“What Do Technical Communicators Need to Know about Genre?” In ch. 14 of Johnson-Eilola and Selber’s Solving Problems in Technical Communication, Brent Henze examines the function of genres within technical communication and how we can use our knowledge of genre (as a concept) to design documents for users’ needs, to understand how to modify a specific genre […]

“How Can Technical Communicators Plan for Users?” In chapter 10 of Johnson-Eilola and Selber’s Solving Problems in Technical Communication, Antonio Ceraso introduces the concept of and provides strategies for how we might plan for users, both in the traditional sense of project management and audience analysis, but also through the process of user participation in the design and […]

In “Knowing Where You Are: Genre,” chapter 2 of A Rhetoric of Literate Action: Literate Action Volume 1, Charles Bazerman argues that genres emerge out an established set of practices and conventions that develop over time in response to situations and sets of activities. Or, to put it more precisely, genres “embody understandings of situations, […]