Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Toscano, Aaron, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Conference Presentations
    • Critical Theory/MRG 2023 Presentation
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • SEACS 2022 Presentation
    • SEACS 2023 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • February 13th: Introduction to User Design
    • February 15th: Instructions for Users
      • Making Résumés and Cover Letters More Effective
    • February 1st: Reflection on Workplace Messages
    • February 20th: The Rhetoric of Technology
    • February 22nd: Social Constructions of Technology
    • February 6th: Plain Language
    • January 11th: More Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Audience & Purpose
    • January 23rd: Résumés and Cover Letters
      • Duty Format for Résumés
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • January 25th: More on Résumés and Cover Letters
    • January 30th: Achieving a Readable Style
      • Euphemisms
      • Prose Practice for Next Class
      • Prose Revision Assignment
      • Revising Prose: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Good
      • Sentence Clarity
    • January 9th: Introduction to the Class
    • Major Assignments
    • March 13th: Introduction to Information Design
    • March 15th: More on Information Design
    • March 20th: Reporting Technical Information
    • March 27th: The Great I, Robot Analysis
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • August 24th: Introduction to the Class
    • August 31st: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2022)
      • Rhetoric of Fear
    • November 16th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Finding Dominant Rhetorical Appeals
    • November 2nd: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • November 30th: Words and Word Classes
    • November 9th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • October 12th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 19th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 26th: Stylistic Variations
    • October 5th: Midterm Exam
    • September 14th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 21st: Coordination and Subordination
    • September 28th: Form and Function
    • September 7th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 12th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 19th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics
    • April 5th: Knoblauch. Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • February 15th: Isocrates (Part 2)
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 8th: Isocrates (Part 1)-2nd Half of Class
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 15th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • March 22nd: Mary Wollstonecraft
    • March 29th: Second Wave Feminist Rhetoric
    • May 3rd: Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • February 14th: Fascism and Other Valentine’s Day Atrocities
    • February 21st: Fascism Part 2
    • February 7th: Fallacies Part 3 and American Politics Part 2
    • January 10th: Introduction to the Class
    • January 17th: Scapegoats & Conspiracies
    • January 24th: The Rhetoric of Fear and Fallacies Part 1
    • January 31st: Fallacies Part 2 and American Politics Part 1
    • Major Assignments
    • March 7th: Fascism Part 3
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society
    • August 22nd: Science and Technology from a Humanistic Perspective
    • August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • August 29th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • August 31st: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • December 5th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • November 14th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 16th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 21st: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 28th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 30th: Violence in Video Games
    • November 7th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes Ch. 1-17
    • November 9th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes, Ch. 18-26
    • October 12th: Lies Economics Tells
    • October 17th: Brief Histories of Medicine, Salerno, and Galen
    • October 19th: Politicizing Science and Medicine
    • October 24th: COVID-19 Facial Covering Rhetoric
    • October 26th: Wells, H. G. Time Machine. Ch. 1-5
    • October 31st: Wells, H. G. The Time Machine Ch. 6-The End
    • October 3rd: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 12th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1
    • September 26th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 2
    • September 28th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • September 7th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 5 and 6
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • April 13th: Virtually ‘Real’ Environments
    • April 20th: Rhetoric/Composition Defines New Media
    • April 27th: Sub/Cultural Politics, Hegemony, and Agency
    • April 6th: Capitalist Realism
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
    • Major Assignments for New Media (Spring 2021)
    • March 16th: Identity Politics
    • March 23rd: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies
    • March 30th: Hyperreality
    • March 9th: Globalization & Postmodernism
    • May 4th: Wrapping Up The Semester
      • Jodi Dean “The The Illusion of Democracy” & “Communicative Capitalism”
      • Social Construction of Sexuality
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • How to Lie with Statistics
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire
  • Video Games & American Culture
    • April 14th: Phallocentrism
    • April 21st: Video Games and Neoliberalism
    • April 7th: Video Games and Conquest
    • Assignments for Video Games & American Culture
    • February 10th: Aesthetics and Culture
    • February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis
    • February 24th: Serious Games
    • February 3rd: More History of Video Games
    • January 13th: Introduction to the course
    • January 20th: Introduction to Video Game Studies
    • January 27th: Games & Culture
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
    • March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making
    • March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics
    • March 3rd: Risky Business?

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 255F
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing » November 13th: More on Color

November 13th: More on Color

Plan for the Day

We’ve got a few things to do today, so below is a list:

  • Information Design Critique Due next week (11/20)
    • Information Design Critique Workshop–get ideas from classmates!!!
  • 5182 Project Presentations next week (11/20)
  • Perception, Culture, Rhetoric and Color
  • Ch. 6 Design for Information
  • Color Schemes
  • Document #3 Issues

Perception, Culture, Rhetoric

Color perception is an interesting subject that deals with physiological responses. While I don’t expect you to be well versed in the anatomy of the eye, there are several terms you should know:

  • visible spectrum: “a small range of wavelengths between 700 and 400 nanometers (nm)” in which humans can perceive light. There is other light, but we can’t see it without special devices (See discussion on infrared wavelengths).
    • hue: wavelengths of light that cause us to perceive different colors.
    • saturation: perception of the purity of color. More saturation, more pure and vibrant colors (hue).
      • unsaturation: a mixture of colors. More unsaturated, more muted color.
    • brightness: perception of the intensity of light that is transmitted or reflected from a surface.
  • tristimulus: human perception of colors based on the mixture of perception of the three types of cones in the eye: red, green, and blue.
  • ganglion cells: the nerves that help distinguish between colors.
  • additive primary colors: red, green, and blue.
    • cyan…it’s not the pepper; pronounced cy–an.
  • complementary colors: two colors directly opposite from each other on the 360-degree color wheel.
  • analogous colors: colors close together on the same wheel.
  • Color Temperature: obviously, this is related to our feelings associated with various colors.
    • warm colors: colors naturally brighter at the same level of saturation (i.e. red and yellow).
    • cool colors: colors not as bright as warm colors at the same saturation (i.e. green and blue).
  • color vision deficiency: limitation in perceiving color differences.
    • Test 1
    • Test 2
  • split complementary colors: start with one color, and find the colors on either side of the original color’s complement. Sometimes called complementary colors.
  • Albert H. Munsell’s color theory image.
  • The Mint Site…monochromatic or something different?
    • More monochromatic websites:
      Lighthouse Brewing, Co
      Not quite monochromatic…but close
  • Would this be monochromatic or analogous?
    • Let’s think about where brown is on these color wheels:
      Color Wheel 1
      Color Wheel 2
  • Use color or black & white
    • Surprisingly, black can come in different “colors,” the range of which we call _____________________.

Design for Information Ch. 6 “Textual Structures”

Last chapter! There are a couple things I want to focus our attention on, but below are some general “hits” of the chapter.

  • p. 185: The description of the changes to Darwin’s book mentions the visualization allows us to understand something fundamental about science: “‘We often think of scientific ideas…as fixed notions that are accepted as finished.'”
  • p. 187 and pp. 204-205: Types of Data
    • Nominal (Categorical) Data: No implicit quantitative relationship or inherent ordering, but we can group data into categories
    • Ordinal Data: Arrange in a given order or rank–which comes first, which is bigger, etc.
    • Quantitative Data: Measured and manipulated using statistical methods.
  • p. 187: Citing Moretti: “Quantitative research provides a type of data which is ideally independent of interpretations…and that is of course also its limit; it provides data, not interpretation.”
    • Unfortunately, no data stand on their own; all data is a construction, filtered by gathering the data in a set.
  • Time permitting, a look a the “Technical Notes” for the statistics in this CDC Report.
  • p. 189: The goal of most natural-language data analysis is to look for patterns, structures, or relationships within a collection of documents (corpus).
    • Three Types of Visualization of textual data
      1) Connections among entities within and across documents (think patterns across multiple data sets–what types of words do scientists, architects, and politicians use?)
      2) Language patterns and word frequencies (think how often scientists say “probable”; how often do they say “certain”)
      3) Analyze relationships between words in their usage (consider how words appear and what appears before or after them)
  • p. 191: The purpose of textual mining is to abstract elements “from the narrative flow, and construct a new, artificial object” that allows us to analyze different aspects of a text.
    • For instance, we could analyze a dataset of twelfth graders’ essay for sentence length, compound sentences, and compound-complex sentences. Then, after statistical manipulation (quantitative), we could say the average twelfth-grade writer uses more of these sentences, less of these, and almost none of these.
  • p. 190: Why would Stanford’s letter and travel mapping program be important to studying a particular historical figure?
  • p. 192: Ware (again) on memory and Dual Coding Theory:
    • Imagens, mental representations of visual information, are processed first (think word shape, size, weight, etc.)
    • Logogens, mental representations of language information, are the nonvisual associations stored in long-term memory (think concepts leading to abstract thought; your memory has already stored information that helps you process the visual world)
    • Consider the word “cat,” which is very easy to define, understand, and associate with known images.
    • Now, consider the word, ennui, a concept that means the boredom felt by Westerners in late modernity. The French word is translated, “boredom, tedium, worry.”
  • p. 193: “There is an inherent temporal nature to language that transforms language into a sequence of mentally recreated dynamic utterances.”
  • p. 194: The wonderful world of word clouds!
    • What do you think about word clouds? Useful? How?
    • Where do you see word clouds?
    • English Department Word Cloud
    • CLAS Research Word Cloud

Color and Culture

Obviously, in the context of the United States, red, white, and blue are patriotic colors, plastered all over campaign documents.

Let’s consider color and time period…Think about the colors in homes (appliances, couches, curtains, etc.) from media or your life. What prevailing colors seem to identify the following decades:

  • 1960s
    • Luck be a Lady tonight…
    • Oakland Museum of CA
    • Madison Ave office…
  • 1970s
    • Here’s a story…
    • Another story…
    • Harvest Gold
    • Avocado Green
  • 1980s (early and late)
    • Attack of pastels
    • Prince’s Dining Room
  • 1990s–the last great decade…EVER!
    • Fake wood paneling on dashboards
    • Hunter Green and beige

Color Scheme Groupwork

Go back to last week’s section on color schemes and answer a few questions and put up a webpage.

Then, move on to your Information Design Critique Workshop. Some of you expressed that you weren’t sure if you could write 4 double-spaced pages on a document. I assure you that you can, assuming the document is big enough. For instance, you probably can’t write 4 pages on a business card, but you could write plenty on a document like this one about a family game.

Matching Colors

I know this is a peculiarity of mine, but color matching is really ingrained racism of a culture. Let me explain…

Choropleth Maps

I absolutely doubt we’ll get around to this, but I’m including it here just in case. If anything, I want us to at least add the “Geographic Heat Map” App to Excel. If there’s a problem, I’ll try to track down someone who can help.

My first choropleth map! Click here for the data in Excel, and click here if you get lost in the tutorial.

My second choropleth map! Click here for the data in Excel. I created that data set from here.

Your classmate Zach informed me about a more powerful program called SimplyAnalytics, but I haven’t played around with it because it requires you to create an account. It looks like a good resource, though.

Document #3 (Tutorial or Brochure) Issues

I’ll turn back your Tutorials or Brochures tonight, but, as usual, below are a few general issues to consider:

  • Red circles in Photoshop
  • Uniform, clear screen shots (paste them in Photoshop)
  • “Basal” text–not the herb
  • MS Word Document look…it’s ok to use Word, but try not to have your document look like an assignment–even though it is
  • Stay parallel
  • Use captions for extra-textual elements (Figure X.X)
  • [Color] C=___ M=___ Y=___ K=___
  • Don’t just state what a color means based off some out-of-context web page or your own idiosyncratic “logic”; you have to let me know why a color means what it does. There are several interpretations possible.
    • Why is blue calming?
    • Why is yellow for sickness?
    • Exceptions: Green for environmental stuff and Red for danger or love…those are pretty common.

Those of you who haven’t turned in these portfolio assignments will definitely want to get them to me ASAP.

Next Week

I don’t have any new reading for you for next week, so use your time to finish any reading you might have missed. We’ll be moving onto extra-textual elements and wrapping up any topics we needed to go back to.

We’ll have the 5182 group do their presentations on Nov. 27th. Then, we’ll just prepare for your presentations and portfolios due 12/04.

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