07.17.06 - The Impact of Cicero

If you had to provide a brief account of the impact of Cicero on technical communication today, how would you do it? What would that impact be? Also, what messages have you learned from the Rhetorica ad Herennium?

Cicero:
While this point relates to technical communication, I am not sure how this impacts the field, but Cicero discusses the often-raised question of whether a technical writer must be intimately familiar with the subject on which he or she is writing. Basically, a technical communicator (orator) is expert in knowledge of style, arrangement, rhetoric, delivery, and perhaps language, in general. This individual’s expertise, then, is in the communication of the information, not of the actual topic.

In Book II, Cicero discusses the effective ways to copy style (and whom to copy). I think the strength of certain types of technical communication is in the familiar structure of the communication (arrangement). For example, instructions are best comprehended and easiest to follow when they are chunked into small sections with clear headings and tasks are ordered logically and placed in an ordered list. In this example, language is most often imperative, in 2nd person, and applies simplistic terms and diction. The effectiveness of this structure is two fold. First, it is a logical design, which is easily followed by the reader. Second, it is the style with which we are familiar; thus, it was copied from a familiar model. Other more flowing examples of technical communication, such as reports, also have a particular style and structure that is effective both due to its logic and to its familiar design.

Rhetorica ad Herennium
In the middle of writing the section of my final paper on the canon of delivery, I took a break and read the Rhetorica ad Herennium. Therefore, being that was my frame of mind, I think what I took from this text relates largely to delivery. For example, the author weighs in on the power and importance of delivery (a canon oft overshadowed by the others:

“For skillful invention, elegant style, the artistic arrangements of the parts comprising the case, and the careful memory of all these will be of no more value without delivery.” (III ix 19). Note: this section is not in our readings, it is in Book III, which I read for the purpose of supporting my paper’s argument.

For the sake of making a reference to a point that was in our reading (Book IV), I’ll note that, having written this posting, I am reminded of the author’s discussion about the three levels of style (grand, middle, and plain). It is the p[lain language that is used in the type of writing I discussed above (writing instructions).