Publishing technologies have determined changes for job roles for technical communicators as well as the way documents are presented and restructured online. In this paper I will investigate how the progression of publishing technologies is changing the role of the technical communicator, the way that online publishing is creating documents that are establishing new ways for readers to read, examine the importance of considering the audience when writing and investigate the importance of setting reading standards for the web and the ways that these standards can be implemented to deliver articulate documentation on the web. I will examine how these changes can work collaboratively to author readable and cohesive documents that are developed with special attention paid to the importance of metadata and metadiscourse. Online publishing technologies is an ever-changing, morphing animal that cannot necessarily be predicted, but perhaps we can work to harness it. As publishing technologies change, so too will the style in which the readability of those documents change as they are shaped and designed to meet new formulas and needs. Likewise, as the readability and accessibility of documents change, so too must the interaction and intervention of the technical communicator change to ensure readable, articulate, navigable documentation, as well as preserve an author-reader relationship and also to preserve the role of the technical communicator.

Some changes in labor in the publishing industry are tied to the evolution of publishing technology. Some of these effects are explained by Jack Goody and Ian Watt in their article, “The Consequences of Literacy” where they trace the dissemination of culture and literacy through history by the impacts of publishing.

The pastness of the past, then, depends upon a historical sensibility which can hardly begin to operate without permanent written records; and writing introduces similar changes in the transmission of other items of the cultural repertoire. But the extent of these changes varies with the nature and social distribution of the writing system; varies, that is, according to the system’s intrinsic efficacy as a means of communication, and according to the social constraints placed upon it, that is, the degree to which use of the system is diffused through society (Goody and Watt 73).

This statement suggests that the transmission of information in a society is that of the culture’s communication system and how that culture influences and distributes information. Online publishing is social in its influence on readers is determined by how information is translated from the author to the reader. The way in which technical communicators shape that influence and distribution is in part determined by publishing technologies and how the Internet has produced a new way of reading online.

Labor has been greatly influenced by the changes in publishing technologies and has defined ways that information is created and distributed by laborers in the industry. These sentiments are outlined in “Production for Graphic Designers” by Alan Pipes. Pipes provides a history of the stages and changes in print technologies from ancient China to modern presses, lithography and questions the possible future impacts of Internet publishing. In his book he also describes the way that labor changed with the different and more modernizing publishing technologies. Regarding printing from the 20th century, he states that labor in publishing has changed according to the technology.

Over the years, the printing industry had become fragmented—there were separate typesetters, process engravers, and printers—and someone had to step in to plan and coordinate printing projects. That job fell to the graphic designer. There was greater creative freedom too. No longer were graphic designers constrained to what could be done with metal type and process blocks (Pipes 20).

So too have job roles for the technical communicator changed with the advent online publishing. No longer are technical communicators copy-writers and editors and mediators of information, but now publication-related responsibilities for the technical communicator has evolved into the quality of the text, audience analysis and usability of the site. Pipes continues his assessment of changes in print technologies with questions about the future of the Internet and its capabilities.

Now the internet, once the domain of computer scientists, has further liberated graphic designers, setting them free to expand their horizons beyond the world of printed ink on paper and into digital screen–based multimedia. As with the invention of lithography, it is often difficult to foresee the effect of art isolated discovery on the overall history of printing…. Who could have predicted the growth of the internet in the past few years? In just half a decade, it has become as commonplace as the telephone and television, complementing print-based media with a degree of interactivity and immediacy undreamt of by Gutenberg (Pipes 20).

This statement is an example of how changes in technologies, the jump to online publishing specifically, is deciding how the uniqueness of the Internet and all of its capabilities is shaping changes for labor in publishing and subsequently the documents that are produced as a result. Technical communicators are now in a position to redefine their job roles to incorporate new ways that publishing technologies enable information to be transmitted online. The commonness of the Internet as Pipes states, now has created a new information environment that has the potential to reach a large portion of society that has access to this new media—one that is evolved well beyond basic Gutenberg press. Online publishing as the latest publishing technologies also ushers in extended duties for the technical communicator who must ensure not only that text clarity, grammar and page layout are paramount, but also taking careful consideration the usability of the document.

The changes in labor in online publishing and the diversity of job duties for technical communicators is also defined by Eric P. Kumpf in his 2000 article “Visual Metadiscourse: Designing a Considerate Text.” The essence of his article stresses the need for technical communicators to produce well-designed and well-articulated metadiscourse. “A need for metadiscourse in the visual realm in technical writing has grown due to the influence of computers and their increased graphics capabilities” (Kumpf 403). It is the change in technology Kumpf emphasizes that results in new job duties and the responsibilities they represent for the technical communicator.

Twenty years ago, most technical writing classes acknowledged visuals, but those visuals were secondary to text….Students were limited by the capabilities of their typewriters, which meant that visual embellishments consisted of underlined and indentation. That limitation changed considerably with the introduction of computers (Kumpf 403).

Kumpf details these new duties for technical communicators that were simply a non-issue before the advent of the widespread computer use and certainly before the Internet. The influence of wide-spread computer use has allowed the technical communicator to become versed in a wide variety of job roles that are no longer strictly confined to text.

Other changes due to the development of publishing technologies in online job roles for technical communicators are discussed by Gwen P. Thomas from her talk, “What Every Technical Communicator Should Know About Metadata.” She substantiates the change in the technical communicator’s role in publishing by defining the new management roles for technical communicators for managing metadata. “Frequently, there is no single professional group within an organization that is better equipped—and better positioned—to address metadata management in its many forms than Technical Communicators” (Thomas 1). Here, Thomas not only adds a new job role for the technical communicator but redefines it altogether.

While most Technical Communicators are also experienced in working with metadata, they typically have not developed the same disciplined approach to metadata management. This approach is worth developing, as metadata management, even within the confines of a typical project, can positively impact an organization’s productivity and the quality of web and documentation projects (Thomas 4).

Thomas provides incentive that the technical communicator has taken on new managerial characteristics and how a managerial role can facilitate the shape, distribution and effectiveness of information.

Online literacy

The process that will fine-tune online the readability of documents online and the influence technology will have on online literacy is intrinsically tied to the technical communicator. To investigate how the technical communicator’s new job role will break into a new role of literacy developer for online documentation, it is first important to consider the modern definitions of literacy. In an essay on the historic role of literacy, Lory Hawkes quotes from Robert Hillerich to provide a definition of literacy as a method of communicating within one’s role in society: “Literacy is that demonstrated competence in communication skills which enables the individual to function, appropriate to his age, independently in his society and with a potential for movement in that society.” Hawkes continues to define literacy with a second explanation of literacy from Harvey J. Graff who posits that “literacy is often glossed over and frequently misconstrued. He believes that literacy gains a foothold in society because society is conditioned by oral culture to accept it as the new communication means” (Hawkes 252). Working with these two definitions of literacy there is a lot to be said about the influence and abilities of Internet publishing on a society’s reading practices online. One example of how reading habits have changed by the new communication means, online publishing is by assessing how web pages are created.

Websites are often produced in a modular format often with short descriptions of the next node of information and are structured as independent clusters of information. Kathy Henning emphasizes the importance of structuring online documentation appropriately in her Internet article, “Writing for Readers Who Scan,” and suggestions a list of best practices for writing to online audiences. Some of these suggestions include:

• Keep(ing) sentences short and simple. As a rule, semicolons don't belong on Web sites.
• Include only one idea per paragraph. Keep paragraphs to three sentences.
• Use subheads, and make sure they're clear and relevant. Subheads give readers a quick overview of what's on the page.

These examples of good web writing that Thomas recommends illustrate how documentation has morphed into shorter, perhaps more generalized texts as a result of online publishing. A new kind of documentation is being generated online and technical communicators need to be aware of how to communicate this new style to a common audience as well as determining new standards for developing web documentation.

It seems that the suggestions for job roles and responsibilities posed by Kumpf, Thomas and Henning seem to agree that technical communicators have the position necessary to produce a usable website that is comprehensive in its content and layout design, information metadata management and ability to restructure text for the online media. An additional consideration for a technical communicator to adapt to changing publishing technologies is the relationship of the author and document to the reader.

Consider the reader

Goody and Watt recognize that the printed word poses a specific relationship with the reader. “Writing establishes a different kind of relationship between the word and its referent, a relationship that a more general and more abstract, and less closely connected with the particularities of person, place and time, than obtains in oral communication (Goody and Watt 76). The significance that the changes in publishing technologies in print media (or in this case an online publishing) can have on the audience or referent underscores an important position for the technical communicator. The technical communicator needs to consider how the delivery of online information is likely to have a different impact on the reader than from a print document. Designing information for an online reader with a different style than print media will also necessitate the development an author-reader relationship.

Veteran scholar, Walter J. Ong, S.J. posits in his essay “The Writer’s Audience is Always a Fiction” that to be familiar with the material that your target audience is reading is compulsory for composing a text that is appropriately designed for that audience’s interests and reading abilities. Speaking about a typical writer beginning the authoring process, Ong recommends the following consideration about writing to a mass audience.

Practically speaking of course, and under the insistent urging of editors and publishers, he does have to take into consideration the real, social, economic, and psychological state of possible readers. He has to write a book that real persons will buy and read (Ong 10).

Regarding the importance of the audience is part of the role for the technical communicator that is determined by how publishing technologies change how documents are created and how they might be read and received. And this designates a new assignment for the technical communicator to create conscientious online documents.

In agreement with Ong, Kumpf states that audiences need to be addressed with the author-reader relationship in mind when he says that “a writer is seeking to establish a relationship with readers, that communication is indeed occurring between two human beings and that the writer is not describing unmediated facts (Kumpf 403.) One recommendation that Kumpf has put forth to establish the relationship with the reader is to design online documents with a good metadiscourse.

Conscientious communication

One way for technical communicators to establish a relationship with the online reader is to create online documentation that can communicate the intention of the site with text, graphics and ease of navigation. One part of this equation is metadiscourse.

Metadiscourse helps writers arrange content by providing cues and indicators that both help readers proceed through and influence their reception of texts. For example, metadiscourse occurs with phrases such as “The next section discusses….” (Kumpf 401).

For the technical communicator, liberally employing good metadiscourse can provide the reader with the most comprehensive information available as online publishing technologies develop. Again Kumpf addresses the point of the strength of metadiscourse in documentation. To omit this use of metadiscourse in the text would blur the separation of content, making the text less cohesive and less considerate of readers. Presumably, a considerate text will result in part from a thorough audience analysis (Kumpf 401).

Considering the varied roles for technical communicators that have been created the advent and continued development of online publishing, there is yet another level that the technical communicator can add to qualifications list. As Internet publishing continues to progress and modernize, so too will the developing role of the technical communicator need to consider managing information systems and managing information about information that ultimately facilitates the ability to produce information on the Internet. The organization and process that information systems are managed by metadata management is given credence by Gwen P. Thomas.

What happens if metadata is not managed? Sometimes, a system would immediately become unusable. An example would be an information retrieval system—either a physical or an electronic system….Who would attempt to store files on a computer without an application such as Windows Explorer, which catalogues and organizes the computer’s content based on metadata (Thomas 1-2).

It is not just developing readable documents that a technical communicator needs to consider when designing documentation from continuously progressing online publication technologies, but also how usable and dependable communication systems can be.

Standards

Assurance that the information being provided is correct is of the utmost importance for the technical communicator. It is necessary that the reader is given the most correct information possible to ensure safety and reliability that the information provided is the best that can be offered. The role of the technical communicator holds a professional and perhaps even ethical relationship to ensure the accuracy and readability of technical information presented online. Technical communicators are in the position to define the new standards for the dissemination of online information. As Internet capabilities progress and improve the necessity for standardized writing and usability practices have more of a need for attention. Standards are an integral aspect for any print media and the Internet is no different.

The necessity to develop standards in technical communication is detailed by Patrick Moore in his article, “Instrumental Discourse Is as Humanistic as Rhetoric.” He states that instrumental discourse is a set of standards employed rhetorically to communicate to the reader the most meaningful and valuable information necessary. “One of the effects of standards, however, is to unite many people into one team that works in a coordinated way to solve the large, complex problems of organizations and nations.” These standards to which Moore refers can be translated for the need to establish standards for online documentation for the same reasons. Clear communication and its effectiveness in uniting people to work as a team by the use of computer mediated communication accomplishes two incentives for the technical communicator, that a online environment has been developed fully and thoughtfully and also that the author has connected with the reader.

Moore continues that the necessity for standards in technical communication is to serve the readers, and to build a community of like readers. “Developing and applying standards contribute to that process of belonging to a community. Thus the process of standardization fits well into theories of the social construction of knowledge” (Moore 109). The Internet is inherently a social tool and needs to address the intended audience in toward an audience’s specific reading needs and literacy level for this kind of instrumental discourse to be effective.

It is already apparent why standards for Internet documentation need to be developed and maintained. Again referring to managing metadata, Thomas explains why companies have a vested interest in creating reliable metadata systems when she quotes from Bob Seiner. “Companies that survive on unwritten rules and definitions of data make themselves vulnerable for low quality data and data misuse as a result of the lack of consistency and the lack of confidence in the data” (Thomas 1). Setting standards, realizing new labor roles and considering the audience are part of the ways which a technical communicator can adjust to changing publication technologies. The ability of the technical communicator to grow with technology changes will enable the readability of online documentation.

Conclusion

Publishing technologies, specifically online publishing, has changed labor roles for technical communicators as well as the way documents are created and communicated. A technical communicator has the ability to see what information is necessary for the appropriate audience and the best means to convey that information, be it by considering the potential audience, creating trustworthy metadata and metadiscourse or managing the information systems. Future roles for the technical communicator can be considerate of developing communication systems that can be more articulate and perhaps even literacy-friendly for readers of continuously evolving online documentation. Although ever evolving publishing technologies will pose concerns over how to communicate appropriately with the audience, technical communicators can ensure the best possible documentation that can be produced in an environment where the technology for producing information is continuously redefining itself.

Works Cited

Goody, Jack, ed. Literacy in traditional societies, Cambridge, Cambridge U. P., 1968

Hawkes, Lory, "Transactional Literacy," Software Technology Conference 1993, 252-255.

Henning, Kathy, "Writing for Readers Who Scan" ClickZ, 2001

Kumpf, Eric P., "Visual Metadiscourse: Designing a Considerate Text," Technical Communication Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 4 Fall 2000, (401-424).

Moore, Patrick "Instrumental Discourse Is as Humanistic as Rhetoric." Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Vol. 10 No. 1 January 1996 1-118 1996 Sage Publications.

Ong, Walter J., S.J., "The Writer’s Audience is Always a Fiction." 1975.

Pipes, Alan, Production for Graphic Designers. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1998

Thomas, Gwen P., "What Every Technical Communicator Should Know About Metadata," Software Technology Conference, 2002.