There are no required textbooks for this class; generally speaking, texts cost exorbitant amounts of money that college students would be better off putting toward food. Besides, with the miracle of technology -- translate that "the web" and "Photocopiers-R-Us" -- instructors are now able to easily "build" their own customized textbooks tailored to the specific course, rather than tailoring the course to fit a specific textbook. Nice how that works out; instructors get more of what they want, and it costs students significantly less.
That said, you will probably have to spend a little money on photocopying the papertexts which are assigned in this class; folders containing all assigned non-web-based materials are on reserve both in the library and in Pat Marra's office, 4703 Sage, just down the hall from our classroom. Obviously, you can read them, put them back, and not make copies if you wish -- but please, only mark up copies which you have made for yourself.
Be prompt in returning the folders; you have two dozen classmates who also need the material! If you have any difficulty locating one of the assigned readings, post your concern to the class list to see if anyone knows where it is; it is far too easy to inadvertantly walk away from the library with something or to accidentally leave it in the copier.
There are about 15 websites listed in the bibliography below; before you go to the trouble of printing any of them out (and to be honest, I will discourage this practice for reasons we will discuss in class), find out what specific parts are assigned -- in multinodal websites it can be very difficult to ascertain where the reading "ends." If you try to print out the Strunk work, for instance, you will probably pay more in printer fees than the 70-page paperback would cost you at Barnes and Noble.
In addition to the readings below, you will need to do the following:
Texts are listed alphabetically by author. They are listed on the class calendar by the author's last name(s).
Actual Writing from Church Bulletins and Insurance Claims. No authors identified. Collected and coded from various websites for RPI-Tech/Pro, 1996.
ASEAN-Australian Economic Cooperation Program. Technical Report Writing -- Checklist. Copyright 1996.
---. Oral and Presentation Skills Menu. Copyright 1996.
Bofinger, Mark. English Rules of Thub (sic). Copyright 1996.
Chauss, Karen McGrane. Reader as User: Applying Interface Design Techniques to the Web in Kairos: A Journal For Teachers of Writing in Webbed Environments 1.2 (Summer 1996).
Consigny, Scott. "Rhetoric and Its Situations" in Philosophy and Rhetoric 7:3 (1974), pp. 175-88.
Doheny-Farina, Stephen. "The Individual, the Organization, and Kairos: Making Transitions form College to Careers" in A Rhetoric of Doing: Essays on Written Discourse in Honor of James L. Kinneavy, Stephen P. Witte, Neil Nakadate and Roger D. Cherry, eds. Southern Illinois UP: Carbondale, 1992, pp. 293-309.
Doherty, Michael E. Jr. "MOO as Tool, MOO as Realm: A Response to Don Langham" in Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine 1:7 (November 1994).
Ede, Lisa and Andrea Lunsford. "Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy" in College Composition and Communication 35 (May 1984) pp. 155-71.
Grice, Roger A. "Online Information: What Do People Want? What Do People Need?" in The Society of Text: Hypertext, Hypermedia, and the Social Construction of Information ed. Edward Barrett. The MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1989: pp. 22-44.
Jordan-Henley, Jennifer. Tone and Audience Awareness. Copyright 1996.
Kickstart Initiative. Intellectual Property. Copyright 1996.
Langham, Don. "The Common Place MOO: Orality and Literacy in Virtual Reality" in Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine 1:3 (July 1994).
Lay, Mary M. (et al). Technical Communication. Irwin, Inc.:Chicago, 1995.
MagicPublishing, Inc. A Brief 'Net Primer. Copyright 1996.
Martin, J.R. "Technicality and Abstraction: Language for the Creation of Specialized Texts" in Writing Science: Literacy and Discursive Power by M.A.K. Halliday and J.R. Martin. The Falmer Press: London, 1993: pp. 203-220.
McAdams, Mindy. "Copy Editing for Magazines." Copyright 1992, 1995.
Monday, Jacquelyn L. and Mary C. Hester, "Protecting your Work: Professional Ethics and the Copyright Law" in Techniques for Technical Communicators ed. Carol M. Barnum and Saul Carliner. Macmillan Publishing: New York, 1993: pp. 339-358.
Nelson, Vee. "Sweat the Small Stuff -- Editing For Consistency" in Techniques for Technical Communicators ed. Carol M. Barnum and Saul Carliner. Macmillan Publishing: New York, 1993: pp. 291-304.
Ong, Walter J. (S.J.) "The Writer's Audience is Always a Fiction" in Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 90:1 (January 1975) pp. 9-21.
Redish, Janice C. "Understanding Readers" in Techniques for Technical Communicators ed. Carol M. Barnum and Saul Carliner. Macmillan Publishing: New York, 1993: pp. 14-41.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Department of Language Literature and Communication. The Writing Center Homepage. Various authors. Copyright 1994.
Samuelson, Pamela. "Is Information Property?" in Communications of the ACM 34:3 (March 1991), pp. 15-27.
Strunk, William. The Elements of Style. Geneva, NY: Press of W.P. Humphrey. Transcribed, proofread, and marked-up in HTML, May 1995. Markup, graphics, and added files copyright 1995-96 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.
Waddell, Craig. Basic Prose Style and Mechanics. Copyright 1992.
Webster, Byron and Mason Wong. Taos Mountain Software Job Hunt: 10 Tips [To Writing Effective Resumes]." Copyright 1996.
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