Visual elements such as graphs, tables, and diagrams are essential components of scientific writing. Although scientific writing textbooks and guides often contain information on how to design such visuals, little has been written on how to effectively discuss those visuals within the text. This article offers a novel heuristic for teaching…

School-based practitioners are to implement and report functional behavior assessments (FBAs) that are consistent with both the research literature and the law, both federal and state. However, the literature regarding how best to document the FBA process is underdeveloped. A review of applied behavior analytic and school psychology literature as…

One of the major roles of a school psychologist is psychoeducational testing and the preparation of psychoeducational reports. Unfortunately, parents often have difficulty understanding psychoeducational reports. This difficulty might be ameliorated by supplementing psychoeducational reports with graphs. This hypothesis was tested with 144 parents…

As science teachers at a suburban California high school, the authors were concerned about the lab report conclusions written by their upper-level chemistry, biology, and ecology students--which were consistently of poor quality. Their work lacked inferences derived from data and support for their concluding statements. Working as part of a…

In this essay, the author tries to look forward into the 21st century to divine three things: (i) What skills will researchers in the future need to solve the most pressing problems? (ii) What are some of the most likely candidates to be those problems? and (iii) What are some current areas of research that seem mined out and should not distract…

Suggests that new computer software enables writers and technicians to compose graphs that rival those made by professionals. Suggests that professional and novice users of such software either intend to distort data and manipulate readers or do so out of ignorance. Describes and illuminates seven types of distortion in graphs. (PA)

Discusses the functions of using visuals in communicating and comprehending information. (AEA)

Reprints a corrected version of an article originally published in the volume 43, number 1 issue of this journal. Presents results of a national survey of technical communicators and technical communication teachers assessing the ethics of seven document design cases involving manipulation of typography, illustrations, and photographs. Offers…

Describes an approach to generating graphs that represent the relationship between pieces of quantitative information and play upon the reader's perception of those relations. (AEA)

Uses a brief fictional narrative to discuss how visual media frequently offer a superior alternative to prose for the communication of some kinds of information, specifically, to describe; represent abstract structures; convey spatial relationships; provide a meaningful context for unfamiliar information; assist readers in their attempts to solve…

Explains format, style rules, and lexicographic conventions that improve clarity and precision in a technical glossary. Discusses general rules, rules of style, rules of grammar and syntax, and rules for figures. Describes the computer display techniques and file management system used to develop such a glossary. (SR)

Demonstrates several different ways to visually display patterns of data. Discusses how the different graphics highlight different information in the data. (SR)

Provides evidence of the devaluation of visuals in technical communication courses and also that pedagogical materials on visuals are at odds with current rhetorical theory and are increasingly anachronistic in the computer era. Discusses implications of the computers' impact for visual instruction and presents suggestions for future directions in…

Describes work performed under the Spelling Error Detection Correction Project (SPEEDCOP) at Chemical Abstracts Service to devise effective automatic methods of detecting and correcting misspellings in scholarly and scientific text. The trigram analysis technique developed determined sites but not types of errors. Thirteen references are listed.…

Perhaps because the United States is undergoing a video revolution, perhaps because of its increasing sales of goods to non-English speaking markets where graphics can help explain the products, perhaps because of the decreasing communication skills of the work force, graphic aids are becoming more and more widely used and more and more important.…