Writing Technical Reports

How Engineers Spend Their Time: Early Career ______% Engineering: Designing, measuring, calculating, problem-solving ______% Communicating: Writing reports, letters, memos, proposals; giving presentations, talking to colleagues and bosses and customers and clients 25-50 50-75 Performance evaluation and job advancement usually depend more on communication skills than on technical skills.

How Engineers Spend Their Time: Later Career ______% Engineering: Problem Solving ______% Communicating: Writing reports, letters, memos, proposals; giving presentations, talking to colleagues and bosses and customers and clients 5-10 90-95 As you advance in your career, even more of your time is spent communicating rather than calculating.

Evaluation Exercise 1 Individually, read Example 1 and fill out the grading checklist In pairs, compare and discuss your ratings. Try to agree on the correct ratings. Revise the individual ratings to reflect the discussion. Identify opportunities for improvement.

Evaluation Exercise 2 Individually, read Example 2 and fill out the grading checklist. In pairs, compare and discuss your ratings. Try to agree on the correct ratings. Revise the individual ratings to reflect the discussion. Identify opportunities for improvement. What are the principal differences between the first and second summaries?

Tips on Technical Report Writing Don’t waste words. Don’t say obvious things. (“Pollution is a serious problem.”) Don’t say things your audience doesn’t need to know (long irrelevant explanations, detailed math). Use spell-check and grammar-check! It’s (contraction of it is) versus its (possessive pronoun). It’s a nice day. Put the CD back in its case. Affect (verb) versus effect (noun). Stress affects everyone differently. The effect of stress can be negative. Include proper citations of others’ work.

Tips on Technical Report Writing Use the full term, then put the acronym in parentheses Eliminate fluff (e.g. “Back in the year of 1973…”, “A man by the name of John Smith…”, “Basically…” (this is the written equivalent of “like”) Avoid vague generalizations. (e.g. “very expensive”, “very difficult”, “very high temperature”)

Tips on Technical Report Writing Proofread carefully. Look for missing words, extra words, and wrong (but correctly spelled) words like: due/do form/from their/there an/and where/were

Avoid sentence fragments. Every sentence must have a subject and verb Avoid sentence fragments. Every sentence must have a subject and verb. “Also to measure things about the tube.” doesn’t. Avoid choppy sentences, especially if they repeat words and phrases. Example: “This report is about permeation tubes. Permeation tubes are devices that...” “This report is about permeation tubes, devices that...”

“Since the gases are very toxic, care should be taken to avoid leaks.” Watch out for misplaced modifiers. Example: “Being poisonous, you have to be very careful about leaks.” “Since the gases are very toxic, care should be taken to avoid leaks.”

Dr. Lim’s pet peeves Cut and paste from the lab write-up “Data” used as singular Too many sig figs Missing units in graphs, tables, and sample calculations Axes or curves lacking labels Failure to refer to and explain tables and figures in the text

Dr. Lim’s pet peeves Font size too small in Excel spreadsheet Use of first person and present tense in procedure description No-No’s: Using someone else’s data Copying from a previous lab report

A good report: addresses intended audience provides introductions and conclusions for internal sections as well as the whole paper provides transitions between sections avoids “stream of consciousness” (rambling) writing looks professional in style and appearance recognizes that the document should be persuasive

How to Write Anything Free-write a rough draft. Just write—don’t proofread, edit, revise, correct, look back at all. Then Revise. Organize, check for introduction and conclusion for all sections, build in transitions, get rid of excess verbiage, spell-check and grammar-check. Revise again. Read it out loud. This can help you detect awkward phrases, missing commas, etc.

Experience has shown me I believe in miracles in every area of life except writing. Experience has shown me that there are no miracles in writing. The only thing that produces good writing is hard work. (Isaac Bashevis Singer)