Stuart Selber
Penn State University
sas37@psu.edu
Technical and professional writing is a species of rhetoric that encompasses the discursive work of both technical specialists and workplace writers and communicators. Practitioners tend to focus on best practices for creating effective communication. Teachers at the college level tend to focus on the service course for technical specialists, on courses for students majoring or minoring in technical or professional writing, and on graduate courses that train people to be either workplace researchers or university professors. University professors tend to focus on not only best practices for creating effective communication but also on the social implications of those practices for culture. The topic area holds an expansive definition of "writing," which includes the visual, new media, and electronic communication.
Leading Journals
Technical Communication Quarterly http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/10572252.asp
Journal of Business and Technical Communication http://jbt.sagepub.com
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication http://www.baywood.com/Journals/PreviewJournals.asp?Id=0047-2816
Technical Communication http://www.stc.org/pubs/techcommgeneral01.asp
IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=47
Programmatic Perspectives: Journal of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication http://www.cptsc.org/pp/
Relevant Organizations
Association of Teachers of Technical Writing http://cms.english.ttu.edu/attw
Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication http://cptsc.org
Society for Technical Communication http://stc.org
IEEE Professional Communication Society http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pcs/
ACM SIGDOC (Special Interest Group on Design of Communication) http://www.sigdoc.org
Relevant Web Sites
Technical Writing at Wikepedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_writing
E-Server Technical Communication Library http://tc.eserver.org
Bureau of Labor Statistics http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos089.htm
Relevant Email Discussion Lists
ATTW-L http://cms.english.ttu.edu/attw/organization/email-discussion-list
CPTSC-L https://lists.unomaha.edu/mailman/listinfo/cptsc
TECHWR-L http://www.techwr-l.com