Story proposals of 300 words are requested for an upcoming collection Negotiating International and Cross-Cultural Technical Communication: Stories of Technical Communicators. This collection is designed for technical communicators to tell their stories working in international and cross-cultural contexts, working for and with clients and colleagues from diverse cultural backgrounds, or writing and designing for audience from diverse cultural backgrounds. The goal is for contributors to share their experiences and lessons-learned, to inform and educate fellow practitioners, and to demonstrate their value-add to employers and clients. Submissions that meet the scope of the collection will be followed up for full-length stories.

Themes (See Writers’ Guidelines, also, below)

The editors welcome a wide range of stories from technical communicators who work within or outside the U.S. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
* Working as technical communicators outside of U.S.
* Non-U.S. technical communicators writing or designing for clients or audiences outside of the communicators’ own countries or cultures
* U.S. technical communicators working with clients, subject matter experts, writers, or editors from various nations or various cultural backgrounds within the U.S.
* U.S. technical communicators writing or designing for audiences from various nations or various cultural backgrounds within the U.S.
* Coordinating or managing technical communication projects that span national or cultural borders
* Involvement in outsourcing, translation, localization, or globalization projects
* International and cross-cultural stories from various technical communication fields such as business communication, science writing, engineering writing, medical writing, nonprofit organizations or NGOs, government writing, usability testing, technical translation, etc.

Payment for Contributors

Contributors will receive a free copy of the book and book royalty shares. Specific amount of the share will be determined when a book contract is finalized with the publisher.

What to Submit Now
* Story synopsis (300 words)
* Biographical note (150 words)

How To Submit

Email submissions to both:

• Hyu1@ksu.edu
• gjsavag@ilstu.edu

Timelines

* Submission of story synopsis and biographical note: July 31, 2010
* Notice of synopsis acceptance: August 31, 2010
* Submission of 1st draft full-length story: November 30, 2010
* Notice of draft acceptance: January 31, 2011
* Submission of final draft full-length story: June 30, 2011

Writers’ Guidelines

The editors are interested in stories that engage readers and help them identify with the protagonist(s) in the story. In this sense, these stories are not unlike feature news stories and fiction.  If you have little experience writing such narratives, following are some suggestions that might be helpful:
* Tell a concrete story, not a general overview or description of your work.  Remember to “Show, not tell.”
* Stories have the 5Ws and 1H:
o Who was involved?
o What happened?
o Where did it take place?
o When did it take place?
o Why did it happen?
o How did it happen?

* An alternative framework is SCAD:
o Situation: What is the occasion that makes the story? This may be an incident, a crisis, a typical occasion that illustrates what it¡¯s like to be an intercultural technical communicator.
o Character: People, especially the main characters. Readers should get a sense of characters as real, distinctive human beings. The best writing doesn¡¯t spend a lot time describing people. Instead, their nature, character, personality, temperament, etc. become evident through their actions and reactions, what they say, what other characters say to them and how other characters act in relation to them.
o Action: Something important, significant, or interesting happens in the story. These are often performed by characters and may cause changes to the situation.
o Dialogue: Usually verbal communication but could be other modes of communication.

* The story needs to have some point, but it does not need to be explicit. The point could be implicit; readers need to figure out for themselves. Or the point could involve some ambiguity.
* Stories don’t have to begin at the beginning; they can begin in the middle, at the end, a long time later, or anywhere in between.
* Stories can be developed from one particular incident or a synthesis of multiple real incidents.
* People, project, and company names can be omitted or pseudonyms can be used to protect confidentiality.
* Stories should be around 3000-5000 words.

Editors

Han Yu, Assistant Professor, English Department, Kansas State University. Han’s research focuses on workplace writing, intercultural technical communication, and more specifically, technical communication in China. Her work has appeared in Technical Communication, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, and Business Communication Quarterly. Han has worked as an editor for State Farm Insurance, as a technical writer for the Laboratory for Integrated Learning and Technologies at Illinois State University, and as an editor and translator for New Oriental Publishing Group in Beijing. She has received numerous grants and awards for her research and teaching.

Gerald Savage, Professor, English Department, Illinois State University. Jerry’s research focuses on the ethics and politics of technical communication, workplace practices, and issues of social justice in international technical communication. His work has appeared in Technical Communication Quarterly, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Journal of Business and Technical Writing, and as chapters in a number of essay collections. He is co-editor with Dale Sullivan of the book Writing a Professional Life published in the Allyn & Bacon Technical Communication Series and co-editor with Teresa Kynell Hunt of the two-volume collection of essays Power and Legitimacy in Technical Communication published in the Baywood Technical Communication series. He has worked as a freelance contract writer, researcher, and editor for numerous organizations and government entities, including Eaton Software, Epicenter Press, Alaska State Operated School System, University of Alaska Museum, City of Bloomington, IL, and The Journal of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, among others.

Journal: Percept Mot Skills. 2008 Feb;106(1):35-42.
Abstract:
The aim of this study was to explore the latent affective and persuasive meaning attributed to text when appearing in two commonly used fonts. Two satirical readings were selected from the New York Times. These readings (one addressing government issues, the other education policy) were each printed in Times New Roman and Arial fonts of the same size and presented in randomized order to 102 university students, who ranked the readings on a number of adjective descriptors. Analysis showed that satirical readings in Times New Roman were perceived as more funny and angry than those in Arial, the combination of emotional perception which is congruent with the definition of satire. This apparent interaction of font type with emotional qualities of text has implications for marketing, advertising, and the persuasive literature.

The theme of Cultural Usability and Human Work Interaction Design was very timely and relevant for India, given the increasing investment by the government in e-governance, e-learning, e-health and applications of information systems to empower the rural and agricultural population of India. Cultural usability is also highly relevant to the work of information technology in India in providing solutions for customers world wide.

Technical Communication, the journal of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), is soliciting article proposals for an upcoming special issue that will examine how factors of law and of culture affect how technical communicators work in international and cross-cultural contexts.  This special issue will be published in November 2010, and the guest editors are Kirk St.Amant of East Carolina University and Martine Courant Rife of Lansing Community College.

SPECIAL ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Legal issues are increasingly affecting the work we do as industry practitioners, academic researchers, university and college educators, and independent entrepreneurs in technical communication.  In some cases, these legal issues involve notions of ownership, copyright, and trade secrets.  In other instances, legal concerns related to privacy, disclosure, and free speech affect how technical communicators perform different activities.  These legal issues are further complicated by different cultural perspectives related to working in global environments and to addressing the informational needs of different cultural groups within our own nations.  Very few individuals in technical communication, however, are lawyers or have formal training in issues of law and its intersection with different cultural communication expectations and assumptions.   This special issue of Technical Communication will examine the legal issues affecting technical communication practices related to designing materials for or to working with individuals from other nations and cultures.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Completed proposals or questions about either proposal topics or this special issue should be sent to Kirk St.Amant and Martine Courant Rife at tc.special.issue@gmail.com

Surveys are popular tools used to assess a condition, opinion, situation, or held value. They come in many forms, such as online and paper questionnaires, in-person interviews, focus groups, telephone, and mail.  Sometimes, a technical writer will be asked to get involved in a conducting a survey either in-house or for an external customer.  This article discusses issues associated with doing online and paper benchmark surveys (which monitor the progress of something or compare data within an industry) and provides basic information on the roles that a technical communicator may play.  Full article in PDF