ABSTRACT

The people of the Ancient Near East, inventors of writing, fully understood that providing instructions was a highly persuasive and reader-centric act that required the writer to make specific choices – the same choices that we still make today. In fact, when we write instructions and teach others to write instructions, we are practicing principles developed by the Mesopotamians. In this paper, I analyze excerpts from a technical manual and two letters to make my argument.

中文翻译：

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古代美索不达米亚技术手册和信件的艺术：教学写作的起源

摘要

古代近东的人们，文字的发明者，完全明白提供指导是一种极具说服力和以读者为中心的行为，需要作者做出具体的选择——我们今天仍然做出同样的选择。事实上，当我们写指令并教别人写指令时，我们正在实践美索不达米亚人制定的原则。在本文中，我分析了一份技术手册和两封信的节选来提出我的论点。