The word refers to a way we engage in an activity. Doing something is difficult if we do it with effort and with some doubt as to the eventual outcome. Depending on the nature and degree of doubt, there are three kinds of difficulty. If we are having difficulty with something but expect from the nature of the task or the fact that others can do it that we will eventually learn to do it easily, we are having a transitory difficulty. This is the difficulty of riding a bicycle, the difficulty of getting up in front of a group, the difficulty of choosing between vanilla and chocolate ripple. Other difficulties we do not expect to overcome, though we think in principle that the task admits easy success and we can see that others have overcome the difficulties. These are continuing difficulties. I have difficulty writing, for instance, and I expect to continue to have difficulty, but I know others for whom it is not at all difficult. I think of this sort of difficulty as a failure to call on the right resources. For most of us, selfdiscipline falls into this category, or being honest on our tax forms. The last kind of difficulty inheres in the task itself, given our capacities. These no one does easily: resolving paradoxes or thinking of two things at once, confronting death or remembering dreams. These are inherent difficulties. The transitory difficulties a new teacher of technical writing faces are only too apparent. They include learning a new curriculum, discovering the needs of a new kind of student, making up assignments and grading them, learning the textbooks, gaining a feel for technical style-and, as Maxwell Smart used to say, loving it. These are difficulties we have teaching any new subject; they are not in principle different from those we would encounter if suddenly asked to teach a course on Nigerian paleoliths. Nor are they particularly difficult as these things go, for there is a profession of teaching technical writing, which we find we have inadvertently joined, and the experienced in that profession have sought to ease our difficulties. An association, a little magazine, summer programs, textbooks, and innumerable how-to articles exist which will help any reasonably thorough person construct and teach a course which will indeed help students. The fundamental principles of technical writing (figure out your audience, organize to