ABSTRACT
Ethics is increasingly important to publications managers and technical communicators. Teaching ethics is now regarded as an important part of business and technical writing curricula. Yet ethical training, for the most part, has been left to the academy. The tendency to reduce rhetoric to technique or skills, however, conflicts with more encompassing views of rhetoric. Richard Weaver argues that rhetoric “at its truest seeks to perfect men by showing them better versions of themselves, links in that chain extending up toward the ideal”. In most professional communication, success is often determined by providing a message that will be interpreted approximately the same by as many of the intended audience as possible, usually as innocuously as possible. Audience is usually taught as the most critical feature in technical writing and document production. Direct mail appeals from environmental groups are an example of unethical communication practices.
