A search of women's magazines yields countless missives on the virtues of female vigilance not only in protecting personal health but also in protecting spouse and family health. Indeed, the face and content of women's magazines has changed remarkably little from their 18th- and 19th-century predecessors, which circumscribed the ideology of…

One of the greatest myths or fictions of nonfiction is that it contains no fiction. Ben Franklin's flight from Boston to Philadelphia illustrates how changes occur in the retelling of the "facts" of a life. In his "Autobiography," Franklin writes that his friend, Collins, arranged for a ship's passage for Franklin by telling…

In addition to the variety of programs, activities, scholarships, and brochures included in Memphis State University's (MSU) minority recruiting program, the institution uses two approaches to the use of media not normally used in recruiting African-American students. The first is a newsletter aimed at historically African-American churches and…

Given the affective dimension of writing in the workplace, assignments based on casebook scenarios have definite advantages in a technical or professional writing course. An English professor surveyed faculty in the Schools of Business and Education at Rider College prior to revising a course in technical writing. A majority of faculty, when asked…

A study examined the visual presentation of characters on five prime time network dramas, popular with the elderly, which star elderly actors. The title sequences of each show ("Murder, She Wrote,""The Golden Girls,""Matlock,""Jake and the Fatman," and "In the Heat of the Night") were analyzed. Results indicated seven significant interrelated…

In a study, 52 first-year college students were asked to complete questionnaires about their attitudes about legalizing drugs. The students were to offer persona judgments about hypothetical authors arguing for and against legalization. Next, the participants were assigned to read and evaluate essays for and against legalization, and then were to…

Raymond Yeager, director of forensics and professor of speech at Bowling Green State University, has reflected the best qualties which forensics as a discipline has contributed to education. As teacher and debate coach, Raymond Yeager believed that only through the rigors of competition would his students be able to acquire and develop the skills…

Successful speech should rest not on prepared notes and outlines but on genuine oral discourse based on "data" fed into the "software" in the computer which already exists within each person. Writing cannot speak for itself, nor can it continually adjust itself to accommodate diverse response. Moreover, no matter how skillfully…

A study examined how well existing audience theory fits what really happens when writers write on the job. This ethnographic study focused on the process of revising one chapter from a guide to the DOS computer operating system designed for use by novices as well as intermediate and skilled users. Preliminary findings confirmed much of audience…

A two-phase ethnographic study conducted over the course of two semesters examined a project to create a web site on the Internet. Subjects were enrolled in either a "Features Writing for Business and Industry" course or an "Advanced Technical Writing" course at an open-admissions university offering a major in Professional…

Through three semesters of teaching the nonfiction essay, an instructor has come to terms with the fact that she has yet to attempt the type of personal essay that she asks her students to write, essays in which personal experiences with death are shared. However, a reminiscence on death through a recounting of her reactions to and understanding…

In a Purdue University English 101 class, students were told to identify an audience outside the classroom for each paper they wrote. The central challenge to composition teachers is preserving elements valued in teaching academic writing in the context of ill-defined problems to be addressed outside the classroom. Most useful for instructors…

A study used protocol analysis to trace a group of specialized journalists' cognitive processing of information. Science writers were selected because they were hypothesized to be particularly sensitive to the needs of their audience and to rely more on audience knowledge when making decisions. Five science journalists (of about 25 contacted at…

While recent arguments often propose that students should be engaged as writers in service to the larger community, the question remains how to engage students as intellectuals, writers, and creators of knowledge in an intellectual setting that mostly asks them to be passive learners. In Project Renaissance, leaving behind the familiar boundaries…

Building on an earlier study, this paper presents the findings of a series of studies that asked senior newspaper editors throughout the United States how they view newspaper coverage of issues of concern to gays and lesbians. The paper presents detailed findings reported in four earlier papers analyzing data from the survey: "Daily Newspaper…