Technical Communication / Edition 8

by Paul V. Anderson

Overview

Technical Communication: A Reader-Centered Approach is a process-orientated textbook in which the central advice to students remains the smae: think constantly about your readers — whether you are preparing messages that will be read on paper or viewed on a computer screen. As in earlier editions, every chapter, reference guide, and appendix conveys specific, useful advice built upon hard-won insights that researchers have gained concerning the ways people read in the workplace. By following the easy-to-remember guidelines in Technical Communication: A Reader-Centered Approach, students can become confident, flexible, resourceful writers who know how to size up a situation and then plan and draft a communication that will achieve an outcome that they and their readers both desrie.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2901133309818
Publisher:	Cengage Learning
Publication date:	03/19/2013
Edition description:	Older Edition
Pages:	672
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Paul V. Anderson is Senior Researcher at Elon University in Elon, North Carolina. He was previously Director of the Roger and Joyce L. Howe Center for Writing Excellence at Miami University (Ohio), where he also served as the founding director of the university's programs in technical and scientific communication. To support various individual and collaborative projects, he has received more than $1,000,000 in external grants for research and program development in technical communication. As a researcher and consultant to business and government, Dr. Anderson has conducted workshops and made presentations in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa, as well as across the United States. His publications, which have won awards from the Society for Technical Communication and the National Council of Teachers of English, address such topics as technical communication practice and theory, ethical issues in research and teaching, research methods, pedagogy, and assessment. Dr. Anderson has been selected as a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication, Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, and Miami University's Institute of Environmental Science. He has received the Jay R. Gould Award for Excellence in Teaching Technical Communication from the Society for Technical Communication.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction. 2. Defining Objectives. 3. Planning. 4. Drafting Prose Elements. 5. Drafting Visual Elements. 6. Evaluating and Revising. 7. Applications of the Reader-Centered Approach. 8. Superstructures.

Editorial Reviews

"The book has a great approach: reader-centered writing and general usability. I think it's clear, compelling, and used throughout the book. These are important concepts for students to consider in learning any genre of report writing. [...] It has one of the best companion Web sites I've seen in terms of content. It has great exercises and document samples."

"This section of the text [Part IV: Conducting Research] is refreshingly real and provides helpful information for students and an up-to-date resource for teachers."

"I really love Anderson's textbook. I continue to use it year after year because it is comprehensive, well-organized, it is clear, and well developed. It fits perfectly with what I am teaching."

"This is the text's main strength, its implicit understanding that every workplace communication is in one regard or another a form of persuasive communication that aims to affect the reader's attitude toward the information in it to effect a desirable outcome."

"The strong focus on reader-centered communication corresponds well to the general emphasis of my course. [...] I refer the students to [Chapters 23, 24, and 27] often. They really offer some excellent guidance. [...] Former students have told me that they still use these superstructures at work."

From the Publisher