The field of technical communication studies informational documents, such as instruction manuals or research articles and so on. Games have instructions, or rules, which must be documented. Technical communication scholars have studied documents for video games, but similar research on tabletop rulebook documents appears to be mostly absent, an absence that creates a gap within technical communication research. Filling this gap, my work studies tabletop game rulebooks, which lie within the genre of instruction manuals. Technical communication has produced a theory of effective manual design, and I present much of that theory as, what I call, standards of effective manual design. I observed 30 tabletop game rulebooks to see how well they follow those standards, and I interviewed or surveyed people who played 15 of those games to see how effective the games’ rulebooks are for those people. This allowed me to see how well a rulebook’s adherence to the standards of effective manual design aligned with its effectiveness. This alignment did not always hold; consequently, though an effective rulebook follows the standards of effective manual design, a rulebook can follow said standards yet be ineffective. I conclude that following the standards is only a necessary, not sufficient, condition for making an effective rulebook. The standards must also be used in the correct way and amount.

Contracting is an integral component of both government (i.e., public) and private business. As part of the contracting process, contracting companies must submit proposals to federal agencies or private businesses; individuals who write proposals on behalf of contracting companies are known as proposal writers. Although proposal writers are central to the proposal writing process, they are only marginally represented in available literature on the contracting and proposal writing processes. Additionally, available literature is disproportionately influenced by industry and trade sources, versus academic sources, and completed by industry authorities. As a result, key findings from such reports may not reflect the feedback gathered as part of this research. This research utilized a 25-question survey with both multiple choice and free answer questions to gauge the most and least effective components of the proposal writing process. Communication and collaboration—internally within the proposal team or within the company, and externally between the company and customers, clients, etc.— were cited as both the most and least effective components of the process. Notably, however, communication and collaboration were not the most frequently encountered issues, as only 23.5% of proposal writers reported communication as a common issues. Instead, supporting resources (46.9%), time/ schedule (49.2%), and direction. instructions (44.9%) were reported as the most common issues that proposal writers encountered, although one in four participants noted that issues were not consistent across proposals.

The global reliance on fossil fuels is driving climate change and urban air pollution, both of which constitute grave threats to public health. Poor air quality has dramatically increased the incidence of respiratory illness in large cities. Climate change has brought about increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events which directly affect public safety and lead to destruction of farmland and fresh water sources. A globally scaled transition from fossil fuel combustion to low-carbon “clean” technology for power generation is necessary for both climate change mitigation and urban air quality improvement—a feat that could be feasibly accomplished through worldwide development of renewable energy (RE) infrastructure, consequently resulting in improved pub-lic health. From the perspective of advancing technical communication research, this study performs a qualitative content and frame analysis of recent newspaper articles that draw connections between RE and public health, thereby clarifying the primary messages the public receives about these two topics which are related by climate change.