ABSTRACT
Most of us who work in technical communication programs realize the value of teaching website design using a rhetorical approach (Hunt, 1996; Jackson, 2000; Swenson, Constantinides, & Gurak, 2002; Tovey, 1998). We know how sensitivity to audience and attention to construction of digital ethos can help our students overcome many of the problems we see on countless sites littering the web. At the same time, there seems to be a practical discrepancy between a rhetorical approach to website design advocated by many academics and the design techniques employed by professionals in many digital design studios. In his critique of technical communication education, Moore (1997) argued that the rhetorical approach of most university programs is inappropriate for teaching many forms of workplace communication; instead, he advocated a task-oriented "instrumental" approach that displaces persuasion as the primary goal and instead concentrates on showing users how to perform certain actions. Additionally, Moore believed such an approach can aid technical communicators in their management of various project components, including both technology and personnel.
