzes emergency risk messages presented in the Biloxi Sun Herald and explains how people could construe an interpretation of reality that would lead them to remain in the path of one of the deadliest storms in American history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not only have historical studies of technical communication increased in quantity and quality over the last 15 years, but they have also entered the mainstream of technical communication research. These studies have focused on practitioners, artifacts, genres, movements, techniques, events, and the profession, as well as relevant methodology and pedagogy. There are still many opportunities for historical research in our discipline, particularly in the areas of chirographic, oral, and nonverbal communication as well as technical communication activities such as illustrating, translating, and editing and the business of technical communication. Researchers now have many online indexes, databases, and archives to assist them in locating and studying primary sources. There is a need, however, for greater coordination among scholars and a better awareness of the areas that have already been studied. Historical studies can serve teachers and practitioners by suggesting ideas, supplying precedents, creating critical distance, and establishing context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our view of ethics in professional and technical communication has evolved, paralleling developments throughout society. Earlier views on ethics and values have grown into a broad perspective of complex gradations with people at many levels affecting eventual practical outcomes. This newer perspective includes not only persons but social forces and organizations. The organizational culture of NASA, for example, was specifically identified by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) as one of the causes of faulty communication leading to a terribly tragic event. The Challenger investigations of 20 years earlier, on the other hand, focused primarily on physical events, secondarily on professional judgments, and only little on the social and cultural context of the disaster. We learn by failures but also by self-examination. As we see how ethics and values impact technical events, we understand that technological progress is ultimately a human endeavor in which reflection and judgment is as important as measurement and observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To summarize existing research on individual numeracy and methods for presenting risk information to patients. Methods: We selectively retrieved articles from MEDLINE and the Social Sciences Citation Index. Results: Many Americans have low numeracy skills, a deficit that impedes effective health care. Approaches to risk communication vary in cur- rent practice, but how risks are presented can significantly affect both patients' risk perceptions and their knowledge. Conclusions: Adhering to some basic principles for presenting risk information to patients can improve understanding. However, different risk-communication methods may be needed for individuals with high versus low levels of numeracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As distributed work begins to shift the nature of practice for technical communication professionals in the workplace, faculty need new frameworks to help prepare students for roles that involve negotiating, supporting, and facilitating virtual global collaboration. This paper identifies key areas of metaknowledge appropriate to these new frameworks by synthesizing a review of current scholarship on such collaborations and a case study of students participating in a cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural team project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Localization includes translating, explaining, and adapting a document for use in a specific culture. This article presents the case of a form for reporting the findings and decisions of pre-production meetings held during development of electronic products. The need to localize such a document may seem less obvious or critical than the need for sales documents like manuals, but this case demonstrates the same cultural requirements and, furthermore, the requirements of corporate differences. To meet local needs, the comprehensive preparation that localization requires should follow specific methods in each step of a process corresponding to the general writing process, like the stages defined in common technical writing texts. The deliberate use of an effective writing process to localize documents will improve results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common aphorism in the halls of education is that the writing skills of Americans decline over time. Compared to the "golden age of letters," so the argument goes, each subsequent generation of writers is worse than the last. Although contemporary readers and educators commiserate over encounters with bad writing, a fair comparison of 18th century American exemplars to modern American exemplars reveals a significant advance in clarity, an advance that technical communicators can be proud of. To demonstrate the advances in expository writing over the past two centuries, the author compares what the authors of the U.S. Constitution did with their limited resources to what modern professional communicators do with their abundance of resources. Many of the communication problems that were pervasive when the U.S. Constitution was created have since been remedied by insights emerging from the fields of linguistics, human factors, and cognitive psychology, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents announcements and calls for award nominations to English teachers in the U.S. The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Nomination Committee has declared the candidates for CCCC offices. The Executive Committee has solicited nominees for its Exemplar Award. Nominations should include letters of support and a full curriculum vitae. The CCCC Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication announced the deadline for submissions of candidates for its 2007 doctoral dissertation award in technical communication.

This article explores the transfer of U.S. technologies to three maquilas, or joint U.S.–Mexican manufacturing facilities in northern Mexico. Drawing on case study methods, it focuses on the rhetorical strategies that Mexican engineers and manufacturing personnel used to translate U.S. technologies and corresponding documentation for their Mexican contexts. It also suggests ways U.S. technical communicators can adapt their documentation to be more effective for these U.S.–Mexican intercultural rhetorical contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study integrated the situational theory of publics with theories in risk communication to explore reactions to simulated media coverage of food terrorism. Focus group participants, given news scenarios about a terrorist threat on a U.S. food product, discussed problem recognition, level of involvement, constraint recognition, fear, risk, and social connections. Findings revealed a sense of ‘shared’ involvement that influenced how participants perceived risk. When participants perceived the source of information was in ‘the same boat’ as them, they were more likely to pay attention. Also, news coverage increased feelings of ‘information overload,’ which led participants to shut down cognitively and deny the need for protective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study focuses on the role of language in managing organizational change. We examined the campaign and rhetorical strategies used by a major US airline to persuade customer service employees not to vote for Teamsters Union representation. The company's anti-union campaign documents included internal memos, letters, and emails. If included in a professional or technical communication course, these documents provide a powerful case for students to explore the role of written communication within a changing organization. We situate the case in the context of relevant literature and provide background information. We also include learning outcomes, methods, and implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

* Assesses the availability and quality of Spanish translations in user manuals written in the U.S. * Discusses why we need culturally-appropriate Spanish translations and how technical communicators can make translations more culturally appropriate [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

* Compares the cultural values that have shaped the way documents are viewed, created, and used in China versus in the United States * Examines a variety of documents to demonstrate the differences based on cultural influences [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since World War II, the United States has been actively pursuing scientific research and development. Over 50 years later, the federally funded technical report literature, the results from the nation's R&D, has grown extensively. However, this vast technical report literature has not had effective methods of dissemination during these decades to provide easy access to its riches. The technology of the late 20th and early 21st century is enabling more effective access to this literature. This article will examine some of the reasons why effective access to federally funded technical reports has been elusive and will illustrate some new technologies that are greatly improving access to this literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many technical documents present information both graphically and verbally. While much is known about the verbal tools of technical professionals, technical graphics have been less fully examined. Here the drawings of a United States patent are examined revealing a system for organizing and presenting visual information that is analogous to commonly-used models for organizing and presenting verbal information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]