"What Technical Communicators Can Learn from Comics"

This was a cool article. It is very interesting to think about the rhetorical potential of comics, especially their ability to relay a lot of information in fairly short order. The visual aspect of comics helps too, as author Opsteegh writes, by getting people to remember information.

But in thinking about the article's central point -- that comics can be used to help technical writers, especially in creating how-to manuals like that of the army's M16A rifle or Google's new Chrome internet browser -- I believe a larger issue becomes revealed.

In the last line of the article, Opsteegh ends with what was perhaps meant to be an uplifting comment on the future of comic-technical partnership: "as the functional literacy of Americans falls lower and lower, technical communicators will see more and more use for comic-book-style manuals."

I find it interesting that the author uses the ever-diminishing literacy rate of Americans as a send-off point for his readers. It paints a picture of technical writing, especially with the help of comics, as a way to profit off an uneducated population. Seems to me that before we write technical manuals attempting to help people, maybe we should first help them learn how to read.