Customer Reviews

A Guide to Writing as an Engineer

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is exactly a guide to the types of writing engineers have to do, put in terms engineers understand.

The authors present analogies that help engineers understand "soft" topics like revising for clarity. For example, they describe poor writing as having a lot of "noise" in the "signal", and then describe specific strategies for reducing noise.

They describe most of the common types of documents that engineers write, such as reports, specifications, proposals, and even business letters and email messages. They describe the format and typical contents for each type of document, while also noting what *not* to worry about. For example "Don't get hung up on the names of reports. Sorry, there is no ANSI standards committee on the proper names, contents, and formats of reports."

This is an excellent book for any engineer who has to write on the job, which is to say, any engineer.

This handbook provides a decent, quick-and-dirty introduction to technical communication for engineers . It does a good job of dealing with letters and oral presentations (though it does not discuss how to create a good slideshow--just the actual presenting itself). For engineers, then, I give this book three stars.

For technical writing instructors like myself, however, it is almost worthless, and deserves one star.

The main problems which I have with this book include:
* A lack of example documents;
* Some very bland, colorless formatting (though this is better, I suppose, than the unnecessary pyrothechnics to be found, for example, in the Lannon book);
* Virtually nothing is provided for technical writing students who are not themselves going into engineering;
* The advice provided by this book on most topics is extremely minimal. For example, there is a mere four pages on tables, with most formatting advice appearing as a bulleted list with no illustrative examples.

If you are an engineer who wants a cheap and simple introduction to some basic documents, this book will fill the bill--barely. If you are looking for a technical writing textbook to teach with, however, or if you will be writing a wide variety of sophisticated engineering documents and presentations for demanding audiences, then this is not the book for you. For such people, I would instead suggest the 8th edition of Mike Markel's Technical Communication. Alternately, one could buy this book ALONG WITH Alred, Brusaw, and Oliu's Handbook of Technical Writing so as to get fuller writing advice, a large number of sample documents, and so on.

Either way, this book does not impress.

This book does a good job of focusing on the projects (e.g., reports, memos, proposals, presentations) that engineers are commonly asked to write. It also covers the most common writing mistakes made by engineers (e.g., passive voice). If you need a quick, short answer for a specific task, this book will likely be useful. But it will not provide in-depth training on how to become a better writer. I was also disappointed that it did not address how to work effectively with professional writers or how to provide useful input & reviews - both are common activities for engineers.

I have found this title as a succinct, jargon-free, no nonsense guide to writing engineering documents/reports of any length. It contains almost everything a serious and mature engineering writer needs to know about communicating his/her work.

I have used it as a textbook in 499: Senior Project, and, as a guide, in editing many articles and dissertations while working as a WRITING INSTRUCTOR in the College of Engineering at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah.

If you are writing an engineering report, it provides you excellent directions about how to write each chapter or section of the report: cover and label, page numbering, abstract, table of contents, list of figures/tables, introduction, body of the report, conclusions, appendixes, documentation, bibliography/references, and so on. It has a separate chapter on how to construct tables and graphics for the report. In addition, it has chapters on how to research, how do an oral presentation, how to write a resume, documentation and ethics, etc.

However, I have found some shortcomings of this writing guide. Any serious researcher would be looking for directions for writing two major chapters/components of a senior project, thesis or a journal article to be published -- (1) literature review and (2) methods/materials components. This title does not cover literature review adequately. Further, procedure/methods/materials section, so vitally important for a research report, is missing.

M. Solaiman Ali, Ph.D. (Indiana)
Writing Instructor
College of Engineering
King Abdulaziz University
P.O. Box: 80379
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia 21589
E-mail: m.s.ali.2009@gmail.com

Traditionally, technical writing is the least favored topic for engineers. This nice, concise book is a great guide for those of us who have a hard time remembering the rules and understanding how to communicate effectively.

I hate writing!!!! I'll do numbers all day, but no writing!! This book helped me get an A in Communication for Engineers

I was required to buy this book for my Technical Writing class but I was pleasantly surprised at how useful it was. I scored higher grades on the technical papers I wrote for my engineering classes because I learned the proper format and styles that you need to focus on. The little things...

There were two required textbooks for my technical writing class, and this was the second, cheaper of the two. I am afraid to say this book went totally unused.

The information in the book is important, but the internet provides all the information covered in this book as well as being more current.

This is a guurrreaat book if your an engineering student! If your like me and hate writing this will help you to at least get your formatting right for the vast amount of reports you're going to have to write in school and in an internship, co-op, or job. In my opinion the web has enough resources for the average person to utilize to write a correctly formatted report but nothing beats a book when it comes to quick, concise tips.

Any engineering student, or even current engineers, should invest the money to own a copy of this book. It has a concise list of the proper ways to format reports, papers, publications, articles, etc, as well as rules for the correct way to reference sources, edit bibliographies, and include tables, figures diagrams. Basically a one stop source for any engineering documentation guidelines.

Definitely a work of genius!