Doris Ross Dant — Associate Teaching Professor
Editing

Contact Information

Office: 4069 JFSB

Phone: 422-4707

Email: doris_dant@byu.edu

Semester Schedule: 12-12:50pm MWF

Biography:

Doris Dant's current teaching assignments are technical writing and editing. She has also taught classes and seminars on her specialities in ethics, instructional writing (particularly user documentation), applications and resumes, and document design. Her teaching materials in these areas have been widely distributed, usually without her name, and many of her students are currently working as technical writers. One of her latest training projects was assisting two students to capture in hypertext her expertise with resumes. Her theoretical knowledge is enriched by her experience with technical writing and editing heuristics gained by consulting in the software and nuclear power industries. While consulting, she has written and edited numerous publications. Currently she is consulting on documentation for researchers wishing to use WordCruncher for analyzing large texts. From her past experience as the faculty writing specialist associated with the Writing Center and as the founder of the graduate writing program, Dant learned the power of one-on-one tutorials. Such tutorials are an integral part of all of her classes. Her classes also have a very practical, hands-on orientation. These approaches even characterize the training she provides editing interns at <i>BYU Studies, </i>where she is executive editor, both editing the journal and occasionally writing. Currently she is lead editor for a book of John S. Hams's poetry and a book on the experiences of Mormons who lived in the German Democratic Republic. Dant's other interests are in psychology and critical discourse analysis, where she focuses on questions of agency and bias.