What's practical about technical writing?

Abstract

Courses and programs in technical writing are both praised and damned for being "practical." Other writing courses are practical, to be sure: in general, practical rhetoric emphasizes that discourse is a means for pursuing a goal. Thus, freshman composition aims to help students be more effective as students, technical writing aims to help them be more effective as engineers or accountants or systems analysts, and the writing instruction that accomapnies many literature courses aims to help them to be more effective as reader-critics. But since technical writing is singled out for being practical, it is worth considering what makes it so.