The Founding of ATTW and its Journal

Cunningham, Donald H.

doi:10.1207/s15427625tcq1301_11

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Scholars of business and technical communication have been interested in Benjamin Franklin’s technical writing for more than 50 years (see Bernheim, 1981; Brogan, 1965; Fecko, 2014; Gresham, 1977; Hargis, 1962; Tebeaux, 1981) although Cunningham (2004) disparaged the common practice in the 1960s and 1970s of using Franklin’s works in technical writing classes (see p. 123). Some attention has been paid to Franklin’s fireplace pamphlet as a technical communication artifact.…”

Section: Franklin’s Fireplace Pamphlet As Marketing White Papermentioning

confidence: 99%

“To Promote That Demand”

Malone

Wright

2017

Journal of Business and Technical Communication

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Although various types of documents are called white papers, in technical marketing communication the white paper is usually a document that describes a new or improved technology in order to generate interest in—and promote sales of—that technology. Most sources discussing the history of the white paper assume that marketing white papers evolved from government white papers. They conflate genre history with etymology. At some point in the mid-20th century, the term white paper—denoting a type of government policy document—began being applied to other types of documents, including eventually a particular form of technical marketing communication. This article proposes a revised history of the marketing white paper as a genre. By examining the formal features and characteristic substance of white papers through the lens of their pragmatic value as social action, we show that the marketing white paper of today has much in common with documents from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.

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Section: Franklin’s Fireplace Pamphlet As Marketing White Papermentioning

confidence: 99%

“To Promote That Demand”

Malone

Wright

2017

Journal of Business and Technical Communication

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“…The STC also developed an anthology series, with a focus on practice. As Don Cunningham (2004) explains, the exigence for developing academic infrastructure was the need to prepare faculty to teach a subject different from the one they had studied in graduate school. Few academic programs were then graduating PhDs in rhetoric and writing.…”

Section: Building Identity and Community Through Programs And Curriculummentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I plot the trajectory of the field’s academic activities, looking at patterns and trends in the history of the field as it builds toward increasing recognition and an established place in academia and the nonacademic workplace. This broad sweep of a review is better understood if one knows the details of the history of the field in the 20th century as written by Connors (1982), Cunningham (2004), and Malone (2011), among others.…”

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confidence: 99%

Building Identity and Community Through Research

Rude

2015

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication

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A field’s identity and sustainability depend on its research as well as on programs, practice, and infrastructure. Research and practice have a reciprocal relationship, with practice identifying research questions and researchers answering those questions to improve practice. Technical communication research also has an exploratory purpose, using the knowledge and methods of the field to explain how texts work in a variety of contexts. A gap between research and practice developed in the 1990s. Defining explicitly how the parts of our research and our practice connect to form a whole will give the field a stronger identity

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“…Scott P. Sanders, in "Forty" (1997) [26], reviews the history of the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication from its founding in 1957 to 1997. Donald H. Cunningham, in "The Founding of the ATTW and Its Journal" (2004) [27], reports on the early goals of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW), which was established in 1973 at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in New Orleans to help improve technical communication and its teaching through its journal, The Technical Writing Teacher, now Technical Communication Quarterly. Teresa Kynell and Elizabeth Tebeaux (2009) [28] have published the most recent history of The Association of Teachers of Technical Writing and addressed the issue of technical writing's identity as it moves into the 21st century.…”

Section: Disciplinary Self-consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%