Using Engineers' Characteristics to Improve Report Writing Instruction

Courses in basic writing skills tend to be ineffective in increasing professional engineers' competency in writing technical documentation. The material in many such courses often does not meet the expectations of the participants or their organizations because it relies on simplistic maxims and rote methodologies common in report writing textbooks. Such instruction takes scant account of the needs and, more importantly, the specific personal and professional characteristics of engineers. This paper describes methods of report writing instruction that help engineers become more aware of the need to use techniques for the transfer of information by the writer and its extraction by the reader. The material is based on the author's experiences in running over 60 such workshops. Strategies are described that specifically overcome the following perceptions: (1) That the skills needed to write competent technical documentation are no more than those used in writing a discursive essay; (2) that readers should extract information in a way that is determined by the writer, and not in the way in which they themselves read a document; and (3) that complex words and constructions, and a bulky report are necessary indicators of value to management and the client.