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 Performance evaluation and job advancement usually depend more on advancement usually depend more on communication skills than on technical communication skills than on technical

skills.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 As you advance in your career, even more of your time is spent communicating rather of your time is spent communicating rather

than calculating.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. “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...”

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.

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)