The Communicative Work of Biology-Journal Captions: Lessons for Technical and Professional Communication

ABSTRACT

The authors examined a corpus of figure captions from technical and professional communication (TPC)-journal articles to test their sense that TPC captions do not fulfill their communicative potential as well as, they sensed, journals in science often do. The authors performed a content analysis on captions from biology-journal articles and iteratively tested a coding scheme of caption content. The resulting scheme can help in analyzing caption content, developing captions, and imparting a variety of TPC-related skills to students.

KEYWORDS:

• Biology journals
• captions
• coding scheme
• content analysis
• figures
• technical and professional communication journals
• visuals

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Brittany Betzer, Leslie Shapy, and Jim Colbert, all of Iowa State University, for serving as raters during the development of this coding scheme for figure captions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jordan Smith

Jordan Smith is a Ph.D. student at Iowa State University comajoring in the Rhetoric and Professional Communication Program and the Applied Linguistics and Technology Program. His research interests lie primarily in the area of English language studies.

Jo Mackiewicz

Jo Mackiewicz is an associate professor of rhetoric and professional communication at Iowa State University. Recently, with Isabelle Thomson, she published Talk about Writing: The Tutoring Strategies of Experienced Writing Center Tutors.

Derek Hanson

Derek Hanson is a Ph.D. student studying digital rhetoric, content management, and multimedia production in the Rhetoric and Professional Communication Program at Iowa State University.

Shannon N. Fanning

Shannon N. Fanning is a Ph.D. student studying data visualization and rhetoric of science in the Rhetoric and Professional Communication Program at Iowa State University.

Sara Doan

Sara Doan is a Ph.D. student studying rhetoric of technology in the Professional Writing Program at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.