Technical Communications: A Reader-Centered Approach

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.

Paul V. Anderson is Director of Writing Across the University at Elon University in Elon, NC. 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, 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. 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.