Memorandum
To: Technical Communication (Eng 271) participants
From: Roland Nord
Date: July 28, 2016
Re: Documentation exercise 1—author-year style (Documentation1.doc)
The following exercise is based on the text and reference (works cited) list in
Dragga, Sam. 1996. "Is this ethical?" A survey of opinion on principles and practices of
document design, Technical Communication 43 (3): 255-65.
Read the explanatory information; then, modify the memo headings above, this
introductory section, and the page header; then, complete the exercise (the last section).
Save your file as Documentation1_y3i.doc (e.g., Documentation1_rdn.doc), replacing the
y3i with your three initials.
Citing sources in the article
In the body of the article, when Dragga cites a source, he places the author’s name and
the year of publication in parentheses. If he uses the author’s name as part of the
sentence, he places only the year in parentheses. Note the following paragraph:
While studies of technical communication ethics typically omit the subject of the
document design, research focusing on document design usually offers little
discussion of ethical issues or implications (Benson 1985; Dragga 1992; Felker et al.
1981; Kostelnick 1990; Murch 1985; Schriver 1989; White 1982). Two important
exceptions are Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983) and
Mark Monmonier’s How to Lie with Maps (1991). Tufte’s book however, discusses
only the ethics of graphical display, offering guidelines without evidence of their
practical merit. Monmonier’s perceptive book is equally restrictive, focusing
exclusively on the ethics of mapping. (257)
Listing bibliographical entries
When compiling their list of references (or works cited), authors typically list their
sources in alphabetical order, beginning with the author’s last name. The date of
publication is always the second element listed. In addition, authors typically include

the title (of the article and journal, the book, or the presentation and proceedings
title)
Your Name
Documentation exercise 1
Page 2

the publication information (such as volume, number, and pages; place of
publication and publisher; the conference, city and publisher)
The order of the information varies less than the conventions for capitalization and
punctuation. The best you can do is pay attention to the examples provided in the style
guide that you are to follow or the publication for which you are writing.
Sample entries
I have reproduced the following entries from Dragga’s list of references:
Austin, J. L. 1962. How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Benson, Phillipa J. 1985. “Writing visually: Design considerations in technical publications.”
Technical communication 32: 35–39.
Dragga, Sam. 1993. “The ethics of delivery.” In Rhetorical memory and delivery: Classical concepts
for contemporary composition and communication, ed. John Frederick Reynolds, pp. 79–95.
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Geary, David C., Jeffrey W. Gilger, and Barbara Elliott-Miller. 1992. “Gender differences in
three-dimensional mental rotation: A replication.” Journal of genetic psychology 15, no. 1:
115-118.
Note that in this journal, titles of articles follow sentence capitalization and appear inside
quotation marks. Many journals and style manuals (such as APA and Chicago style) no
longer require quotation marks around titles of articles; some require title capitalization
and italics for the titles of journals but require sentence capitalization and italics for the
title of books.
Exercise
Using the bibliographic entries above as your guide, correct the following entries. Each
entry contains one or more errors.
Girill, T. R. 1987. “Technical communication and ethics.” Technical Communication 34: 178–
179.
Kostelnick, Charles. 1990. “The rhetoric of text design in professional communication.” The
technical writing teacher, 17, no 3: 189–202.
Olson, Darlene M., and Eliot, John. 1986. “Relationships between experiences, processing
style, and sex-related differences in performance on spatial tests.” Perceptual and motor
skills 62, no. 2: 447–460.
Plunka, Gene A. 1988. “The editor’s nightmare: formatting lists within the test.” Technical
communication 35: 37-80.
Schriver, Karen A. 1989. “Document Design from 1980 to 1989: Challenges that Remain.”
Technical communication 36: 316–331.
Society for Technical Communication. 1992. Profile 92: STC Special Report. Arlington, VA:
Society for Technical Communication.
Tufte, Edward R. 1983. “The visual display of quantitative information.” Cheshire, CT: Graphics
press.