A Strategic Guide to Technical Communication incorporates useful and specific strategies for writers to create aesthetically appealing and usable technical documentation. These strategies have been developed and tested on a thousand students from a number of different disciplines over twelve years and three institutions. The second edition adds a chapter on business communication, reworks the discussion on technical style, and expands the information on visual communication and ethics into free-standing chapters. Particular attention is paid throughout to the needs of Canadian students.

Heather Graves' profile page

Roger Graves' profile page

Heather Graves is Associate Professor of English at the University of Alberta.

Roger Graves is Professor of English and Director of Writing Across the Curriculum at the University of Alberta.

Comments on the previous edition:

“What a fantastic textbook! Concise and practical, A Strategic Guide to Technical Communication is an outstanding text that provides theoretically well-grounded, pedagogically sound, and hands-on guidance to creating effective professional documents. It’s one of those rare textbooks students will want to keep on their book shelves well beyond their graduation.” — Doreen Starke-Meyerring, McGill University

“Clear, accessible, and immaculately written, A Strategic Guide to Technical Communication is a superb choice for the introductory technical communication course. The organization of the text is excellent, guiding students through style and document design to the major genres of technical discourse, ethics, and usability testing, concluding with impressive chapters on online documentation and oral presentations. Without question, A Strategic Guide to Technical Communication is my text of choice for our undergraduate technical communication course.” — Joseph Little, Niagara University

“A Strategic Guide to Technical Communication covers clearly and well the main genres of technical writing—further, it includes in-depth, thought-provoking, up-to-date sections on topics such as navigating ethical issues; setting up, conducting, and reporting usability studies; and writing online documents. This book would work equally well for a technical communication course and for courses in business or professional writing: its rhetorical perspective and wide-ranging coverage go well beyond the features common to bestselling technical writing texts.” — Kelly Belanger, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

“Intelligently organized and informed by the latest in theory and research, A Strategic Guide to Technical Communication is a comprehensive and user-friendly textbook. Instructors will appreciate its solid grounding in theory and research, its many examples of student writing, and its helpfully integrated in-class exercises, lab assignments, and suggestions for major projects. Students will like the book’s hands-on approach and practical strategies for writing, designing, and testing documents for real users in both traditional and online environments.” — Jo-Anne Andre, University of Calgary