Writing Technical Reports

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Writing Technical Reports

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How Engineers Spend Their Time Early Career
25-50

• ______ Engineering Designing, measuring,
  calculating, problem-solving
• ______ Communicating Writing reports,
  letters, memos, proposals giving presentations,
  talking to colleagues and bosses and customers
  and clients

50-75
Performance evaluation and job advancement
usually depend more on communication skills than
on technical skills.
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How Engineers Spend Their Time Later Career
5-10

• ______ Engineering Problem Solving
• ______ Communicating Writing reports,
  letters, memos, proposals giving presentations,
  talking to colleagues and bosses and customers
  and clients

90-95
As you advance in your career, even more of your
time is spent communicating rather than
calculating.
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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.

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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?

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Tips on Technical Report Writing

• Dont waste words. Dont say obvious things.
  (Pollution is a serious problem.) Dont say
  things your audience doesnt need to know (long
  irrelevant explanations, detailed math).
• Use spell-check and grammar-check!
• Its (contraction of it is) versus its
  (possessive pronoun). Its 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.

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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)

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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

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• Avoid sentence fragments. Every sentence must
  have a subject and verb. Also to measure things
  about the tube. doesnt.
• 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...
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• 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.
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Dr. Lims 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

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Dr. Lims pet peeves

• Font size too small in Excel spreadsheet
• Use of first person and present tense in
  procedure description
• No-Nos
• Using someone elses data
• Copying from a previous lab report

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• 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

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How to Write Anything

• Free-write a rough draft. Just writedont
  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.

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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)