24 July 2006 (Usability_notes.doc)
Usability notes
Review of research
Tone, bias, and ethics—Required reading
TWS, Chapter 9, "Establishing and Appropriate Tone," 187-214
TWS, Chapter 10, "Considering Style and Bias," 215-235
TWS, Chapter 11, "Determining the Ethics of Style," 236-252
Gopen, G. and J. Swan. 1990. The science of scientific writing: If the reader is to grasp what
the writer means, the writer must understand what the reader needs. American Scientist
78: 550-558.
Luzon, M. 2005. Genre analysis in technical communication. IEEE Transactions on
Professional Communication 48 (3): 285-295. [E-reserves]
Schriver, K. 1997. What can document designers learn from usability testing? In Dynamics in
Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers, 473-491 New York: John Wiley & Sons.
[E-reserves]
Usability—Web writing style
Morkes, John and Jakob Nielsen. 1997. How to write for the web. Useit.com. 21 July 2007.
Nielsen, Jakob. 16 April 2007. Show numbers as numerals when writing for online readers.
Useit.com. 21 July 2007.
Nielsen, Jakob. 6 January 1998. Applying writing guidelines to web pages. Useit.com.
21 July 2007.
Perfetti, Christine and Joshua Porter. 12 August 2002. Words drive action: An interview with
Gerry McGovern. UIE.com. 21 July 2007.
“To be a success, I believe that the person in charge of a web publishing team must have an
editorial perspective. They have to champion the reader of the content. They have to truly
understand the needs of that reader, and be able to publish content relevant to that reader.”
Ruel, Laura and Steve Outing. 2003. Article-level page design: What matters inside?
Eyetrack III. 21 July 2007.
Theofanos, M., and J. Redish. 2003. Bridging the gap between accessibility and usability.
Interactions 10 (6), 36-51.
Further reading—Ethics
Dragga, Sam. 1996. "Is this ethical?" A survey of opinion on principles and practices of
document design, Technical Communication 43 (3): 255-65.
Dragga, Sam, and Dan Voss. 2001. Cruel pies: The inhumanity of technical illustrations.
Technical Communication 48 (3): 265-274.
Dragga, Sam, and Dan Voss. 2003. Hiding humanity: Verbal and visual ethics in accident
reports. Technical Communication 50 (1): 61-82.
Manning, Alan, and Nicole Amare. 2006. Visual-rhetoric ethics: Beyond accuracy and injury.
Technical Communication 53 (2): 195-211.
Orwell, G. 1946. Politics and the English language:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
Online resources
Organizations for editors
American Copy Editors Society (ACES)
American Medical Writers Association (AMWA)
Includes many useful links, including a link to A Guide to Grammar and Writing
Authors and Publishers Association
Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (BELS)
Council of Science Editors (CSE)
Includes a job bank; you do not need to be a member of CSE to access the job bank.
Editors’ Association of Canada (EAC)
International Science Writers Association
National Association of Science Writers
National Writers Union (NWU)
STC Technical Editing SIG
Publications for editors
Copy Editor, McMurray
Corrigo, Newsletter of the STC Technical Editing SIG
Editorial Eye, EEI Communications
Usability websites
American Institute for Graphic Arts (AIGA). n.d. <http://www.aiga.org/> 21 July 2007.
Eyetrack III. 2006. Poynter Institute <http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/index.htm>
21 July 2007.
Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES). n.d. <http://www.hfes.org/> 21 July 2007.
International Council of Graphic Design Associations (icograda). n.d.
<http://www.icograda.org/> 21 July 2007.
Nielsen, Jakob. n.d. Useit.com <http://www.useit.com/> 21 July 2007.
Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI). n.d. ACM
<http://www.sigchi.org/> 21 July 2007.
Special Interest Group on Design of Communication (SIGDOC). n.d. ACM
<http://www.sigdoc.org/> 21 July 2007.
Spool, Jared. n.d. User Interface Engineering <http://www.uie.com/> 21 July 2007.
Usability Professionals Association (UPA). n.d. <http://www.upassoc.org/> 21 July 2007.
Usability.gov n.d. US Department of Health & Human Services <http://www.usability.gov/>
21 July 2007.
W3C World Wide Web Consortium. 2006. <http://www.w3.org/> 21 July 2007.
Jones’ Technical Writing Style
The following vocabulary and list of writing styles were taken from Chapters 9-11 of Jones’
Technical Writing Style. All page references are to his text.
Vocabulary
You are responsible for the following vocabulary:
Persona –
Person –
Point of view –
Voice –
Humor –
Political correctness –
Doublespeak –
Tone
Levels of formality
Jones identifies the following levels of formality:

formal technical prose –

informal technical prose –

impersonal technical prose –

personal technical prose –
Attitude and emotion
Jones identifies the following attitudes and emotions frequently conveyed to audiences:

friendliness, warmth, graciousness –

empathy –

anger and accusation –

familiarity and cuteness –
Ethos
Jones identifies the following tones that ethos may help establish:

authority or credibility –

trust –

control –

deference –

awareness (of a delicate situation) –
Strategies
Jones identifies the following strategies for developing an appropriate tone:

determine your relationship with your audience

consider how your communication will be read

choose appropriate diction for the best tone

express ideas that convey the intended relationship

use an appropriate amount of detail

focus on how your document looks
Bias
Kinds of bias
Jones identifies the following kinds of bias:

gender –

corporate –

philosophical or religious –

political –

racial –

cultural –

age –

bias against the physically and mentally challenged –
Quiz
You have 20 minutes for this quiz. You may use your texts; however, if you do quote, paraphrase,
or summarize information from any of your texts, please cite the source (title and page
parenthetically). Please write as much as you can as quickly as you can.
1. What is the difference between persona and ethos? (TWS, Chapter 9, Topic 6, page 211)
2. How does Gopen and Swan’s article serve as a unifying text for the course?
3. What is PAM? Wlhy, according to Shriver, should you as an editor be interested in her
research with PAM?
D2L small-group assignment
Please complete the following tasks taken from TWS, Chapter 12, Exercise 1 (page 266). What
does each passage need in terms of further editing? What are some of the changes you would
recommend in the style of the passages?
1. The problem of tennis elbow affects many athletes. A regime of massage therapy can
help to eliminate the pain and stiffness that accompanies this condition. If the symptoms
of tennis elbow are present the elbow should be used as little as possible. At the onset of
the symptoms of tennis elbow, 24–48 hours of rest should be given to the joint. Apply ice
to the elbow for no more than ten minutes each day to reduce soreness. A program of
therapeutic massage should then be started. Therapeutic massage will prevent the
muscles in the area from shortening and bring blood to the injured area to promote
healing.
2. Every language is made up of three basic elements: phonemes, allophones, and
morphemes. A phoneme is a basic unit or category of sound such as /p/ or /t/ (the
phoneme is the sound made when /p/ or /t/ is pronounced). Allophones are the various
sounds, or manifestations, of a particular phoneme in any given language environment.
Morphemes are basic units of meaning, and are made up of allophones. Morphemes can
be either “free,” or “bound.” Free morphemes can stand alone as words. For example, the
words “hat” and “auto” are free morphemes. Bound morphemes can only function as part
of a word, such as an “s’ added onto a word to make it plural. Bound morphemes can be
derivational morphemes which change the category or meaning of a word; or, bound
morphemes can be inflectional in which case the meaning of a word is changed only
slightly as when a word becomes plural or past tense.
Please complete the paragraphing exercise, which is also available from D2L Content.