ABSTRACT
IN TRO DUC TION-EMER GENCE OF PRO POS ALS AND RE PORTS
When I first developed the plan for The Flowering of a Tradition, I knew that I would need to deal with the development of both reports and proposals, foun - dational genres of technical writing. As I had recognized since 1999, both existed in abundance in the 17th century. I also knew that the history of both the proposal and the report, as we use those terms in technical communication, had not been addressed. When I began to explore the history of both genres, I came to a major conclusion: Both the proposal and the report likely evolved from the petition, an important document that seems to have begun in England with Edward II in the 1270s and continued throughout the 15th through the 17th centuries and well into the 18th century. As I studied petitions, led by the work of Ormrod [1], Gwilyn Dodd [2], as well as Fisher, Richardson, and Fisher [3] and Myers [4], I observed that the structure of the medieval petition anticipated the structure of modern proposals and also many proposals written during the 17th century. At the same time, I noted that many 17th century printed reports reflected the structure of both modern reports and proposals. With these observations in mind, I offer a common theory for the development of both genres-both reflect the template or formulary of the petition as it existed in the 13th century. Examples of early reports and proposals will support that claim.
