1. Writing Technical Reports

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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?

6. 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.

7. 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”)

8. 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

10. 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...”

11. “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.”

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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.

16. 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)