Customer Reviews

The Essence of Technical Communication for Engineers: Writing, Presentation, and Meeting Skills

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In this very little book (less than 200 pages), you'll find a treatment of the too often neglected aspect of effective communication: mental and psychological preparation. It discusses many issues that are responsible for ineffective communication.

The first part deals with written documents, part II with formal presentations, part III with informal discussions, part IV about cross-culture communication. Each part tackles the three important aspects of communication: planning, building the right attitude, and finally producing. Communication requires that one knows what one wants to communicate and how to do it. This book will change your way of thinking about effective communication.

Insightful, humorous, introspective, this little book is nothing less than an inviting series of conversations about what it takes to be an interesting, engaging writer and speaker. I know first-hand how tough that is for many in engineering, and I'm sure this lovely little collection of practical advice is genuinely helpful. It's refreshing to read as well as grounded in the reality of what engineers must deliver on the job.

Hirsch does a commendable job of boiling down the primary ideas for writing, presentation and meeting skills into a quick read. Many of the practices that we once learned, but have long forgotten (or ignored) are re-iterated here. By dividing into sections, you can quickly jump to where you want to focus (writing, speaking, meeting) There is some carryover from each chapter though, so reading once through is recommended