Profile Of Writers Research Articles

„L’ange noir” i „wirtuoz słowa” – fragment wspomnienia Jana Iwańskiego o Antonim Langem (opracowanie tekstologiczne Aleksandra Błasińska)

The article presents an excerpt from Jan Iwanski’s memoirs referring to Antoni Lange. The text was probably expected to constitute a part of the work prepared to be published in the chapter The profiles of writers and scholars . The manuscript can be found in the National Ossolinski Institute, signature 15047 (4b). The following text entitled Lange is an extract from Jan Iwanski’s draft work and was supposed to be included in the memoirs which were under editorial preparation. The Iwanski family cultivated the tradition of putting down their recollections on paper. Moreover, the concept of this work resembles the memoirs published by the poet’s father – Pamietniki 1832–1876 , and Wspomnienia. 1881–1939 written by his brother, August Jr. Unlike August Jr., Jan mentions people who were not closely related to his school education though they occasionally appeared in his family home at the invitation of his father – August Iwanski Sr. They formed a circle of individuals connected with the artistic world: Edward Slonski, Gustaw Danilowski, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Antoni Lange. Iwanski intended to dedicate extensive parts of the texts to the latter, making him – as it is reflected in the title – the subject of a longer fragment of a chapter; however, frequently emerging digressions did not allow the author to characterize Lange and their relationship in a coherent way. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the poet significantly influenced Iwanski, caused his fascination and became his master whose opinion on the poetic attempts of the young entrant proved to be of paramount importance.

What Is Successful Writing? An Investigation Into the Multiple Ways Writers Can Write Successful Essays

This study identifies multiple profiles of successful essays via a cluster analysis approach using linguistic features reported by a variety of natural language processing tools. The findings from the study indicate that there are four profiles of successful writers for the samples analyzed. These four profiles are linguistically distinct from one another and demonstrate that expert human raters examine a number of different linguistic features in a variety of combinations when assessing writing proficiency and assigning high scores to independent essays (regardless of the scoring rubric considered). The writing styles in the four clusters can be described as action and depiction style, academic style, accessible style, and lexical style. The study provides empirical evidence that successful writing cannot be defined simply through a single set of predefined features, but that, rather, successful writing has multiple profiles. While these profiles may overlap, each profile is distinct.

POE AND THE REMAPPING OF ANTEBELLUM PRINT CULTURE

POE AND THE REMAPPING OF ANTEBELLUM PRINT CULTURE. Ed. J. Gerald Kennedy and Jerome McGann. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2012. vii + 271 pp. $45.Since the impact of F. O. Matthiessen's American Renaissance (1941) on the academic study of American literature in the 1950s and 1960s, scholars in the last three decades have debated Matthiessen's criteria for inclusion, his nearly exclusive focus on five major authors (three from New England and two from New York), and the writers excluded from his overall discussion. Notable by his absence in American Renaissance was Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), who represented to Matthiessen the tragic consequences of isolation, a contrast to those writers who consciously or unconsciously confronted a larger social world. If Walt Whitman's poetry represented engagement with the ordinary experiences of the common man, Poe's works, according to Matthiessen, suggested an escape from such concerns, a retreat into a realm out of space and out of time. body of Poe's writings represented the trappings of an abnormal Romantic temperament, a horror and anxiety generated by a tortured sensibility.Several of the contributors of the ten essays in Poe and the Remapping of Antebellum Print Culture invoke Matthiessen or use his work as a point of departure. Maurice Lee, in particular, does so with a hint of weariness. He duly cites the number of Matthiessen-influenced works-from American Renaissance Reconsidered (1985), edited by Donald Pease and Walter Benn Michaels, and David Reynolds's Beneath the American Renaissance (1988) to more recent studies. He notes, however, that Matthiessen, when currently cited, represents a once-dominant tradition of scholarly inquiry that examined a more manageable canon at a time of an apparent scholarly consensus. Pointing to Poe's critical neglect, according to Lee, seems less compelling today, and his own essay, via a numerical accounting, shows that academic interest in Poe remains strong and shows few signs of abating.The metaphor in the volume's title, addressed by editor J. Gerald Kennedy in his introduction, is mapping, a marker suggesting a decentralized and volatile network of writers, editors, and publishers of varied, competing, and often antagonistic agendas and interests. It was this literary, economic, and social marketplace that Poe, the magazine editor aspiring for independence, aimed to negotiate and control. As the contributors demonstrate, however, he was often the victim of his own assertiveness and was subject to forces in the publishing milieu, most notably a vast culture of reprinting, that he failed to master.Kennedy seizes on the metaphor of mapping in his opening essay, which focuses on Poe's mixture of literary criticism and gossip, The Literati of New York City (1846). Despite acknowledgment that the series was a random selection of his New York contemporaries, the compilation constituted a fairly systematic appraisal of antebellum authors, including portraits of every person of literary note in (24). Clergymen, politicians, and scholars appeared alongside poets and fiction writers, and Poe took pains to include over two dozen editors of periodicals, fellow arbiters of literary taste. Kennedy charts the course from Poe's early Autography installments in the Southern Literary Messenger (1836), to the Autography series in Graham's Magazine in 1841-42, to the Literati. All these efforts led Poe toward a plan in the last years of his life for a more ambitious project on American authors and their literary productions. If Kennedy's essay elaborates on Burton R. Pollin's pioneering work in presenting the notes and outline for Living Writers of America (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1991), a project Poe never completed, persuasive claims are made for Poe's achievements in broadening the scope of American letters by including profiles of women writers, practitioners in a diversity of genres, and figures from different regions. …

POE AND THE REMAPPING OF ANTEBELLUM PRINT CULTURE

POE AND THE REMAPPING OF ANTEBELLUM PRINT CULTURE. Ed. J. Gerald Kennedy and Jerome McGann. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2012. vii + 271 pp. $45.Since the impact of F. O. Matthiessen's American Renaissance (1941) on the academic study of American literature in the 1950s and 1960s, scholars in the last three decades have debated Matthiessen's criteria for inclusion, his nearly exclusive focus on five major authors (three from New England and two from New York), and the writers excluded from his overall discussion. Notable by his absence in American Renaissance was Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), who represented to Matthiessen the tragic consequences of isolation, a contrast to those writers who consciously or unconsciously confronted a larger social world. If Walt Whitman's poetry represented engagement with the ordinary experiences of the common man, Poe's works, according to Matthiessen, suggested an escape from such concerns, a retreat into a realm out of space and out of time. The body of Poe's writings represented the trappings of an abnormal Romantic temperament, a horror and anxiety generated by a tortured sensibility.Several of the contributors of the ten essays in Poe and the Remapping of Antebellum Print Culture invoke Matthiessen or use his work as a point of departure. Maurice Lee, in particular, does so with a hint of weariness. He duly cites the number of Matthiessen-influenced works-from The American Renaissance Reconsidered (1985), edited by Donald Pease and Walter Benn Michaels, and David Reynolds's Beneath the American Renaissance (1988) to more recent studies. He notes, however, that Matthiessen, when currently cited, represents a once-dominant tradition of scholarly inquiry that examined a more manageable canon at a time of an apparent scholarly consensus. Pointing to Poe's critical neglect, according to Lee, seems less compelling today, and his own essay, via a numerical accounting, shows that academic interest in Poe remains strong and shows few signs of abating.The metaphor in the volume's title, addressed by editor J. Gerald Kennedy in his introduction, is mapping, a marker suggesting a decentralized and volatile network of writers, editors, and publishers of varied, competing, and often antagonistic agendas and interests. It was this literary, economic, and social marketplace that Poe, the magazine editor aspiring for independence, aimed to negotiate and control. As the contributors demonstrate, however, he was often the victim of his own assertiveness and was subject to forces in the publishing milieu, most notably a vast culture of reprinting, that he failed to master.Kennedy seizes on the metaphor of mapping in his opening essay, which focuses on Poe's mixture of literary criticism and gossip, "The Literati of New York City" (1846). Despite acknowledgment that the series was a random selection of his New York contemporaries, the compilation constituted a fairly systematic appraisal of antebellum authors, including portraits of "every person of literary note in America" (24). Clergymen, politicians, and scholars appeared alongside poets and fiction writers, and Poe took pains to include over two dozen editors of periodicals, fellow arbiters of literary taste. Kennedy charts the course from Poe's early "Autography" installments in the Southern Literary Messenger (1836), to the "Autography" series in Graham's Magazine in 1841-42, to the "Literati." All these efforts led Poe toward a plan in the last years of his life for a more ambitious project on American authors and their literary productions. If Kennedy's essay elaborates on Burton R. Pollin's pioneering work in presenting the notes and outline for The Living Writers of America (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1991), a project Poe never completed, persuasive claims are made for Poe's achievements in broadening the scope of American letters by including profiles of women writers, practitioners in a diversity of genres, and figures from different regions. …

Writing Process Induced Media Noise Measurement

Writing processes can cause extra medium noise, which is the dominant noise in the perpendicular recording system. This work describes the methodology of using averaging methods to measure the writer footprints and its noise profiles, which are recorded at different writing currents on a Spin-stand. Two different commercial heads have been used for the evaluation. The test is performed on a 2.5 inch commercial disc at the middle diameter (MD) location, rotating at 5400 RPM spindle speed, and at 0 skew angle. The center track is DC erased over an AC erased background and then recorded with a repetitive footprint data pattern and an alignment data pattern. Multiple revolution averaging and down track footprint averaging are used to retrieve the noise free footprint profile of the writer. Using the noise free footprint profile, the statistical characteristics of noise can be derived from the individual noisy footprint which shows the media noise characteristics induced by writing process. Using footprint and noise profile data, signal to noise ratio (SNR) for regions near the trailing edge of the writer profile are calculated and suggests that the ideal writing condition for writer A and B to be 55 and 25 mA respectively.

Grandparents Reveal Their Secrets: A New Holocaust Narrative for the Young ‘Third Generation’ in Israel

Since the 1990s, a new type of Holocaust story has been emerging in Israeli children's literature. This new narrative is directed towards very young children, from preschool to the first years of elementary school, and its official goal is to instil in them an authentic ‘first Holocaust memory’. This essay presents the literary characteristics of this new Holocaust narrative for children and its master narrative. It brings into light a new profile of both writers and readers. The writers were young children during the Holocaust, and first chose to tell their stories from the safe distance of three generations. The readers are their grand-children and their grand-children's peers, who are assigned an essential role as listeners. These generational roles – the roles of a First Generation of writers and of a Third Generation of readers – are intrinsically familial ones. As such, they mark a significant change in the profile of yet another important figure in the Israeli intergenerational Holocaust discourse, the agent of the Holocaust story for children. Due to the new literary initiatives, the task of providing young children with a ‘first Holocaust memory’ is transferred from the educational authority, where it used to reside, to the domestic sphere.

Dans la fabrique de l'imaginaire soviétique : la consultation littéraire du magazine Komounarka Oukraïny (1932-1934)

As ideological discourses have often been studied, we intend to highlight the construction of the Soviet imaginary, through literary texts that were sent by readers for publication in the magazine Komunarka Ukrainy. The archives contain a hundred manuscripts and the reviews of them by the «literary consultation» of the editorial board. To understand the values, strategies and interactions of various actors in this vast literary game, we will present the magazine, study the profile of writers «from below» and their texts before considering their critique by the editorial board. Dealing with poetry and fiction in the cultural sphere, we nevertheless do not lose site of the key historical problems of Soviet society : adapting one's prose to the Stalinist storytelling style means is synonymous with backing the regime itself.

Reflexões metodológicas para a análise sociocultural de redatores em corpora históricos

Este artigo expõe em discussão procedimentos metodológicos produtivos no processo de reconstrução dos perfis socioculturais de redatores de sincronias passadas da língua portuguesa. Pretende-se pensar a questão da aplicação de categorias sociais (gênero, faixa etária, grau de escolaridade, nacionalidade/naturalidade do autor) aos redatores de missivas manuscritas e de textos impressos, apontando os percalços e os caminhos metodológicos implementados no desenvolvimento de uma sociolinguística histórica do português.

An international journal’s attempts to address inequalities in academic publishing: developing a writing for publication programme

Scholars around the world are under increasing pressure to publish in English, in Anglophone centre journals. At the same time, research on professional academic writing indicates that scholars from outside Anglophone centre contexts face considerable obstacles in getting their academic work published in such journals, relating to material and linguistic resources. This paper draws on current research to offer a brief outline of inequalities arising from the privileged status of English and critically discusses the experiences of Compare: a journal of comparative and international education, in trying to tackle some of these inequalities in publishing through a mentoring programme. Recognising that many writers submitting to the journal have rich and original material, and that the established reviewing procedures do not readily accommodate the mentoring required to support submission (and eventual publication), the programme was designed to offer writers access to resources not easily (or necessarily readily) available: ‘expert insider’ knowledge from Compare editorial board members and reviewers and English textual commentary by ‘academic literacy’ facilitators. We outline key features of Compare’s ‘writing for publication’ programme and critically discuss both the success and difficulties encountered, drawing on reflections of participants, writer profiles and numbers of submissions from the three years in which the programme was run.

Critical survey of long fiction

This work offers profiles of major writers of long fiction throughout history and the world, including analyses of their significant novels and novellas. It discusses the novel in overview essays by time period, country, ethnicity, and genre, and provides valuable resource material. Originally published in 1983 & 1984 and revised in 2000, Critical Survey of Long offers 678 profiles of major writers of long fiction throughout history and the world, including analyses of their significant novels and novellas. Overview essays discuss the novel and other long fiction by time period, country, ethnicity, and genre. This new edition includes all 581 original author essays as well as 97 new ones, expanding the set to ten volumes and covering more than 60 countries and the literary fiction from the 10th century to the 21st. All the original essays were evaluated for their currency, and 130 of them were replaced or substantially revised, in some cases by the original contributors. The sections 'Other Literary Forms', 'Achievements', 'Biography', and 'Analysis' were updated to include recent developments: new titles or awards, changes in residence or employment, and alterations in critical and popular reception. For these essays, one or more sections on specific novels or novellas were added. This edition also provides 61 informative overviews in volume 10 organized under the categories 'Long Fiction in History', 'World Long Fiction', 'North American Long Fiction', and 'Genre overviews'; eight of the essays are new. The essays are arranged alphabetically by author. Each essay begins with full data on dates and places of birth and death, and a list of the author's 'Principal Long Fiction'. A brief overview of 'Other Literary Forms' places the author in a larger literary context. Two longer sections, 'Achievements' and 'Biography', follow. 'Analysis', the heart of the essay, describes the author's work in the long fiction form and examines it in terms of themes, typical concerns, characters, and motifs; several subsections on the author's most important works illustrate these themes. Finally, a 'Further Readings' section lists authoritative, up-to-date resources. Volume 10 contains a number of useful resource aids, including a general Bibliography, a Time Line, a list of Major Awards, a Chronological List of Authors, and Category, Geographical and General Subject Indexes.

How Breast Cancer Patients Want to Search for and Retrieve Information From Stories of Other Patients on the Internet: an Online Randomized Controlled Experiment

BackgroundOther patients’ stories on the Internet can give patients information, support, reassurance, and practical advice.Objectives We examined which search facility for online stories resulted in patients’ satisfaction and search success.Methods This study was a randomized controlled experiment with a 2x2 factorial design conducted online. We facilitated access to 170 stories of breast cancer patients in four ways based on two factors: (1) no versus yes search by story topic, and (2) no versus yes search by writer profile. Dutch speaking women with breast cancer were recruited. Women who gave informed consent were randomly assigned to one of four groups. After searching for stories, women were offered a questionnaire relating to satisfaction with the search facility, the stories retrieved, and impact of the stories on coping with breast cancer. Of 353 enrolled women, 182 (51.6%) completed the questionnaire: control group (n = 37), story topics group (n = 49), writer profile group (n = 51), and combination group (n = 45).Results Questionnaire completers were evenly distributed over the four groups (χ2 3 = 3.7, P = .30). Women who had access to the story topics search facility (yes vs no): were more positive about (mean scores 4.0 vs 3.6, P = .001) and more satisfied with the search facility (mean scores 7.3 vs 6.3, P < .001); were more positive about the number of search options (mean scores 2.3 vs 2.1, P = .04); were better enabled to find desired information (mean scores 3.3 vs 2.8, P = .001); were more likely to recommend the search facility to others or intend to use it themselves (mean scores 4.1 vs 3.5, P < .001); were more positive about how retrieved stories were displayed (mean scores 3.6 vs 3.2, P = .001); retrieved stories that better covered their information needs (mean scores 3.0 vs 2.6, P = .02); were more satisfied with the stories retrieved (mean scores 7.1 vs 6.4, P = .002); and were more likely to report an impact of the stories on coping with breast cancer (mean scores 3.2 vs 2.9, P =. 02). Three main effects were associated with use of the writer profile search (yes vs no): being more positive about (mean scores 3.9 vs 3.6, P = .005) and more satisfied with the search facility (mean scores 7.1 vs 6.5, P =. 01), and being more positive about how retrieved stories were displayed (mean scores 3.8 vs 2.9, P < .001). For satisfaction with the search facility, an interaction effect was found (P = .03): at least one of the two search facilities was needed for satisfaction.ConclusionsHaving access to the story topics search facility clearly had the most positive effect on patient satisfaction and search success.

Writing Center Philosophy and the End of Basic Writing: Motivation at the Site of Remediation and Discovery

At York College, many of the students fit the linguistic and educational profile of basic writers, and yet there is no remediation built into the curriculum. It falls to the writing center, then, to provide our students with the academic support that they need in order to move beyond being classified as developmental writers. In this article, I examine how our students are using the York College Writing Center, with a view to determining how a lower level of academic preparedness influences the kind of services that students seek and the kind of academic trajectory they follow. I suggest that the progress that we see these students making over the course of the semester can be best understood as a move from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation, rather than from lowerto higher-order concerns that is the professed goal of writing center philosophy. This article has implications for how writing centers can best serve less prepared students, especially in light of the national movement to end remediation, as well as for the ways in which we measure student success.

Native Writer Profile: Ralph Salisbury

Native Writer Profile:Ralph Salisbury Arnold Krupat (bio) The following brief essay will appear in slightly different form as the introduction to Ralph Salisbury's forthcoming book, Light from a Bullet Hole: New and Selected Poems, 1950–2008. Salisbury, a Cherokee from Iowa, born in 1926, has contributed to many journals and anthologies. Formerly editor-in-chief of Northwest Review, and the recipient of many awards, he is the author of nine books of poetry and two books of short fiction. He is currently professor emeritus at the University of Oregon and lives in Eugene, Oregon, with his wife, the poet Ingrid Wendt. Now in his eighty-third year to heaven, Ralph Salisbury has gifted us with a volume of new and selected poems in which there is no diminution of powers but an amazing further blossoming.1 The selected poems range from his earliest volume, Ghost Grapefruit and Other Poems (1972), through the chapbooks Pointing at the Rainbow: Poems from a Cherokee Heritage (1980) and Spirit Beast Chant (1982), on to Going to the Water: Poems of a Cherokee Heritage (1983), A White Rainbow (1985), Rainbows of Stone (2000), War in the Genes (2006), and Blind Pumper at the Well: Poems from My 80th Year (2008). Light from a Bullet Hole reprises "Some of the Life and Times of Wise-wolf Salt-town," as Salisbury etymologized his name in an autobiographical prose piece published in 1994 in Returning the Gift, and it brings us up to date.2 In "Scarlet Tornadoes," from Ghost Grapefruit, we discover that it was left to his father's "brother to tell me / that we were Cherokee," while in "A Black Half Moon," from Spirit Beast Chant, the child growing up tries out the names: "The [End Page 69] Cherokee—Tsaragi—Cave Men—Groundhogs / 'Yunwiya' their real name—'The People'—his own."3 From A White Rainbow come the poems "A Cherokee History Chapter Written Near the Globe Theater Site" and "Cherokee Initiation Rite: 1981," which may be compared to "Breed Kid's Initiation Rite: 1981," from Rainbows. "Three Visitations or Evocations," from the recent Blind Pumper at the Well, is dedicated to Joe "Dog" Smith, and it begins, "Old friend and fellow Cherokee."4 Also from Rainbows comes the lovely and moving "Being Indian," which opens, "Who we were seemed simple when gun / dropped meat onto plates." Its last stanza details change: The path to Granny's apples and talesTurkey Creek's bramble-tangled bank;the road snow, mud or dust, from my parents' farm,to redskin-plundering Carnegie's free—now tax-supported—library—war,for national survival through colonial tyranny,was my Medicine Way into the 20th Century,being what I was not ever simple again. The title poem of Rainbows, "A Rainbow of Stone," chronicles my Cherokee people's buffalo, deer,plantations, even our holy town,Echota, generations gone. To crime, monoxide, disease,and other city uncertainties.5 But in a vision that persists through Salisbury's work early to late, the poem concludes by imagining a time when even the arrogant sky-scraperswill bend,and, balled into foetal curl, the whole earth will be toe-to-toerainbows, my own and Thunder's and your homeagain. [End Page 70] In another poem from Blind Pumper, the poet appears at fourteen, in "War on, One Brother Sixteen, and I, Fourteen, Try to be Men." At fifteen, as "Direction of Storm," from Going to the Water, tells us, the young poet was struck by lightning on his family's Iowa farm: it "bleached my world / white like hospital sheets." In "Green Gophers," one of the new poems, the older poet sings back this young man who dreamedof targets too big for my air rifle to killand was naughty, though never successfully,in stopping the singing of birds,and joined, as soon as I could,the really naughty army.6 The teenage World War II Army airman appears in many of the poems.7 Thus, earlier, in "Green Smoke," the poet had remembered how, at . . . eighteen, I saved eight men,Nine if I count myself,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .and now I'm a poetAnd try to save everythingI...

Creativity and mental health: A profile of writers and musicians

Creativity and its link with mental health have always been much speculated about. However there have been a handful of methodologically sound studies to clearly establish the relationship between creativity and mental health. The objective of the study therefore was to examine the psychiatric morbidity stress profile, coping skills and personality profile in creative versus non-creative populations. Forty writers, 40 musicians and 40 controls chosen after randomization, who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria constituted the sample of the study. All the subjects were administered GHQ-28; SCAN for all GHQ positives (and 10% of GHQ-ves), Perceived stress scale and coping check list and NEO-FFI. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS 11.0 version. Pearson's correlation, Chi-square and ANOVA one-way tests were used. The present study corroborated the findings of earlier studies in 70's and 80's that there was no difference between creative and non-creative groups in terms of mental illness and stress profile. The writers differed significantly from the other two groups on religious and faith domain of coping skills. The two creative groups had similar personality characteristics and scored significantly high on all dimensions compared to the non-creative group.

A Multilanguage Online Writing Center for Professional Communication: Development and Testing

An online writing center developed at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, called Calliope, provides a modular platform aimed at enhancing learners’ professional writing skills in five different languages: Dutch, English, French, German, and Spanish. It supports courses in business and technical communication. The current version includes modules on press releases in English, business letters in French, and minute taking in Dutch. Unlike many online writing centers, it is genre-specific and context-specific, it is highly interactive rather than linear, it uses a process approach to cater to different learning styles, it accommodates different writer profiles, and it is an instructional tool not connected to a physical writing center.

Rhetoric and the writer's profile: Problematizing directed self-placement

Open enrollment and walk-in advising at two-year colleges make placement assessment a continual, year-round process, effectively prohibiting the use of placement processes like entrance portfolios. On the grounds of expediency, many two-year institutions have turned to computerized editing tests such as COMPASS for placing entering students into writing courses, even though such tests do not directly measure writing. Forgoing placement assessment entirely through directed student self-placement, such as that described by Royer and Gilles, has also become an attractive alternative for some institutions. Beginning with the premise that assessment is a rhetorical act, the authors describe their reasons for resisting computer editing tests and suggest possible problems with using only directed student self-placement in open access institutions. They then describe a placement process, the Writer's Profile, which they developed. A sample student profile is presented to illustrate the interaction and negotiation among writing teachers as they read profiles and reach an agreement about their placement recommendation. The authors argue that the form of assessment chosen is important because as a rhetorical act assessment affects curriculum, pedagogy, faculty development, and even the surrounding community's expectations and perceptions of college writing.

Technical Writing in the Netherlands

This article is about the profession of technical writing in the Netherlands. The data are mainly based on two studies. The first was directed at technical writers who work as freelancers (external writers). It was done with the objective of learning about the characteristics and backgrounds of external technical writers and about their wishes concerning the development of the profession. The second study was directed at technical writers who work inside organizations (internal writers) and focused on questions about text quality and the writing problems that threaten this quality. We will focus on three issues. After the introduction in the first section and the description of the design of our studies in the second section, we will give a global profile of technical writers in the Netherlands. In the fourth section we will give an impression of the writing problems internal technical writers have to deal with. In the fifth section opinions concerning more professionalism in the field of technical writing are discussed. Also attention is paid to current developments in professionalism.

Encyclopedia of utopian literature

Offers brief summaries of utopian novels, discusses concepts related to utopias and dystopias, and offers profiles of utopian writers.

INTRAINDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN LEVELS OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE

Intraindividual differences across different levels or units of written language — the word, the sentence, and the paragraph — in sequencing the elements of written language were examined in intermediate‐grade children. Both Experiment 1 (N = 72 good readers) and Experiment 2 (N = 102 readers of varying ability) confirmed the main hypothesis that performance at the word level does not predict performance at the sentence or paragraph levels and that performance at the sentence level does not predict performance at the paragraph level. The hypothesis was confirmed for both an expressive, production task and a receptive, metalinguistic judgment task. A secondary hypothesis, tested only in Experiment 2, that metalinguistic judgment and production are related was supported at the word and sentence (but not paragraph) levels of language in intermediate‐grade writers. Results have implications for (a) individualized educational programming that takes into account the developing writer's profile of levels of writ...

Profile of Technical Writers in San Diego County: Results of a Pilot Study

In spite of the recent proliferation of technical writing programs, textbooks, and professional associations, quantitative information on the people and work involved in technical writing is scant. This article reports the responses of 122 technical writers in the San Diego area to a questionnaire asking them about the tasks they perform, documents they produce, skills they consider significant, audiences they write to, working conditions, types of companies they work for, and education and training. The pilot survey also identified other demographic information such as salary and length of service as technical writers and in their present position.