Keywords in Technical and Professional Communication

Since 1976, when Raymond Williams published Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, "keywords"books have become a staple resource for knowledge workers in the humanities, offering short essays on frequently used terms within a given field. At least two such texts exist in composition (Keywords in Writing Studies and Keywords in Composition Studies), and in the past year, we have seen the publication of two books aimed at technical and professional communication (TPC): Keywords in Design Thinking and Keywords in Technical and Professional Communication. The latter book is the subject of this review. Edited by Han Yu and Jonathan Buehl, Keywords in Technical and Professional Communication should be of interest to TPC specialists in both industry and academia, as well as to any engineer interested in learning about how communication mediates their field. The purpose of the book is not just to define terms. Rather, it aims to trace the disciplinary contexts and sketch possible futures for terms that have informed and continue to shape the field of TPC. In Keywords, Yu and Buehl gather some of the field s most prominent and thoughtprovoking researchers, each of them offering insightful commentaries about an array of topics and focus areas. © 1988-2012 IEEE.