Proceeding from the idea that scientific and technical register is related to the function of scientific and technical texts, this article aims to show that variant ways of presenting and sequencing information are register phenomena that reflect cross-culturally different author-reader relationships. After discussing the general notion of register, this paper describes differing arrangements of ‘given’ information to ‘new’ information with respect to differing author-reader relationships and conventions. Then, an attempt is made to establish and classify criteria for describing discourse phenomena in ST register by examining cross-cultural variation in “given’-‘new’ contracts between author and reader. The relevance of these differences as potential translation problems is shown on the basis of English-German examples, taken largely from the experience of co-translating Samuelson & Nordhaus, Economics into German. This article is thus limited to English written ST register in the field of economics and the discussion of possible German equivalents.