PRACTICAL STRATEGIES FOR TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION is a shorter version of Technical Communication, which for 11 editions has remained a best-selling text for introductory courses in technical communication. Practical Strategies focuses on the essential topics, writing strategies, and skills students need to succeed in the course and in their professional lives. Its streamlined and reorganized chapters make it more concise than the larger book, but it remains an accessible and thorough introduction to planning, drafting, designing, and revising technical documents. Practical Strategies also offers detailed advice on the most common applications such as proposals, reports, and instructions.

Evident throughout this book is a focus on the expanding role of collaboration in the world of technical communication. Technical communication has always involved collaboration. A writer who needed to produce a user manual for a new software package would likely have interviewed the engineer who wrote the code. The company might also have convened a focus group to find out what users liked and didn’t like about the prototype of the software. Now, however, there is more interaction than ever before between the people who produce technical documents and those who consume them. Often, that interaction goes in both directions. Using social media and new technologies, technical communicators can collaborate with their audiences at every step of the communication process. And thanks to online publishing, audience members contribute to the development of technical documents even after they have been published, by asking and answering questions, revising existing information, and contributing new information.

The types of documents that technical communicators routinely produce have changed as well. Microblog posts, contributions to discussion boards and wikis, and status updates to one’s LinkedIn profile—once the raw materials of longer and more-formal documents—are now routinely used to communicate important messages.

Despite these changes, the fundamentals of technical communication are at least as important as they always have been. An inaccuracy in a microblog post communicating a project update is every bit as big a problem as an inaccuracy in a traditional progress report. And even though we live and work in an era that values brevity and quick turnaround, some information can be properly communicated only through the longer, detailed documents that have always been at the center of technical communication.

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I have revised this new edition of Practical Strategies for Technical Communication to help students learn how to communicate effectively in the fast-paced, highly collaborative world in which they will work. Employers have never valued communication skills as much as they value them today, and for good reason. Today’s professionals need to communicate more frequently, more rapidly, more accurately, and with more individuals than ever before. This book will help prepare students to do so—in their courses and in their careers.

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New to This Edition

The Second Edition recasts the text’s features in the context of today’s professional environment. Chapter 1, thoroughly revised in light of the input of fellow technical-communication instructors, sets the stage for the text’s new focus. The chapter about audience includes an expanded introduction that prepares students who are, for the first time, considering audiences other than their instructors. In addition, this chapter presents techniques for analyzing social-media data to better understand those audiences. The correspondence chapter now includes guidelines on how to represent one’s organization on a microblog. The chapter on definitions, descriptions, and instructions covers the new role of discussion boards, wikis, and videos in disseminating information. Updated sample documents, both in the print text and online, provide opportunities for students to analyze the types of documents they’ll need to produce or contribute to, such as a municipal government app that enables residents to report infrastructure problems from their phones, as well as an interactive map of global forest changes that allows different audiences to customize their viewing experience to obtain the precise information they need. New to the Second Edition of Practical Strategies are sample documents annotated with insights from conversations with the professionals who created them, such as a Prezi frame built for a sustainability startup’s presentation at an investor conference.

In keeping with its promise of serving as a model of the principles it teaches, the new edition communicates in new ways. Reflecting the increasingly visual nature of today’s learners and of technical communication itself, the Second Edition includes new “Thinking Visually” graphics, developed with feedback from instructors. This feature provides an accessible, modern take on key principles and concepts throughout the text. Cases are now presented in LaunchPad so that students can easily download and work with related documents. Tutorials introduce tools for multimodal composition, present helpful technology tips, and offer another means of learning documentation. LearningCurve adaptive quizzing activities, covering the first six chapters, help students master and apply concepts in a new, personalized way. LearningCurve activities for multilingual writers are also available here, as are video-based team writing modules that help students learn collaborative writing skills. Also available in LaunchPad are two full-length e-books: Document-Based Cases for Technical Communication, Second Edition, by Roger Munger, and Team Writing, by Joanna Wolfe. Finally, instructors can access a variety of instructor resources here, including a new test bank featuring multiple-choice, true/false, and short-answer questions for each chapter.

The table on the next two pages describes the updates made to each chapter in the Second Edition.

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Acknowledgments

All of the examples in this book—from single sentences to complete documents—are real. Some were written by my students at Boise State University. Some were written by engineers, scientists, health-care providers, and businesspeople, with whom I have worked as a consultant for more than 40 years. Because much of the information in these documents is proprietary, I have silently changed brand names and other identifying information. I thank the dozens of individuals—students and professionals alike—who have graciously allowed me to reprint their writing. They have been my best teachers.

The Second Edition of Practical Strategies for Technical Communication has benefited greatly from the perceptive observations and helpful suggestions of my fellow instructors throughout the country. I thank Lisa Angius, Farmingdale State College; Katie Arosteguy, University of California, Davis; Monique Babin, Clackamas Community College; Jenny Billings Beaver, Rowan Cabarrus Community College; Sheri Benton, University of Toledo; Charles Bevis, University of Massachusetts Lowell; Olin Bjork, University of Houston–Downtown; An Cheng, Oklahoma State University; Elijah Coleman, Washington State University; Crystal Colombini, University of Texas at San Antonio; Teresa Cook, University of Cincinnati; Matthew Cox, East Carolina University; Ed Cuoco, Wentworth Institute of Technology; Jerry DeNuccio, Graceland University; Charlsye Smith Diaz, University of Maine; Carolyn Dunn, East Carolina University; Tomie Gowdy-Burke, Washington State University; Sandy Johnston, University of Maryland Eastern Shore; Amber Kinonen, Bay College; Tamara Kuzmenkov, Tacoma Community College; Jodie Marion, Mt. Hood Community College; Donna Miguel, Bellevue College; Bonni Miller, University of Maryland Eastern Shore; Mary Ellen Muesing, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Ervin Nieves, Kirkwood Community College; Sabrina Peters-Whitehead, University of Toledo; Ehren Pflugfelder, Oregon State University; Neil Plakcy, Broward College; Kathleen Robinson, Eckerd College; Paula Sebastian, Bellevue College; Stella Setka, Loyola Marymount University; Terry Smith, University of Maryland Eastern Shore; Russel Stolins, Institute of American Indian Arts; Virginia Tucker, Old Dominion University; Gabriela Vlahovici-Jones, University of Maryland Eastern Shore; Lynne Walker, Bellevue College; Beverly Army Williams, Westfield State University; and several anonymous reviewers.

I would like to acknowledge the contributions of one of my colleagues from Boise State University, Russell Willerton. Russell developed two of the LearningCurve activities and contributed substantially to the test bank and to various instructor resources. I greatly appreciate his expertise and hard work. I wish to thank Elaine Silverstein, who developed the other three LearningCurve activities with great patience, wisdom, and care. I also wish to extend my gratitude to Jerilyn Bockerick and Alisha Webber at Cenveo for helping to design the new “Thinking Visually” feature that appears in the Second Edition.

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I have been fortunate, too, to work with a terrific team at Bedford/St. Martin’s, led by Regina Tavani, an editor of great intelligence, judgment, and energy. Regina has helped me improve the text in many big and small ways. I also want to express my appreciation to Joan Feinberg, Denise Wydra, Karen Henry, Leasa Burton, Molly Parke, Andrea Cava, Eliza Kritz, Anna Palchik, Carrie Thompson, Kathleen Karcher, Chelsea Rodin, Quica Ostrander, and Sally Lifland. For me, Bedford/St. Martin’s continues to exemplify the highest standards of professionalism in publishing. The people there have been endlessly encouraging and helpful. I hope they realize the value of their contributions to this book.

My greatest debt is, as always, to my wife, Rita, who, over the course of many years, has helped me say what I mean.

A Final Word

I am more aware than ever before of how much I learn from my students, my fellow instructors, and my colleagues in industry and academia. If you have comments or suggestions for making this a better book, please send an email to techcomm@macmillan.com. I hope to hear from you.

Mike Markel