Product Description

A Guide to Writing as an Engineer provides a brief, easy to use guide to the technical writing issues critical to today’s engineering professionals. Specifically constructed with the needs of engineers in mind, this text offers an "engineering-approach" to technical writing and features practical and relevant examples from today’s industry. This book addresses important writing concepts that apply to professional engineering communication. It deals with the content, organization, format, and style of specific kinds of engineering writing such as reports, business letters, office memoranda, and e-mail. It also covers oral presentations and details how to find engineering information, both in the traditional ways and on the Internet.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #685378 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From the Publisher
With a combined experience of 30 years teaching and working in the industry, the authors deliver a practical book devoted to the writing concerns of engineers and those planning to enter the profession. They not only address important writing concepts which apply to professional engineering communication but also deal with the content, organization, format, and style of specific types of engineering composition such as reports, business letters, office memoranda, and e-mail. Also covers oral presentations and how to find engineering information in traditional ways and on the Internet.

From the Back Cover
Improve the signal-to-noise ratio in your writing!

You’ll need more than just technical prowess to succeed as a professional engineer; you’ll need to be an effective communicator.

Specifically written to address the needs of engineers, this brief, easy-to-use guide gives you an efficient and direct way to improve your writing and speaking skills. The authors focus on those writing activities that engineers perform on a daily basis, such as reports, business letters, office memoranda, and e-mail, as well as oral presentations.

Now updated to reflect rapid changes in how we communicate, this Second Edition covers writing as part of a project team, plagiarism and ethics, email effectiveness and privacy, presentations using PowerPoint, and applying for jobs using the internet.

With this book, you’ll learn how to:

• Reduce the “noise” in your writing, by eliminating grammatical errors, typos, poor organization, and fuzzy thinking.
• Correctly document information taken from other sources.
• Increase your chances of landing the job you want.
• Construct clear and effective graphics.
• Avoid ethical pitfalls.

About the Author
David Beer is professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas Austin.

David McMurray is a technical writer from industry, most recently with IBM.  This combination of academic and industry perspective gives this book its broad perspective covering all aspects of writing, from academic research to effective corporate communication.

Customer Reviews

Exactly what the title says
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.

Good for engineers, terrible for technical writing instructors
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.

Useful as a quick reference
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.