This compact but complete guide shows that less is more—with fewer extraneous details getting in the way of students trying to learn on the run, it allows them to focus on the most important principles of effective technical communication. The Concise Guide takes a rhetorical approach to technical communication; instead of setting up a list of rules that should be applied uniformly to all writing situations, it introduces students to the bigger picture of how the words they write can affect the people intended to read them. Assignments and exercises are integrated throughout to reinforce and test knowledge.

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Heather Graves and Roger Graves are Professors Emeriti of English at the University of Alberta.

“A Concise Guide to Technical Communication packs so much into so few pages. The ten-chapter organization is perfect for courses on the quarter system or as a secondary text in STEM courses. The text covers all of the fundamentals, including visual and online communication and presentations. I like that both the concise and original texts put ethics up front in chapter 2. This concise edition has a visually clean page layout, making it easy to navigate the series of in-class exercises. Graves and Graves have written a clear and concise text, modeling the excellent writing techniques they present.” — Kelly A. Harrison, Stanford University

“Your concise format includes exactly the level of involvement my introductory Technical Communication course needs. Other textbooks have been of high quality, but it was challenging to fit so much material into a 15-week semester. Now, I can easily choose what to highlight within my timeframe—I'm picking from the best, most important elements. With 100 students, that is the incisiveness I NEED! Chapter PowerPoints and test questions save me so much time. With the supplemental blog and author's lively podcast, I feel like I have a private tutor guiding me through the text.” — Lane Rhodes, English Department, UNC Charlotte