This thesis discusses the benefits of using plain language in legal documents and the role technical communicators can play to help implement plain language. Although many definitions for plain language exist, it is best described as reader-focused communication that presents information in a manner that makes it easy for a reader to find, understand, and use the information. Plain language facilitates comprehension by using shorter, less complex sentences; active voice; and common words. All these elements aid in processing and understanding information, especially unfamiliar concepts. Laypeople, unversed in the law, frequently have difficulty understanding traditional legal writing. The complex sentences, wordiness, and redundancy that characterize traditional legal writing often inhibit comprehension and become barriers to understanding. To demonstrate how plain language can improve legal writing, this thesis reviews before-and-after versions of documents that were revised to incorporate plain language as well as common documents that laypeople might encounter. The studies and research discussed in this thesis demonstrate that readers achieve greater comprehension with plain language documents. Technical communicators, the language experts, can work with legal professionals, the content experts, to help encourage plain language use in legal writing. By emphasizing plain language use in legal formbooks, law school courses, and continuing legal education courses, plain language will become more dominant. Technical communicators can work with governments and law firms to develop and run in-house writing programs. When organizations realize how plain language can benefit them, both economically as well as in improved consumer relations, they will be motivated to adopt plain language into their legal writing.

Information fluency refers to the ability to recognize information needs and to gather, evaluate, and communicate information appropriately. In this study, I treat "information fluency" as both an overall competency and as a collection of knowledge and skills. The purpose of this study is to explore the specific workplace information fluency skills valued by employers of technical communicators, to find out how instructors perceive and teach these skills, and to suggest how these findings can inform our teaching practices. Within the framework of qualitative methodology, this study employs two data-collection instruments, including a content analysis of online job recruitment postings and a survey of technical communication instructors across the United States. The study discovers that when hiring technical communicators, employers require candidates to have skills in information processing, information technology, and critical thinking. Candidates must be able to identify their information needs, and must know how to use specified tools to gather, evaluate, and communicate information. It also reveals that although "information fluency" is a new terminology to a majority of instructors, the skill sets that constitute information fluency already existed in their knowledge. The study's last finding suggests that the opportunity for an internship is perceived as the most helpful in students' acquisition of information fluency skills. This dissertation concludes with a list of specific employer-valued information fluency skills, recommendations for program administrators and instructors for implementing information fluency, as well as recommendations for future researches on this subject.

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This investigation is concerned with the problem of Texas employers' inability to hire adequately trained technical communication personnel because Texas universities and colleges do not offer a bachelor's degree program for that career field. This study contains the results of five separate surveys that investigate the backgrounds and training of present technical communication personnel and the training desired by supervisory personnel. The study also recommends a bachelor's degree program in technical communication with three technological specialties: electronics, mechanical, and chemical/petroleum. Anticipated problems in setting up such a degree program and possible solutions to the problems are discussed in the study. The suggested freshman and sophomore curriculum could be used as a guideline for a junior college associate program.

As mobile phones become increasingly ubiquitous in today’s world, academic and public audiences alike are curious about the interaction between mobile technologies and social norms. To investigate this phenomenon, I examined how individuals use technology to actively manage their communication behaviors. Through a three-month research project on usage patterns of Burner, a mobile application, this thesis explores the relationships among technology, culture, and privacy. Burner is a service that equips individuals with the means to create, maintain, and/or dissolve social ties by providing temporary, disposable numbers to customers. The application offers a way to communicate without relying on a user’s personal phone number. In other words, Burner acts as a “privacy layer” for mobile phones. It also provides a valuable platform to examine how customers use the application as a strategy for communication management. This thesis represents a marriage of practice and theory: (1) As an applied enterprise, the project was constructed as a customer needs assessment intending to examine how the service was situated in the lives of its users. The findings have successfully been applied to my client’s company strategy and have led to a more informed customer approach. (2) As an academic endeavor, this research contributes to existing scholarship in anthropology, computer-mediated communication, privacy, and design. The results provide rich fodder for discussions about the impact of mobile communication and services.