As a technical communicator, I feel that the technical communicator is the entity that has more responsibility to communicate the point they are trying to argue. We should aim to communicate as clearly and ethically as we can. We should aim to avoid being deceptive in our work; however, we may be limited on what we can do by our employer(s).

I feel like this is a loose definition of "high response rate." The rate of response was 45.5%, which seems low to me.

I agree that ethics is an important topic to consider in any occupation, and I do believe that Dragga's hope for more exploration on ethics has occurred throughout the 2000s. Even within the last ten years, our society (as a whole) is becoming more open-minded or aware of ethical boundaries. The growing awareness of ethics is apparent in the university and college system, as many of these entities now offer undergraduate and graduate degrees in health policy ethics, business ethics, bioethics, medical ethics, environmental ethics, etc.

It also seems that technical communicators operate individually but somehow develop similar ethical ideals, I wonder why this is. It also seems that the technical communicator(s) operate within the scope of their employer. Technical communicators are tasked with completing directives from their employer at their own discretion. Perhaps all ethical ideals are similar because the technical communicators and educators are remembering to keep their audience/readers first. After all, that is the most important role.

This makes sense from a professional standpoint. All of these changes would be related to the technical communicator's business practices (which I would argue is more relevant in this research since fewer technical educators responded). It makes sense that making typography changes can benefit the business; inflating type can make a work appear longer, while compressing type allows the creator to fit more on the page. I utilized different typographical aspects on my own resume, and feel that was completely ethical. I approach the color change decision with caution because certain colors have different meanings for different readers. A challenge to both typographical and color changes is usability, an example would be when the technical communicator's audience is made up of older individuals, a larger font size should be used. For color, a usability challenge to take into consideration is addressing a population of readers that may have red-green color blindness.

I guess I was a little less lenient on the question about the warranty because I am looking at it from a consumer standpoint, and not from a business one. A question that I have from this explanation is: Does a common business practice define how ethical something is? Can common business practices be unethical? Also, it is hard to define "ethical" as the definition may change depending on your point of view. In this case, a technical communicator in a business setting sees this issue differently than I do as a consumer.

I see this a lot in my current job position in the field of market research. It is my job to screen respondents over the phone with questions similar to the survey that is being used in Dragga's research. In my occupation, they are called algorithms and require the recruiter (me) to input the respondents' answers into an excel spreadsheet, which then outputs the percentage results of their answers. More often than not, the respondents I speak with also stick between "agree strongly" and "disagree strongly" with nothing in between. I have found that this is more likely to occur when there are fewer than seven questions to ask them.

1. (The resume) Completely ethical Reasoning: it is my own work. I can align elements and use typography to my benefit and to conform to what is needed.
2. (The pie chart) Ethics uncertain Reasoning: I am uncertain because specific colors cause people to think of certain things and colors are associated with different ideas.
3. (The photograph) Completely unethical Reasoning: The employees viewing the photographs may or may not know that the person is actually disabled or not; however, I would not condone this if I were a part of the group designing the materials/photographs. If there are no employees with disabilities, don't portray your company as having something it does not.
4. (The evaluation) Mostly ethical Reasoning: I don't think bulleted lists and paragraphs are all that different when it comes to portraying information. It would be similar to a resume.
5. (The proposal) Ethics uncertain Reasoning: this is similar to the resume question, I would just be cautious creating this because it doesn't only represent me as an individual, it also represents the company.
6. (The line graph) Completely unethical Reasoning: this would be making the information appear to be the opposite of what it actually is.
7. (The warranty) Mostly unethical Reasoning: I see this as a comparison to "the fine print," which is something that customers usually do not read.

I think this is a good question to ask. After reading it, I thought "this is completely unethical." However, it made me think of another question, is it ethical to have abled actors to play the roles of a person with a disability? This historically is what has been done in the movie industry. In today's industry, there appear to be more opportunities for actors with disabilities, but there is still a preference towards abled actors (even when the role character is disabled).

Edward Tufte a highly regarded and well-known statistician.

Here is a website that has more information about him,