LINGUIST List 12.818

Fri Mar 23 2001

Books: Public Communication

Editor for this issue: Naomi Ogasawara <naomilinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Paul Peranteau, Public Communication: Reading and Writing Public Documents

John Benjmains Publishing announces an new work in Public Communication:


Reading and Writing Public Documents.
Dani�l JANSSEN (University of Utrecht) and 
Rob NEUTELINGS (Technical University of Delft) (eds.)
Document Design Companion Series 1
US & Canada: 1 58811 009 5 / USD 45.95 (Paperback)
Rest of world: 90 272 3201 6 / NLG 100.00 (Paperback)

Governments communicate with the public through all kinds of
documents: forms, brochures, letters, policy papers, and so on. These
public documents have an important role in any democracy and their
design very much affects the efficiency with which governments can
perform their tasks.

Document designers, linguists and other communication experts in the
Netherlands have been studying public documents from a design point of
view as well as empirically for decades. In this book, the most
prominent of these researchers present the results of their work,
collectively giving an overview of various recurring problems in
government-to-public communication, and providing suggestions for
problem solving.

Contents: 

Dani�l Janssen & Rob Neutelings: Introduction
Carel Jansen & Michael Steehouder: How Research Can Lead to Better 
Government Forms
Jan Renkema: Undercover Research into Text Quality: The Case of the Tax 
Department
Menno de Jong & Peter Jan Schellens: Optimizing Public Information 
Brochures: Formative Evaluation in Document Design Processes
Jacqueline Hulst & Leo Lentz: Public Documents in a Multilingual Context
Dani�l Janssen: Improving The Quality of Public Documents. Or: Why Training 
Public Writers Often Doesn't Work
Frank Jansen: Lack of Clarity in a Sentence: The Style of Public Documents
Hans Hoeken: Convincing Citizens: The Role of Argument Quality
Dani�l Janssen & Niels van der Mast: Collaborative Writing for The Government
Niels van der Mast & Dani�l Janssen: Strategic Revision of Public 
Documents: How Policy Writers Revise Documents in Order to Reach Consensus
Rob Neutelings & Henk Pander Maat: Trust But Verify: Local Suspensions of 
the Cooperation Principle in Policy Documents
Rob Neutelings: Reading to Assess in Professional Life: Reading Styles of 
Legislators.



 John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Offices:	Philadelphia 			Amsterdam:
Websites: http://www.benjamins.com 	http://www.benjamins.nl
E-mail: servicebenjamins.com 		customer.servicesbenjamins.nl
Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6304747
Fax: +215 836-1204 +31 20 6739773