My first source is a project proposal, the audience of this piece is most likely a group of investors or clients. Notice the very easy to read structure and language. Since the investors and clients most likely are not in the engineering field, the proposal must be very explicit and easy to follow. The headers break down the paper into separate sections so the reader could easily find the information they are looking for. Not only is the information easy to follow, it is also very concise, and straight to the point, so the potential client is not overwhelmed with all of the technical jargon which they are not versed in.
My second source is a technical report that an engineer wrote. This is a scholarly, peer-reviewed report that is not meant for the general public or someone outside the field. It is a very long piece of writing, that is most likely not meant to be read all at once. For this reason the format is very easy to follow. It is easy to find the desired information because of the explicit table of contents and frequent page breaks and title headings.
My final source is an example of a patent. If an engineer creates an idea or solution to a problem that he or she wants to own, they must know how to correctly format a patent. The patent must be very specific, first explaining the use of this idea/device, and then it must demonstrate, usually visually, how it works. Every little piece of the device is broken down and explained through a legend at the end of the visual.
The common conception of engineering is mainly focused on the mathematics and scientific portion of the field. Through my research and interview, i have learned this is not true. While getting the actual solution to a problem is ultimately the goal of the engineering process, the results mean nothing if they cannot be communicated properly. I learned through my interview process that writing could take up as much as half of an engineer’s professional time. Most of this writing is composed of things such as emails, journals, proposals, books, the list goes on. A majority of the task in these writings is communicating results in a clear, but efficient way. While an engineer does spend a lot of time writing scholarly pieces of work that is meant for professionals in their field, they also must learn to communicate to their clients, or the general public, without the use of all the technical jargon they and their peers learned through years of school. The professor who i interviewed said that this is the hardest part of being an engineer. For example, a few years back when the river flooded and left an immense amount of damage to our campus, a group of civil engineers decided to write a book explaining what happen. They had to explain concepts such as conservation of momentum-or entire fields of physics like fluid dynamics-in a way that anyone without prior knowledge in the field could understand. They also had to explain these things in an efficient manner. Meaning they could not go on explaining entire textbooks worth of information to make sense of one chapter of the book. In conclusion, the nature of writing in engineering mainly involves the communication of results to a wide variety of audiences. From being very explicit, like when writing a proposal to a group of investors, or explaining a new innovation in a scholarly journal which will most likely only be read by peers, writing is a vital skill of any effective engineer.
No comments:
Post a Comment