TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Ethics in Professional Communications From:Charles Good <good -at- AUR -dot- ALCATEL -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 26 Sep 1995 22:00:53 GMT
The September 1995 edition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic
Engineers (IEEE) Transactions on Professional Communication (Vol. 38, No. 3)
is dedicated to the subject of ethics in professional communications.
If anyone has access to a university library that carries the IEEE publications,
this would be a good one to read.
The various papers adddress ethics in terms of early writer education issues,
professional codes, false inference and masking, quality end products, etc.
These papers do NOT focus on just technical writing; they address writing in
the general sense and compare modern written communications to predecessor
disciplines such as journalism.
As one of the author's put it, "Bad writing is normal, but not natural" and
"Bad rhetoric goes hand-in-hand with bad ethics."