Technical and Professional Communication: Integrating Text and Visuals / Edition 1

by Dolores Lehr

Overview

This is an introductory textbook for college-level undergraduate courses or certificate programs in Professional / Technical Communication or professional writing. This book is geared toward courses that would be offered by Communications or English departments as opposed to courses offered within Engineering departments, for example, or other more narrowcast courses in Technical Writing.

The book is divided into four parts:

- Part one focuses on the planning of documents and includes chapters about aspects that need to be considered before beginning a document: decisions about its purpose, audience, mix of text and graphics, resources, and collaboration. Also this part looks at legal and ethical issues, sources for information, drafting, sketching, and formatting of graphics. It includes chapters devoted to writing text, designing pages, creating tables and figures, and using photos and color.

- Part two focuses on composing text and generating graphics with chapters devoted to writing text, designing pages, creating figures, and using photos and color.

- Part three looks at the applications themselves, the integration of text and graphics as they appear in technical descriptions, instructions, proposals, reports, correspondences, promotional materials, and oral presentations.

- Part four serves as a reference for understanding grammar and punctuation as well as a reference for correcting common writing errors. It concludes with guidelines for citing sources within documents.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781585102570
Publisher:	Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/15/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 10.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Dolores Lehr (Ph.D. Temple University) is Assistant Professor at La Salle University in Philadelphia. She has taught technical communication and other professional writing courses for thirteen years. Previously, she taught writing at several other colleges and universities in the Philadelphia region. She also worked seven years in industry as a technical editor and publications manager. Currently she is the Web and Portal Editor at La Salle.

Editorial Reviews

"As expressed in the title, Dolores Lehr has a specific purpose for her book. Her approach to technical communication is to treat text and graphics as a comprehensive unit rather than let graphics play second fiddle to the text.
Lehr follows through, with this concept by being generous with graphics, using them in conjunction with text to explain important aspects of technical communication, features of specific documents, and even the mundane side of writing.
Overall, the book is an excellent introduction to document planning and creation for novices and a good reference book for more experienced writers."
Sherry Shadday, Technical Communication [Volume 57, Number 3]

From the Publisher