Teaching to See

Inge Druckrey: Teaching to See from Edward Tufte on Vimeo.

Master teacher Inge Druckrey on teaching design students to see. Heavy emphasis on type and design.

Out Now

Consider this excellent holiday gift for your family, close friends, small relatives, and students. Only $40 in softcover. Think of the smiles on their faces when they unwrap this—priceless!

Seriously, though, I’ve edited more than a couple of collections in my career and this text if far and away the one I’m proudest of. Thanks to my co-editor, Stuart Selber; the great contributors we had (listed below); and David Morrow and the rest of the staff at U of Chicago Press.

And check out the list of Table of Contents:

Introduction

0 “Introduction” Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber

Part 1: Mapping the Field

1 “What Are the Boundaries, Artifacts, and Identities of Technical Communication?” Richard J. Selfe and Cynthia L. Selfe

2 “What Are the Work Patterns of Technical Communication?” William Hart-Davidson

3 “How Can Technical Communicators Fit into Contemporary Organizations?” Jim Henry

4 “How Can Technical Communicators Develop as Both Students and Professionals?” Kelli Cargile Cook, Emily Cook, Ben Minson, and Stephanie Wilson

Part 2: Situating the Field

5 “How Can Rhetoric Theory Inform the Practice of Technical Communication?” James E. Porter

6 “How Can Work Tools Shape and Organize Technical Communication?” Jason Swarts

7 What Can History Teach Us about Technical Communication? Bernadette Longo and T. Kenny Fountain

8 “What Is the Future of Technical Communication?” Brad Mehlenbacher

Part 3: Understanding Field Approaches

9 “How Can Technical Communicators Work in an Ethical and Legal Manner?” J. Blake Scott

10 “How Can Technical Communicators Plan for Users? Antonio Ceraso
11 How Can Technical Communicators Study Work Contexts?” Clay Spinuzzi

12 “How Can Technical Communicators Evaluate the Usability of Artifacts?” Barbara Mirel

13 “How Can Technical Communicators Manage Projects?” R. Stanley Dicks

Part 4: Developing Field Knowledge

14 “What Do Technical Communicators Need to Know about Genre?” Brent Henze

15 “What Do Technical Communicators Need to Know about Writing?” Ann M. Blakeslee and Gerald J. Savage

16 “What Do Technical Communicators Need to Know about Information Design?” Karen Schriver

17 “What Do Technical Communicators Need to Know about New Media?” Anne Frances Wysocki

18 “What Do Technical Communicators Need to Know about Collaboration?” Rebecca E. Burnett, L. Andrew Cooper, and Candice A. Welhausen

19 “What Do Technical Communicators Need to Know about International Environments?” Kirk St. Amant

List of Contributors

Index

Anyone who receives this bill…

ANYONE WHO RECEIVES THIS BILL WILL BE BLESSED WITH ALOT OF MONEY BUT ONLY IF YOU COPY THIS MESSAGE ON TEN OTHER BILLS

[larger version]

Colson Whitehead’s Rules for Writers

Rule No. 10: Revise, revise, revise. I cannot stress this enough. Revision is when you do what you should have done the first time, but didn’t. It’s like washing the dishes two days later instead of right after you finish eating. Get that draft counter going. Remove a comma and then print out another copy — that’s another draft right there. Do this enough times and you can really get those numbers up, which will come in handy if someone challenges you to a draft-off. When the ref blows the whistle and your opponent goes, “26 drafts!,” you’ll bust out with “216!” and send ’em to the mat.

From Colson Whitehead’s Rules for Writers at the NYT

Design Writers

“Design writers are a dying breed because they operate in the two most unprofitable industries: Design and Writing.”

- Confessions of an Architect

[via Darkly Euphoric]

John Updike on the Ethics and Poetics of Criticism

Open to (healthy) debate, John Updike’s six rules for criticism have something to offer to web commentary. From his 1977 anthology of prose, Picked-Up Pieces:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.
2. Give him enough direct quotation–at least one extended passage–of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.
3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.
4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending. (How astounded and indignant was I, when innocent, to find reviewers blabbing, and with the sublime inaccuracy of drunken lords reporting on a peasants’ revolt, all the turns of my suspenseful and surpriseful narrative! Most ironically, the only readers who approach a book as the author intends, unpolluted by pre-knowledge of the plot, are the detested reviewers themselves. And then, years later, the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf.)
5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author’s ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in an idealogical battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never (John Aldridge, Norman Podhoretz) try to put the author ‘in his place,’ making him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.

[via Brain Pickings]