Technical Writing

Students should meet with their Technical Writing adviser or with the Director of the Technical Writing Program to select appropriate readings from the following lists.

(More information about the MA Qualifying Exam can be found in the Guidelines.)

Technical Writing Theory

Anderson, Paul, et al., eds. New Essays in Technical and Scientific Communication. 1983.

Campbell, Jeremy. Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, and Life. 1982.

Dennett, Daniel C. Consciousness Explained. 1991.

Gardner, Howard. The Mind’s New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution. 1985.

Gordon, George N. The Languages of Communication. 1969.

Greenfield, Susan A. Journey to the Centers of the Mind: Toward a Science of Consciousness. 1995.

Jaynes, Julian. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral mind.

Littlejohn, Stephen W. Theories of Human Communication. Latest edition.

Mattelart, Armand and Michele Mattelart, Theories of Communication: A Short Introduction. Translated by Susan Gruenheck Taponier and James A. Cohen. London: SAGE Publications, 1998. ISBN: 0-7619-5647-6.

Nystrand, Martin. What Writers Know: The Language, Process, and Structure of Written Discourse. 1982.

Nystrand, Martin. The Structure of Written Communication: Studies in Reciprocity Between Readers and Writers. 1986.

Tonfoni, Graziella. Information Design: The Knowledge Architect’s Toolkit. 1998.

Theoretical Approaches to Research

Bazerman, Charles, and James Paradis, eds. Textual Dynamics of the Professions: Historical and Contemporary Studies of Writing in Professional Communities. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1991.

Fearing, Bertie E., and W. Keats Sparrow, eds. Technical Writing: Theory and Practice. New York: MLA, 1989.

Odell, Lee, and Dixie Goswami, eds. Writing in Nonacademic Settings. New York: Guilford, 1985.

Spilka, Rachel, ed. Writing the Workplace: New Research Perspectives. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1993.

Ethical Theory

Herndl, Carl G. “Teaching Discourse and Reproducing Culture: A Critique of Research and Pedagogy in Professional and Non-Academic Writing.” College Composition and Communication 44 (1993): 349-63.

Katz, Steven. “The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust.” College English 54, 3 (1992): 255-75.

Journals

• Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
• Technical Communication
• Communication Theory
• Technical Communication Quarterly
• Journal of Business and Technical Communication

History of Scientific and Technical Literature

Ancients and Early Moderns

Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. George Kennedy Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991.

Bacon, Francis, selections from Advancement of Learning, and Novum Organum, in Norton 6 th edition.

The “Scientific Revolution”

Boyle, Robert, A Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, Preface and Section 1. (in Works, Vol V, pp.158-67).

Galileo, “The Starry Messenger,” in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans. Stillman Drake. New York: Anchor Books, 1957.

Glanvill, Joseph, preface to Scepsis Scientifica, 1665 edition.

Newton, Isaac, “Of the System of the World,” Book III of Principia, trans. Andrew Motte

Sprat, Thomas, History of the Royal Society, ed. Jackson Cope and Harold Whitmore Jones. Section X through XX (pp 80-119); Section XXXIII (pp. 215-27).

The 19 th Century and Biology

Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species. ed. J. W. Burrow. New York: Penguin, 1968.

Twentieth-Century Biology, Physics, Human Sciences, and Popular Science

Einstein, Albert, Relativity: The Special and the GeneralTheory. trans. Robert W. Lawson. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1961.

Gould, Stephen Jay, Darwin’s Legacy. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982.

Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam, 1998.

Milgram, Stanley, “Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience to Authority.” Human Relations 18, 1 (February 1965).

Watson, James, and Francis Crick, “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid.” Nature, no. 4356 (April 25, 1953): 737-38.

Secondary Sources

Gross, Alan. The Rhetoric of Science. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996.

Jones, R. F., “Science and Seventeenth Century Prose Style,” PMLA (1930).

Killingsworth and Palmer. Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP: 1992.

Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1964.

Kynell, Teresa, and Moran, Michael, Three Keys to the Past: The History of Technical Communication. Ablex 1999.

Latour, Bruno. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986.

Williams, Joseph. Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace. New York: HarperCollins, Latest edition.

Information Design

Comprehensive Works

Kostelnick, Charles, and David D. Roberts. Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998. [ISBN 0205200222]

Lester, Paul Martin. Visual Communication: Images with Messages. 2 nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000. [ISBN 053456142X]

Schriver, Karen A. Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Text for Readers. New York: Wiley, 1997. [ISBN 0471306363]

Visual Displays of Information

Kosslyn, Stephen M. Elements of Graph Design. New York: Freeman, 1994. [ISBN 071672362X]

Tufte Edward R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics P, 1992. [ISBN 096139210X]

Typography and the Printing Process

Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style. 2nd ed. Point Roberts, WA: Hartley & Marks, 1997. [ISBN 0881791326]

Bruno, Michael H., ed. Pocket Pal: A Graphic Arts Production Handbook. 18th ed. Memphis: GATF Press, 2000. [ISBN 0883623382].

Spiekermann, Erik , and E. M. Ginger. Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works. Mountain View, CA: Adobe P, 2000. [ISBN: 0201703394]

Design of Online Information

Hackos, JoAnn T., and Dawn M. Stevens. Standards for Online Communication. New Horton, William. Designing and Writing Online Documentation. New York: Wiley, 1994. [ISBN 0471306355]

Rosenfeld, Louis, and Peter Morville. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilley, 1998. [1565922824]

Shneiderman, Ben. Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997. [ISBN 0201694972]

USABILITY

Dumas, Joseph S., and Janice C. Redish. A Practical Guide to Usability. Exeter, UK: Intellect, 1999.

Nielson, Jakob. Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. Indianapolis: New Riders, 1999. [ISBN 156205810X]

---. Usability Engineering. Boston: AP Professionals, 1993. [ISBN 0125184069]

van der Geest, and Jan H. Spyridakis, ed. Technical Communication: Special Issue on Web Heuristics. 47.3 (2000): 301-410.

Cognitive Science, Human Factors, and Instructional Design

Coe, Marlana. Human Factors for Technical Communicators. New York: Wiley, 1996. [ISBN 0471035300]

Hartley, James. Designing Instructional Text. 3rd ed. New York: Nichols Publishing, 1994.

Seels, Barbara, and Zita Glasgow. Making Instructional Design Decisions. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997. [ISBN 0135206022]

West, Charles K., James A. Farmer, and Phillip M. Wolff. Instructional Design: Implications from Cognitive Science. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1991. [ISBN 0134885783]

Current Research Reported in Related Journals:

• Information Design
• Technical Communication
• Technical Communication Quarterly
• Journal of Business and Technical Communication

Return to Area Reading Lists Page

English Department
College of Arts & Sciences
Oklahoma State University
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Statement of
"Organic Knowledge"
for Technical Writing

1.understand the way individual texts reflect the material and intellectual conditions of the time of their writing; this means that the student can perceive a writer's work in reference to history, including literary history, and to contemporary social and philosophical issues.

2. discuss and evaluate the major theories and trends in the field. The student should be able to cite both theoretical and experimental studies to support and/or refute these theories.