Department of English

Dan Jones

  • Professor

djones@ucf.edu
Office Hours: Tues--11-12; 1:30-3; Th--11-12
Campus Location: 303B Colbourn Hall

Dan Jones is a Professor of English at the University of Central Florida where he has taught a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate technical communication courses for the past 26 years. He helped develop the department's undergraduate and master's programs in technical communication as well as the department's new Ph.D. program in Texts and Technology. Prior to teaching at UCF, he taught for 4 years at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. He has also consulted for over 25 companies teaching employees many kinds of effective writing and technical writing seminars as well as evaluating company documentation.

Research and teaching interests include technical and professional communication, technical writing style, technical editing, the relations of literature and science, software documentation, and science fiction.

Publications include four books:

Defining Technical Communication (Society for Technical Communication, 1996)

Technical Writing Style (Allyn and Bacon, 1998)

The Technical Communicator's Handbook (Allyn and Bacon, 2000)

Technical Communication: Strategies for College and the Workplace (Longman, 2002), co-authored with Karen Lane.

Education

Awards

Spring 2010 Courses

Course Number Course Title Mode Date and Time
21386 ENC3241 WRITING FOR TECHNICAL PROF WWW -
Dan Jones. ENC 3241 W63. Writing for the Technical Professional (WWW) In this course, students learn how to plan, research, write, design, illustrate, edit, and revise a variety of documents; write more effective correspondence (letters, memos, e-mail), including more effective job correspondence; create effective technical instructions, proposals, informal reports, and formal reports; collaborate more effectively with others in peer reviews and on a team report; and adopt a variety of strategies for professional growth and development. Requirements include several weekly discussions on the readings; several correspondence assignments; an instructions assignment; a collaboratively written proposal; a progress report; a collaboratively written report; and a team evaluation.
11554 ENC3905 DIRECTED EXPERIENCE IN WRITING Face2Face 12:00AM - 12:00AM
ENC 3905 CAH-ENG 3(3,0)
Directed experience in Writing: PR: Grade of C (2.0) or
better required in ENC 1102 and C.I. Individualized topics
of study and/or research in writing with personalized faculty
direction. May be repeated for credit.
10783 ENC4280 TECHNICAL WRITING STYLE Rdce Time M,W 1:30PM - 2:20PM
ENC 4280 Technical Writing Style

This course focuses on providing a better understanding of technical prose style and how students can improve their own writing style, particularly for writing correspondence, reports, proposals, procedures, and instructions as well as writing for various online genres. In this course, students learn about relationships between style and rhetoric; how prose styles depend on the rhetorical situation and are influenced by different discourse communities; how prose styles range from plain styles to complex styles to unnecessarily complex styles and how to choose what is most appropriate; and how the persuasive nature of technical writing influences technical prose style. Students will also learn what general diction problems technical writers share with all other writers; what challenges are presented by specialized language and how to deal with these challenges; how to write more effective technical sentences and paragraphs; how to establish a wide range of tones, including humor; how bias influences writing style; what some of the major style issues are concerning gender and ethics; and how to edit for problems in technical prose style. This class is a mediated or reduced seat-time class. Students meet in the classroom on Mondays and Wednesdays, and they have asynchronous discussions online on Fridays. Requirements include exercises in response to the reading on Mondays and Wednesdays, discussion postings for Fridays, an exam, and a major paper.
22037 ENG6947 INTRN IN TEXTS & TECHNOLOGY WWW -
ENG 6947 Texts and Technology Internship

This online course provides students the opportunity to integrate valuable practical experience with the theory and content of their courses in the Texts and Technology program. Additionally, students who are working as interns should make a meaningful contribution to the company or organization during the internship experience.

The internship will normally be completed in 8-15 weeks. However, in some cases, companies may want interns for a longer period. The minimum number of contact hours for the entire internship experience must be 80 hours. This course is conducted completely online. The learning and the challenges come from the tasks required by the company or organization during your internship. In this course, you simply report on and discuss your internship activities, assess your own internship experience, and have the company or organization mentor evaluate your internship contribution. Requirements include a proposal, bi-weekly progress reports, bi-weekly discussion posts, an internship report, a portfolio of sample work, and an evaluation from the mentor.