Research
Research & White Papers
Peer-reviewed work and downloadable white papers. Papers that came out of a talk are grouped under it — each set also ships as a single bundle PDF.
Innovative Assessment Strategies in the Age of AI
From the talk · watch & details →
Other papers
Becoming an AI Whisperer: A Field Guide to Prompt Engineering
The hands-on version of my Intercom article — what prompt engineering actually is, the Do-What-How method, how to interview a model, the tropes to watch for, and the ethics you can't skip.
From Technical Communicator to AI Whisperer: The Rise of Prompt Engineering
A trade-magazine essay for STC's Intercom arguing that prompt engineering is the next evolution of the technical communicator's skillset, with practical guidance on language structures, prompting methodologies, AI parameters, synthetic-text tropes, and ethics.
Challenges in Developing Technical Communication Leaders in Client-Based, Content Strategy Projects: A Teaching Case
A teaching case examining how a graduate content strategy course, built around six real client projects with 45 students, struggled to develop technical communicators as business-minded organizational leaders. Students readily diagnosed content quality issues but rarely connected them to business outcomes.
Identifying Commonalities and Divergences Between Technical Communication Scholarly and Trade Publications (1996–2017)
A quantitative content analysis of 1,271 articles from five leading technical communication journals and the trade magazine Intercom (1996–2017), showing that both populations pivoted to process-driven content while the primary topic of rhetoric marks their greatest division.
Content and Authorship Patterns in Technical Communication Journals (1996–2017): A Quantitative Content Analysis
A quantitative content analysis of 672 articles across five leading technical communication journals (1996–2017), mapping the field's primary topics, audiences, and authorship patterns. Winner of the Society for Technical Communication's Frank R. Smith Award for Outstanding Journal Article.
Gender Effects in Student Technical and Scientific Writing: A Corpus-Based Study
A corpus-linguistics study of 87 student writers' use of adverbs and passive voice in technical and scientific writing, finding that female and male writers use the same style markers to fulfill different rhetorical functions.
“How Does That Make You Feel?”: The Psychological Dimensions of Editorial Comments
A sentiment analysis of a 41,146-word corpus of graduate-student editorial comments, scored on four LIWC dimensions—analytical thinking, clout, authenticity, and emotional tone—to show how editors balance expertise and empathy and how gender, major, and native-speaker status shape the comments they deliver.
Introduction to the Special Issue: Data-Driven Approaches to Research and Teaching in Professional and Technical Communication
Guest editorial introducing a special issue surveying data-driven approaches—big data, computational analysis, and visualization—in professional and technical communication research and teaching, with a tribute to Thomas Orr.
Analyzing Error Perception and Recognition Among Professional Communication Practitioners and Academics
A survey of 303 practitioners and academics in professional and technical communication that measures their botheration levels of 24 usage errors and correlates those levels with their ability to recognize the errors. Findings show practitioners are often more bothered by error than academics and that gender, job type, and experience shape error perception.
Improving the Data Information Literacies of Technical Communication Undergraduates
Three classroom case histories—content analysis, SEO and website analytics, and UX app design—that show how to build the data information literacies technical communication undergraduates need for industry careers.
An Overview of Research Methods in Technical Communication Journals (2012–2016)
An empirical content analysis of 117 articles from five leading technical communication journals (2012–2016), coding each for research method, topic, and whether the work was RAD (replicable, aggregable, and data-driven).
Are We Missing the Boat? A Roundtable Discussion on Research Methods and How They Define Our Field
A four-person ProComm roundtable arguing that technical communication researchers struggle to employ appropriate research methods, with each panelist addressing a facet of the problem—evidence quality, workplace research, current method trends, and alternative approaches.
Using Authentic Language Data to Teach Discipline-Specific Writing Patterns to STEM Students
A corpus-linguistic study of student-written critical reviews and white papers, showing that STEM students applied passive voice intentionally and used a variety of reporting verbs, and arguing that authentic language data can teach discipline-specific writing patterns better than generalist textbook prescriptions.
Workshop: Integrating Data-Driven Learning into the Technical Writing Classroom
A hands-on IPCC workshop introducing data-driven learning (DDL) and showing instructors how to use corpora and the freeware text-processing tool AntConc to deliver more tailored technical writing instruction across disciplines.
The Presence of Professionalism in Technical Communication: Views from Industry and the Academy
An extended abstract examining 184 technical communication articles across four research journals and one industry magazine, finding that professionalism content concentrated in industry publications while research journals ceded the study of the profession to others.
Academics Are from Mars, Practitioners Are from Venus: Analyzing Content Alignment Within Technical Communication Forums
An empirical content analysis of 1,048 articles published over 20 years in five technical communication forums, mapping how article topics and audiences diverge between academic journals and the professional magazine Intercom.
Using Corpus-Based Instruction to Explore Writing Variation Across the Disciplines: A Case History in a Graduate-Level Technical Editing Course
A case history of integrating three corpora into a graduate technical editing course to teach writing variation across the disciplines, with quantitative and qualitative results from students editing research texts for STEM clients who spoke English as a second language.
Update to Who Says What to Whom? Assessing the Alignment of Content and Audience Between Scholarly and Professional Publications in Technical Communication (1996–2013)
A bibliometric content analysis of 986 articles from four leading peer-reviewed journals and the trade magazine Intercom, extending the 2014 study to assess how the content and audiences of scholarly and professional technical communication publications align and diverge.
What Are the Most Common Title Words in Technical Communication Publications?
An exploratory bibliometric study of every article title published in five technical communication journals and the trade publication Intercom (1996–2013), identifying the most common title words, words unique to scholarly versus trade publications, and how those words shifted over time.
Who Says What to Whom? Assessing the Alignment of Content and Audience Between Scholarly and Professional Publications in Technical Communication (1996–2013)
A content analysis of 348 randomly sampled articles from four leading peer-reviewed journals and one professional magazine (Intercom), measuring how content areas and intended audiences align between scholarly and professional publications in technical communication from 1996 to 2013.
The Naked Truth About the Naked This: Investigating Grammatical Prescriptivism in Technical Communication
A corpus-linguistic study of 1,999 instances of (un)attended this in student technical and academic writing, challenging the prescriptive textbook rule that the demonstrative this must always be followed by a noun phrase.
Explicitly Teaching Five Technical Genres to English First-Language Adults in a Multi-Major Technical Writing Course
A mixed-method, control-group quasi-experiment with 316 English first-language adults finding that explicitly teaching five technical genres (job letter, resume, claim letter, recruitment email, instruction set) produced texts with significantly greater awareness to audience, purpose, structure, design, style, and editing than more traditional instruction.
The Technical Communication Editing Test: Three Studies on This Assessment Type
Three studies on the editing test used to screen prospective technical communicators: the general characteristics of 55 authentic tests, a weighted index of 71 error types from 3,568 errors, and a survey of 176 professionals' perceptions of error. The studies find that organizational context shapes test format and contents, and that hiring managers and professionals perceive error differently.
An Overview of Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Research in Technical Communication Journals (1992–2011)
A 20-year survey of 137 experiments drawn from a corpus of 2,118 refereed papers across five leading technical communication journals, mapping how much experimental research was published, which journals and topics it concentrated in, and who produced it.
Types of Errors Used in Medical Editing Tests
An analysis of the types, frequencies, and dispersions of errors found in 13 editing tests administered to prospective medical editors, using a contingency table analysis and a weighted index. The results indicate that grammatical/mechanical and style errors had a higher than expected frequency, with style-intensive testing emerging as a possible convention that differentiates medical editing from other technical editing.
Examining Error in the Technical Communication Editing Test
An empirical study of the types and frequencies of errors found in 41 editing tests administered to prospective technical writers and editors, finding misspellings and faulty/missing capitalization to be the most frequent and dispersed errors.
Quantitative Content Analysis: Its Use in Technical Communication
A methodological argument for using quantitative content analysis in technical communication, grounded in two original case studies—a conceptual analysis of visual-rhetoric language in four journals and a relational analysis of advertising appeals in Sheep and Goat Raisers' Magazine (1920–1971).
Rubric Use in Technical Communication: Exploring the Process of Creating Valid and Reliable Assessment Tools
A foundational study on the process of building technical-communication rubrics that are genuinely valid and reliable — and why those questions matter more in the age of AI.