Writing Center Coordinator

I took a course in Technical and Professional Communication. The professor showed us the memo that failed to prevent the 3 Mile Island nuclear accident. It was a very technical memo with lots of jargon, and acronyms. No sense of alarm was conveyed in the memo and it was clear to all of in the class that had this memo been written better, it could have prevented a major accident.

Another document this professor showed us was a will that identified the recipients of a great sum of money. In the part that listed the names of the recipients, the names were all separated by commas except the last two names. It turns out that those individuals had to split the amount of money willed to them. The professor used this example to illustrate the importance of punctuation.

I'm convinced that communication skills are vital for success in most fields.

I'm an engineer and scientist by training and I heard a story as a senior in college that has stuck with me through my 25+ year career as a successful engineer and entreprenuer. The Dale Carnegie institute, which I'm sure you have all heard about, did a study about what contributes to the success of people in technical careers. The somewhat surprising conclusion was that 87% of a person's success in a technology career depends on his/her ability to communicate and work with others. I couldn't agree with this more and if you think about it, it does make sense. It doesn't matter how smart you are or what good work you do, if you can't communicate with others then you are isolated, you will be limited by what you can do by yourself and you will not get the credit you deserve. The Dale Carnegie book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" goes into this in more depth and I think it is well worth reading.

I couldn't agree more. Being able to communicate your ideas and intentions to others is vital. I believe that a major contributor to the problem of poor communication skills is the current education system and in particular the teaching of English. For some time now there has been little attention paid to grammar, punctuation and spelling and too much to analyzing literature like "The Great Gatsby". The way an alcoholic author saw the world through bloodshot eyes can have little effect on how you try and describe the operational constraints of a particular piece of technology.

One argument is that reading the works of writers like Shakespeare will teach you how to write. Unfortunately Shakespeare's works are in Middle English, a language that is no longer used. Could you imagine Shakespeare trying to describe the technical problems behind the use of parallel processing in super computers.

As we have seen in an earlier post errors in punctuation and grammar can have an enormous effect on the eventual interpretation of a document. The use of out dated language just complicates things and causes the reader to either not get the primary meaning or to simply forget what they have read..

My personal belief is that we need to initially pay more attention to teaching the structure of the English language then break it up into elective subjects like literary studies, technical writing, poetry, drama etc. that can be chosen according to a particular student's requirements.

Advise?

Don't become an engineer, of any kind. Neither become a technical writer. This fields will always find ways to punish a good writer.

Excellent discussions, but I wanted to directly answer the group of engineering students with a big fat YES and give them a why.

I've been an aerospace engineer for 11+ years now, and I learned very quickly my writing classes in college were not as helpful to what I was doing. In the job I do, and I imagine most engineers, I write a lot of instructions to artisans/mechanics and end users on how to do various things (installations, repairs, modifications, update a manual). As an engineer, you not only need to understand the problem and understand the fix, you have to be able to communicate it to those who are actually going to implement the fix. This can be a very big challenge for us, as most engineers are math-oriented, not English-oriented. We need to be able to write to our audience, whether you're telling a 17-year-old wrench-turner how to implement your complicated repair, or writing a presentation to a high-level supervisor about why your design is necessary (especially when you know they don't want to hear it).

TAKE A TECHNICAL WRITING CLASS. Or more, even.

We as engineers design the fixes - we very rarely actually implement them. We need to be able to communicate our intentions. Writing is a challenge for most of us, and I feel was greatly understated at my college. I think this is sort of analogous to not teaching new doctor's good bed-side manners and patient communication skills.

Them's my two cents!

:) Being an engineer is a good excuse here for not knowing the grammar... what a sad state.... Some of my engineering professors don't even know how to construct a good English sentences... I agree... good writing communication skills is very important. I'm still honing my skills on it.... I still have a hard time of when to use some participles like .... in for of.... in, at or on for dates... Also I'm still a green horn when to use the correct tenses, the progressive and a lot more... I can get a good score when it comes to English exams but when I try to write my own blogs or my own book... huh... they were really tough... I still need a good editor for it

YES, writing skills are essential.

Regardless of the field of engineering you work in, you have to write daily, weekly, and monthly progress report. Budget and project cost estimate reports that need our jargon translated for the non-technically oriented (ie. bean counters) who do not understand the cost benefit of safety factors and abating litigation.

Writing in engineering is unavoidable. Designing and manufacturing, requires the creation of specifications and clarifications of RFI's. Construction management, requires change orders and tactfully stating how much of an idiot the contractor is for compromising OSHA safety regulations to make more money.

Again, YES writing is important.

...Excuse my writing, as I'm still honing my skills.

I think that engineers and technologists of all sorts need better writing skills than they usually have. As potential engineers, your students need specialized courses in developing and writing procedures, in structuring data for observation and recording, and in briefly and accurately describing things and situations. Their goal should be to communicate accurately, clearly, and as simply as possible.

To achieve this they need a reasonable grasp of standard spelling, the specialized vocabulary of their specific fileds, grammar, and plenty of practice with various types of engineering documents (lab reports, inspection reports, installation, inspection and repair procedures, etc.) and with the language as a whole.

It used to be all engineers learned a completely legible all-capitals block printing style in their bassic drafting classes, and usually carried it into the work world with them. Since CAD and keyboards, this is no longer true. Sigh... So your students will also need legible handwriting, as well as the ability to keyboard, especially if they're making notes or reports on a construction (or demolition) job site.

For reference, I've been a licensed PE for 22 years now, am a published (and paid) author of fiction and non-fiction, designed ads and wrote ad copy for 2 of my last 3 jobs, and have developed several in-house continuing-education courses for engineers and designers.

Anna

Assume that the decision makers for whom you work are well educated and literate, further assume that the management folks can read and comprehend written language (a stretch in some cases). Then it follows that any proposal one issues needs to be clear, concise and succinct to impress/express the arguments of the proposal such that those who need to understand it can, with no mistake or uncertainty. It does no good for anyone to ramble in instant message speak when a subject must be clearly understood. Furthermore, improper use of written language labels the user as poorly educated, a person incapable of sophisticated or profound thought and unlikely to be taken seriously during "important" discussion or work.

I think what you need to find an example of bad technical writing and then re-write it to demonstrate the effect. Unfortunately I havn't got and example of bad writing that I can give you. That doesn't mean I havn't seen one I just can't give it to you for confidentiality reasons.

A simple but effective example however it the acronym AMD which stands for Air Movement Device. I would like to find this goose and ask him why he decided to use the three letter acronym AMD to replace the three letter word Fan.