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To date, there have been very few studies on how editors convince engineer writers to accept their proposed revisions. To fill this gap in the literature, this thesis offers an in-depth style analysis of six proposals in order to determine what technical editors do when they edit engineering proposals and how they create working relationships with engineers. In particular, I will concentrate on how two editors in Clemson University s College of Engineering and Science argue for changes and create stylistic relationships and the interrelationship between argument and style by querying writers through the Comment function in Microsoft Word. The two analyses that I will complete are based on the theories of Stephen Toulmin et al. on argumentation and Walker Gibson on style. Toulmin et al. s theory will enable me to analyze how the editors argue for revisionary changes in each of the technical proposals, whereas Gibson s theory will enable me to determine how editors create relationships with authors through the language they use in the comment box. The findings revealed from this thesis provide practical knowledge to technical editing students and to working technical editors.

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Ali N. Ferguson has a BA in English from Penn State University, earning highest distinction. She then received her MA in Professional Communication with an emphasis in Technical Writing and Editing from Clemson University, earning summa cum laude. After graduating from Clemson, Ali founded her own freelance editing company, Purple Ink Editing.

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