Power Tools for Technical Communication

Rating:
Summary: Up to date student level book at a library level price!
Review: Daved McMurrey's 'Power Tools' contains 21 'openly-sequenced' chapters on a wide range of aspects of technical writing. Intended for use on an undergraduate level course, it assigns homework - sorry - Workshops with each chapter.
Many of the chapters are a bit basic, but this allows for inexperienced readers (explains how to use styles in word processor software, for instance).
Some of the writing is 'undergraduate' or 'highschool' e.g. "4. Do some research. To write even a simple comparison, you may need to do some research. If you did some research on voice-recognition software, you'd find advertisments ..."
In the book's favour, it is very up to date (2003), covering the Internet, e-mail and HTML.
Against it, the price (currently 80 USD)! I can't imagine that anyone listing this as a recommended course text would ever be able to talk to their students again.
To sum up, useful if you're new to technical writing and loaded!

Rating:
Summary: Best technical writing book available
Review: I've been teaching science and technical writing every semester for 17 years and have examined just about every text available. McMurrey's approach to organization, presentation and content make this the best book I can find for my students. It is the book I'd write. I swear McMurrey is in my head. I use the book in in-class and on-line courses to supplement my discussions. Power Tools contains a collection of common writing tools that form the core of all science and technical writing. Learn the tools with McMurrey's sensible approach and you improve your information gathering, thinking, organization and writing. The book is organized so I can assign chapters to fit my perception of the order in which I think students should learn. Numerous short exercises are built in or are available on a companion web site. If you are in a job that suddenly calls for technical writing, this book can help you develop skills by teaching you how to approach writing projects. Usually I have to throw out half a text because it contains materials not relevant to my courses. Not Power Tools.