Whether writing belongs to the humanities
The place of humanities education in medical writing depends on how writing competence is understood. One position emphasises specialised preparation for readers’ practical tasks; another sees humanities composition and scholarly medical writing as complementary.
Competing views of preparation
The objection to humanities-based preparation is that technical writing needs a fundamentally different orientation. W. Earl Britton criticised freshman English in 1974, and Tom Lang argued in 1987 that applying a humanities orientation made students and authors poor technical communicators; in 2000 he described the belief that writing belonged to the humanities as the profession’s largest impediment. Conversely, humanities faculty have been described as dismissing technical communication as vocational training incompatible with academic goals.
William Van Nostran’s 2014 counterargument concerns scholarly writing for highly literate healthcare readers. It accepts that a liberal-arts education does not immediately equip a writer to meet medical-publication standards, but treats humanities composition and medical writing as complementary rather than incompatible.
Lang’s 2015 position distinguishes scientific-technical-medical writing from literary, creative, journalistic and popular writing, arguing that advanced preparation enables specialised communication beyond ordinary school writing. His 2016 response to practitioners’ accounts likewise rejected personal style and reproducing an author’s voice as defining medical-technical skills, calling instead for advanced expertise beyond grammar refreshers.
Contemporary composition and shared methods
The 2014 defence challenges the picture of freshman composition as an uninformed student writing for an instructor who insists on knowing more about the topic. At Ohio State, first-year writers studied academic research and writing conventions while developing expertise in one topic and producing abstracts, annotations, critical responses, proposals and academic papers. Stanford’s required writing-and-rhetoric programme operated outside the English department, with shared assignments, goals and outcomes developed into distinctive courses linking content and disciplined writing.
The following course selection was recorded in 2013.
- Writing Nature: Discourses in Ecology, Culture, and Technology.
- Body Politics: The Rhetoric of Transhumanism.
- The Shape of Things: The Rhetoric of Design.
- Are You Fuzzy or Techie?: The Rhetoric of Art and Science.
- Ladies, Tramps, and Other Furry Friends: The Rhetoric of Pets.
- The Politics of Difference, Identity, and Harm: The Rhetoric of Hate Crimes.
- All That Jazz: The Rhetoric of American Musical Theater.
- The Power of Political Photography.
- Red Pill or Blue Pill?: The Rhetoric of Drugs.
- Illness Narratives: Attention, Empathy, and Storytelling.
Composition teaching in the 1970s began investigating successful writers’ processes as models for instruction, contributing to the familiar stages of prewriting, drafting, revision and editing. These stages are not rigid or exclusive: writers differ, and work at one stage may require returning to another.
Reader-centred teaching also connects the two traditions: composition instruction asks writers to anticipate readers’ concerns and reduce the gap between writer and reader, while technical-writing instruction likewise emphasises the reader. Scientific writing can be understood as communication within disciplinary communities for shared purposes.
Form, style and story
Lang’s humanities model treats words as intrinsically valuable, exemplified by a well-turned phrase, moving speech or enchanting story. Van Nostran’s reply treats substance, form and style as inseparable: style expresses perception, and content cannot be detached from the language expressing it.
In this account, a dramatic speech arises from characters, plot and conflict rather than an isolated aim to produce eloquence. Story likewise concerns the deliberate sequencing of events, and scientific reports and statistical explanations can tell stories in that structural sense. The analogy extends to hypotheses as proposed accounts of phenomena, with scientific methods selecting among competing explanations.
Different boundaries around scientific writing
Van Nostran distinguishes technical communication, such as instructions, manuals and process documentation, from biomedical research’s continuing exchange of knowledge, corrections and clinical applications. Lang instead treats medical writing as a subset of scientific-technical writing, distinguishing it through audience, purpose, utilitarian style and technical subject matter.
Britton’s claim that technical writing permits only one interpretation is challenged by Gopen and Swan’s position that no sentence can guarantee a single meaning: writers can increase the likelihood of the intended interpretation. A consultant in legal and scientific writing who also taught Chaucer and Shakespeare exemplifies expertise crossing these boundaries; Rachel Carson’s scientific nonfiction and Carl Sagan’s books and television documentaries offer examples from scientists.
For Van Nostran, writing is too diverse for any one discipline to own, and barriers between genres restrict writers’ development. For Lang, overlapping traditions still have distinct educational and career tracks: a writer may excel in all three, but conventions do not transfer automatically and each needs its own training.
Three traditions compared
Lang’s 2015 classification distinguishes literary and academic writing, popular writing and journalism, and scientific-technical-medical writing, while acknowledging overlap and uncertain boundaries.
| Characteristic | Literary, academic or creative writing | Popular writing and journalism | Scientific-technical-medical writing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Document types | Novels, poems, essays, term papers, short stories, personal narratives, biographies, songs, plays | Local, national and international news stories, articles, features, editorials, columns, reviews, news releases | Regulatory documents, scientific articles, technical reports, training materials, instruction manuals, grant proposals, letters, business communications |
| Purpose | General: to entertain, enthral, evoke, soothe, challenge; to inform | General: to report and comment on news, to inform, to entertain | Specific: targeted information to help a specific audience accomplish a specific task |
| Readers | Usually general, a heterogeneous public often differentiated by genre | Usually general, a heterogeneous public often differentiated by market sector | Usually more specific and homogeneous, targeted to roles in an organisation or profession |
| Elements used | Primarily words; others may provide artwork or graphic design, with or without the writer’s input | Primarily words; tables, visuals and design may be contributed by others, with or without the writer’s input | Words, tables, graphs and images, usually with substantial input from the writer into content and form |
| Content | Must engage readers, usually in content and presentation | Must engage readers, usually in content and presentation | Must provide the information readers need to perform their tasks |
| Presentation | Must engage readers so they enjoy reading; words are part of the art and the writer’s style is often essential | Must engage readers so they enjoy reading; journalists may develop reputations and publications develop readerships | So transparent that the reader is not aware of the act of reading; content matters more than expression |
| Motivation to read | Reading is optional, so the text must be interesting; sensationalism can be a value; readers self-select | Optional, so the text must interest to increase depth of read; sensationalism can be a value; readers self-select | Often required or assigned, though readers often self-select; the topic is of interest; sensationalism is incidental |
| Evaluation | How much readers enjoy it; popularity over time; literary critics | Enjoyment; financial success of the paper or magazine; critics judge the topics and coverage | How well readers understand, find, remember and use the information; usability testing |
The humanities tradition includes classical discourse forms—exposition, argument, description and narration—and rhetoric, whose principles Lang accepts as applicable to medical writing. Popular writing can combine fiction, news and practical instruction within one publication or programme.
Lang further characterises scientific-technical information as almost always factual or speculation grounded in facts, with errors, omissions or misdirection potentially carrying substantial personal, organisational or economic consequences. He therefore argues that medical writing need not tell stories or cultivate an engaging style, but should give readers the information they want. Van Nostran’s contrasting account treats narrative structure and style as integral to communicating scientific content.
School writing and specialised expertise
Lang identifies three misconceptions that can obscure medical-writing expertise.
- Content and its written presentation must always come from the same person.
- Writing is one general skill applied equally well in any setting.
- Writing well in school removes the need for further preparation in scientific writing.
The first arises from assignments assessed as a student’s own expression, whereas research conducted by one person can legitimately be described by another with stronger communication skills. Lang traces the second misconception through US instruction: Greek and Latin classics dominated grammar and composition until the mid-nineteenth century, followed after the Civil War by English literature amid anxiety about wider access to higher education. In this account, grammatical correctness became a marker of social class, good writing meant avoiding errors and teaching meant correcting them. Literature professors continued teaching composition, often reluctantly, and when composition separated from literature its instructors promoted it as a general skill serving other subjects. Most colleges no longer approached writing that way by 2015, but Lang considered the misconception persistent.
The third contrasts school assignments for a knowledgeable instructor with medical documents for readers who may know less about the topic and must use the information; success depends on what those readers can do. Lang explicitly exempts informed contemporary composition teaching from these misconceptions and accepts that ordinary school instruction is not designed to produce expert writers. His case for additional training rests on limited teaching time, instructors’ preparation and interest, assignments unlike later professional work and insufficient writing practice to develop expertise.
Common ground in education
Both positions value training in medical communication. Because writers may move between audiences and document types, diverse educational backgrounds and learning from several writing traditions can be useful. Expertise requires learning to write well and continuing to improve, with clear and concise communication an art to cultivate and refine.