A large number of technical writing textbooks, many of them revised editions, is entering the college education marketplace. This review of five recent textbooks not only thoroughly analyses the content of the texts, but also raises two serious concerns. The survey finds that the textbooks provide inadequate guidance on paragraph structure. The survey also reveals that this textbook genre appears to rely upon a scanty, and sometimes dated, theory base. The authors ask whether this could lead to the production of manuals based upon “received wisdom,” rather than professional writing guides based upon sound communication theory.
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