technically professional

In pre-preparing to re-prepare to prepare for my qualifying exams, I came across an interesting comment made by Patrick Moore in an essay titled Instrumental discourse is as humanistic as rhetoric (JBTC, v10 n1 p100-18 Jan 1996):

"... when the purpose of technical communication is rigorously instrumental -- to govern, guide, control and help people execute physical actions -- technical writers work hard to make their language unambiguous, unemotional and strictly denotative ... But when the purpose of technical communication is rhetorical (as in a proposal or technical sales document), writers can use language with more connotations, emotional associations, and potential ambiguity."

This is why I try to differentiate between technical and professional communication when teaching WRT 307. This also the reason why I think instructional designers need to be exposed to theories in Composition, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication. As the principal authors of texts that "govern, guide, control and help people execute physical action," IDers control the nature, purpose, mechanics, and structure of the instructional communication.

Said it before. Will continue to find reasons to say it again.