Technical Communication: Problems and Solutions.

The subtitle of Roy Fox's new textbook is a good one: Problems and Solutions. Both practitioners and teachers of technical communication have for years been trying to convince engineers, scientists, and the world at large that writing is an excellent mode of problem solving, and that the processes

of drafting, composition, and revising can reveal both the precise shape of a problem and the most viable solutions. Indeed, Fox organizes much of his text around the stages in the writing and writing-production process: shaping, focusing, revising, and designing. This approach allows Fox to maintain a focus on writing (and speaking) as a dynamic, recursive, problem-solving process rather than a static, rule-bound, product-driven activity. Thus, there are no separate chapters on "grammar," for instance (although there is a grammar "review" in an appendix). It seems clear that Fox, a professor at the University of Missouri, is a contemporary rhetorician before he is a practicing technical communicator, and it is equally clear that this stance renders his textbook both strongly written and rather limited in usefulness.

Fox aims his process-oriented exegesis at such a broad audience that he ends up covering old ground and, in fact, greatly narrowing the range of interested readers. He declares in the "Preface" that his text is an introduction for "students from all disciplines to technical and professional communication." Actually, judging from the samples and examples presented, his book is most useful for undergraduates in the sciences - especially the health sciences. There is not much of interest to computer scientists or engineers, for instance; and even for students in the health and life sciences, the focus is on organizational communication rather than technical documents.

Technical Communication: Problems and Solutions is a mixed bag for any teacher thinking about using it in the classroom. The individual chapters are well organized and end with a three-part set of very useful "Exercises and Experiments." One part is exercises for students to do on their own, one is exercises to do with a partner, and a third is exercises to do within a small group. With the increasing focus on collaborative strategies in industry and now in the classroom, teachers of technical communication ought to find very helpful these suggestions for various kinds of collaborative work. The blue-shaded boxes containing information on "Ethics," on the other hand, add nothing new to the subject, because that information is so general and too brief to allow for any case studies. Some of the blue boxes devoted to "Electronic Communication," however, present useful tips on using computers for drafting, composing, and revising.

The chapter on "Revising" is particularly well done, with a series of drafts and their revisions that show quite well the connection between thinking and writing. Likewise, the chapter on "Designing Documents" does a better job than do most textbooks of demonstrating the elements of good design for common documents that have neither the budget nor the need for four-color and a team of graphic artists. In addition, in the chapter on "Summaries," Fox presents some elegantly clear, even inspirational examples of "sifting complex information through everyday language." The author is patently a good writer: he comes up with some nifty new metaphors for rhetorical strategies. The paragraph, for instance, is likened to a "movie camera" used by a writer/film director to direct attention to this subject or that. Every teacher can appreciate this gift of a new way of making relevant and concrete for their students the cognitive, invisible processes of composition.

Fox keeps his text moving, although not all his devices for doing so are equally successful. One such device is to present in the first chapter sample "real life" technical writers (complete with photo and bio), who then become spokespersons for the various writing problems and their solutions. These "witnesses" do integrate much of the first few chapters, but inevitably they fall away like characters in a novel whose disappearance is never explained. Furthermore, unfortunately, the photographs of the two male technical communicators are notably larger than those of the three women.

As for the layout and design of this book - the news is similarly mixed. The good news is the successful use of vertical and horizontal lines and the tasteful and appropriate use of a few shades of blue to highlight text, examples, figures, and the boxes of specialized information. The bad news is an overuse of bullets and numbers in certain lists. The "Guidelines" in the "Instructions" chapter have so many sets of numbers enumerating the major points and subpoints that the mind quickly boggles. And how on earth did the publisher's typesetter come up with those crazed question marks? All the question marks are sort of upside down and backwards - prompting a friend to declare that they look like question marks on acid. All in all, the book design is probably superior to that of many textbooks, but it certainly didn't pass muster with the information design specialists I asked to look at it.

I can see this textbook finding a real niche in courses that are electives offered in addition to the standard required semester of composition for most college students. Such courses begin to orient the student toward the realities of writing in the workplace rather than in the dorm or espresso bar; and understanding how writing process generates solutions to many of the organizational problems in the workplace is an important part of that orientation. For students who are already firmly engaged in the prepractice of their discipline, however, the examples and rhetoric of Technical Communication: Problems and Solutions may fall somewhat short.

Hillary Hart Department of Civil Engineering University of Texas-Austin Austin, TX