Book review

Technical writing means many things to many people. The instructive literature for the field generally either emphasizes that portion of the field conforming to the author´s interpretation or attempts to cover the entire field with general concepts and admonitions. Rarely does a book appear that covers as much, as clearly, and in as practical a manner as Technically — Write! by R. S. Blicq. Mr. Blicq is Head of the Industrial and Technology Communication Department at Red River Community College, in Winnepeg, Canada. He obviously has had extensive experience teaching technical communications and, in this text book, he speaks familiarly at the undergraduate level. More than this, his presentation holds a warmth and intimacy that is uncharacteristic of instructional literature: the professor is speaking to you in his classroom. Although the physical scientist and even the graduate engineer may tend to view the style as being below his level of sophistication, Mr. Blicq has packed almost every principle of clear technical exposition on the widest variety of communications in this 380-odd page book, along with “problems” in the form of work assignments at the end of each chapter. Even for the professional communicator, this book holds much of value as a reference when he is faced with an assignment in a portion of the field outside of his specialty.