Why you should pay attention in Tech. Comm.

1
Why you should pay attention in Tech. Comm.

• Dr. Toni Logar
• October 3, 2007

2
The Program

• Introduction
• Writing
• The framework
• The audience
• The story
• My guidelines
• A word on presenting
• Conclusion

3
Introduction

• Life isnt fair

4
Introduction

• Can you solve 2x 3 1?
• Do you think people who cant are stupid?

5
Introduction

• If someone walked up to you and said My buddies
  and me was going to Safeway when we was struck by
  an idea of something funner to do.
• Would you think someone who said this was stupid?

6
Introduction

• I write a lot
• Im a technical writer, not a creative writer
• Im dull
• Mathematically gifted pattern matcher
• Pattern matcher and creative dont usually come
  in the same box
• I write algorithmically

7
Introduction

• How I prepared this talk
• Phase Space Analysis of Friction Stir Welding
  Quality
• - Did every one of these things while I was
  writing

8
Introduction

• The big lie If you build a better mousetrap,
  the world will beat a path to your door
• Lots of miserable mousetraps get sold
• Lots of brilliant ideas are buried because the
  inventor couldnt make people see the benefit
• A marketplace of competing ideas

9
Introduction

• You must learn to sell

10
Introduction

• You sell your ideas by presenting them
• That means you must be able to
• write well
• speak well

11
Introduction

• Science and engineering faculty as a group do you
  a disservice
• You dont know how lucky you are

12
Writing

• Define a framework
• Know your audience
• Tell a story

13
Writing The Framework

• Look at the intended publication venue
• Ex IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks
• Pay attention to length
• Citation styles, including equations
• Picture limitations
• Organization can make or break a paper

14
Writing The Audience

• Level of explanation
• Not all technical people know all technical
  topics

15
Writing The Story

• This is critical
• The point of the story must be clear by the end
  of the paper
• Need to set the stage
• Pace revelations
• Make sure the conclusion logically follows from
  the information you have already given

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Writing My Guidelines

• Write a rough draft to get the ideas down
• Golden rule If the reader cant reproduce your
  results, you have failed.
• Must provide all experimental data and settings
• Equation argument (insert vs. rederive)
• Publishing is for peer review as well as
  dissemination of knowledge

17
Writing My Guidelines

• Look at word choices
• This network trains better than that others we
  looked at Subjective and weak
• This network implements a revolutionary training
  approach Subjective and over the top
• This technique has been shown to reduce training
  times by 30 Objective, quantitative,
  non-judgmental (the reader draws the conclusion.

18
Writing My Guidelines

• Remove unnecessary words
• This is a really good, fast network training
  algorithm What does really do for you?
• This is a good, fast network training algorithm
  What does good tell you? What does fast tell
  you?
• This network training algorithm is faster than
  the other approaches surveyed in this work
• This algorithm will train a network in O(n) time
  while back propagation required O(n log n)

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Writing My Guidelines

• Flow is important
• Look for repeated or over-used words
• Look at sentence length
• Look at sentence structure
• Avoid words that look/sound the same instigated,
  intimated. Use clearly different words so the
  reader wont be confused. (instigated, hinted) or
  Technical readers dont read every word
• Always write in the 3rd person. And never, never
  I.

20
Writing My Guidelines

• Use pictures
• Must be clear in black and white
• Label axes
• Check your scale for distortion
• Read it out loud to yourself.
• Write a paper like a proof. Each sentence must
  clearly follow from the one before it.

21
Writing My Guidelines

• Avoid overstatement. You need to be upbeat
  enough to sell it but technical people are
  suspicious of the over-sell
• Seek professional help
• Another technical person should proof-read
• If you are lucky enough to have one, a
  professional writer should critique your style
  and grammar.
• And be appreciative when you get help!

22
A word about presenting your paper

• Some things I learned the hard way at
  international conferences
• Americans talk too fast
• Americans slur words together and dont pronounce
  all the letters.
• wouldja gimme
• Tech Comm. teaches bullets and buzzwords for
  slides wont work in this setting. Pictures,
  pictures, pictures

23
Presenting your paper

• The rest of the world is on the metric system
• Dont forget graphs
• US 1,234.56 Europe 1.234,56
• Humor doesnt translate
• The meaning of color is culturally dependent

24
Conclusion

• Another inconvenient truth
• Dr. Sneller cant teach you to write any more
  than I can teach you to code.

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Conclusion

• What can you do?
• Treat your technical communications/humanities/soc
  ial science courses with respect
• Read, read, read, and read
• Observe and imitate
• Practice