This paper discusses some of the main reasons for the weakness of much technical writing. It suggests that in teaching college-level students in science and engineering curricula the writing teacher should focus mainly on those weak areas, many of which are neglected in high school English courses or in traditional freshman English. If scientific and technical writers can be taught to make a rigorous intellectual analysis of their writing and can be steered away from simplistic and simple-minded formulas they will come to have enough respect for writing as an intellectual discipline that they can be motivated to bring about actual improvement in their written work.

be described as "the way you write," rather than as "proper words in proper places" or "the dress of thoughts," then their thesis is that your style should be such that the reader will do with your report, or because of your report, what you would have him do.Their comments on style and their own easy familiar way with words combine to make Technical Writing a good example as well as a collection of precepts.details are given adequate recognition.Some of the Suggestions for Writing are comprehensive and some specific; some of the Sentences for Revision involve simple matters, others present challenges.Worthy of note is the excellent treat ment, in all Sections, of the structural and logical aspects of planning a tech

Security classification in science and technology has aroused strong feelings, but there is little objective information about its effects. This paper presents the opposing, and highly subjective, points of view; summarizes objective studies of information flow; and reports an investigation of the flow of restricted and unrestricted information in a large research-and-development laboratory. The investigation showed that security classifications had little effect on the laboratory's procedure and output; however, additional research is indicated. Altogether this paper demonstrates the feasibility of obtaining empirical data on the effects of security classification on technical communication-data that are much needed, in view of the ongoing controversy.

Holt, Rinehart and Winston have recently published two works on technical communication. Both of these are third editions of text-books which give chapter-end suggestions for writing-practice. As the two volumes cover about the same material, effort will be made here to point out dissimilarities in content, organization, and tone.

Professors emeritii from both engineering and the humanities can usefully serve as External Examiners to determine the student's final grade in a scientific and technical communication course.

Research in communication is continually underway in universities and colleges. This paper presents one project carried out in the stylistics of technical writing. A number of technical articles were examined; they ranged from report writing to professional and trade publications. The conclusions, while not definite, do shed some light on the difference between technical and nontechnical writing.

During the past 30 years the technical report has developed into an important primary medium of communication in science and technology, to the extent that it is sometimes seen as a threat to primary journal publication. At the same time the (unclassified) report has been accused of not meeting the same standards of authority, scientific rigor, and retrievability as conventional journal publication. Report publication is reviewed in the light of standards commonly accepted for journal publication, and the inherent characteristics of technical reports are assessed. It is concluded that both reports and scientific journals have distinct roles to play in the communication of scientific and technical information, and that a cost-effective system will make full use of the strengths of both.

Effective technical writing is of major importance in today's scientific and technical society. Unfortunately, many of today's students are turned off by those forms of technical writing found in the classroom. A key factor contributing to this attitude may be the inability of today's authors to stimulate reader interest. The article touches upon the way in which the student approaches technical literature, and the way in which today's author may attract his reader's attention to the subject presented. Various devices utilized in today's technical literature are also discussed in conjunction with the stimulation of reader interest.

When is a handbook not a handbook? One answer to this paraphrased riddle might be, “When it is the most complete and sophisticated technical writing guide ever published.” The Jordan-Kleinman-Shimberg Handbook of Technical Writing Practices seems very well described by these words on its dust-jacket. A joint effort of Wiley-Interscience and the Society for Technical Communication, this work is a tour de force in the most complimentary sense of the phrase.

Students are selected by a diagnostic essay. They begin simply, by completing job application forms, personal resumes, and letters of application, tasks which require concise expression of facts, which reveal much about the students' backgrounds, and which they must use to get a job. Then they move to the daily writing problems an engineer faces. In every class they also practice exercises that correct the many errors caused by the change from their native language into English.

Educators' experiments in cassette critiquing of college student papers have met with considerable success. After discussing the potential advantages, the Department of English at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado, conducted a pilot program of cassette critiquing during the 1971 Fall Semester in the English 430, Technical Writing, course. Two course-wide surveys were made during the program to determine 376 students' reactions to cassette critiques as compared with conventional critiquing (written comments, handbook cryptographics in the margins, student-instructor conferences, and in-class discussions) methods.

Among the many text-books, guide-books, case-books, and hand-books now available on technical writing, three small and unpretentious volumes deserve particular attention. All three are instructive, persuasive, and pleasant. One is an old friend, long known as the little book; the other two, very much younger, are works of high quality also:

The use of subjective testing as the only method for testing writing ability is questioned in this paper. Even a collaboration between engineers and specialists in English gives highly debatable results. The author of this paper, a well known British educator, has been experimenting with a type of objective testing. He invites readers to take one of his tests and to discuss the results with him.

This paper makes a strong case for a comprehensive listing of technical writing publications. An introduction to the main thesis establishes the importance of technical writing both academically and professionally. A strong bibliography would provide a mine of information for both teachers and technical writers. The author would welcome a response on the subject, including references to information for citation.

In scientific and technical communication, intelligibility is primarily a cultural problem, to which carefully formulated generalizations, rather than streams of data, are the only solution. Preoccupation with simplicity, or clarity, or `correctness' is a poor substitute for a careful consideration of what the reader can and cannot be expected to understand. The writer who will overcome his prejudices against generalization in order to convey the concepts which his reader does not share with him should be able to communicate more effectively at three levels: (1) to his fellow specialists, (2) to specialists in other fields, and (3) to concerned laymen.

Papers and correspondence may be submitted on any topic relating to technical communication.Topics may range from the preparation of reports and papers for publication to oral presentations, graphic displays, conduct of meetings, communications m f iji<* £r;*r>hic ftrtv publications production, management, information retrieval, and communication psychology.Treatment may be tutorial, documentai, review, descriptive, or theoretical.Papers may be directed primarily to

The rhetorical and syntactic interfaces between technical communicators and readers are being affected by cost-related pressures. The resulting modification of the technical communicator's role will benefit or harm engineering and technical communication according to the developing understanding of the technical communicator. In business and in education the changing professional rationale should consider both the nature of the work and the professional personality of the technical communicator. This is because the success of an engineering enterprise depends on the cooperation and interaction of administrators, engineers, and technical communicators, and because those who are being channeled into technical writing and illustrating are being increasingly selected by educators. As the bridge between the engineer and the user, the professional personality of the technical communicator fulfills two requirements, the technical and the artistic; technical communicators typically remain suspended between technology and art.

Editing and publishing specialized periodicals in a language other than English poses some problems in the world of scientific and technical communication. This article reviews how a major French scientific monthly has addressed itself to the problem, and how it deals with a lack of specialized manpower in the field.

This paper presents a general view of communication, and urges those who write on technical subjects to follow the `rules' in existing books of instruction. Expediency and custom are the basis of these most acceptable ways for presenting written and spoken messages of many kinds. Such suggestions can be very helpful for writers who want to communicate technical matters successfully. By following the recommendations given in guides like the seven listed in this paper, the author of a technical article is likely to please those who think form and correctness are important, to impress those who think nothing is important, and to be understood by all.

Technical writing means many things to many people. The instructive literature for the field generally either emphasizes that portion of the field conforming to the author's interpretation or attempts to cover the entire field with general concepts and admonitions. Rarely does a book appear that covers as much, as clearly, and in as practical a manner as Technically — Write! by R. S. Blicq. Mr. Blicq is Head of the Industrial and Technology Communication Department at Red River Community College, in Winnepeg, Canada. He obviously has had extensive experience teaching technical communications and, in this text book, he speaks familiarly at the undergraduate level. More than this, his presentation holds a warmth and intimacy that is uncharacteristic of instructional literature: the professor is speaking to you in his classroom. Although the physical scientist and even the graduate engineer may tend to view the style as being below his level of sophistication, Mr. Blicq has packed almost every principle of clear technical exposition on the widest variety of communications in this 380-odd page book, along with “problems” in the form of work assignments at the end of each chapter. Even for the professional communicator, this book holds much of value as a reference when he is faced with an assignment in a portion of the field outside of his specialty.

When engineers and scientists think about communicating technical information to others, they seldom think about the psychology involved in the transfer of that information. They reason that if the subject is technical, the conclusions reached by the scientific method, and the technical language accurate, then there can be no lack of communication. But they are misunderstood: conclusions are misinterpreted, data is misused, and language is incomprehensible. How can the communication fail when they work only with the truth of data obtained in a research laboratory? Communication, like engineering and science, is both a craft and an art It is the disciplined exercise of the mind and an intuitive sense of proportion. It is requires the objectivity of a detached view of the subject matter and the subjectivity of an involvement with the design of the final product.

Psychophysics, in this paper, is used in its literal sense: the effect of physical processes upon the mental processes of an organism. Recent studies show that temperature fluctuations of the human body have a 24-hour periodicity that is reflected in the activity of organs and functions of the body, awake and asleep. The rise and fall of such activity is phased differently for different Individuals. It may become necessary to determine the most receptive and responsive time for each individual to engage in communicating, as well as other significant activities.

JPVJR Group's Conference on the Psychology of Technical Communications, held in Philadelphia this past February, served to dramatically display the widening scope of professional communications.Just as the many disciplines of science and engineering are merging to an extent where boundaries are obscured, so have the subdivisions of communications overlapped to a point where distinctions become very difficult.John Phillips, now our President, organized the Conference into its three major sessions: Communications among Engineers and Scientists.Communications to Engineers and Scientists, and Communications from Engineers and Scientists.The list of speakers included, in addition to professional communicators who specialize in the support and education of t(*rYin\rci\ nprcnnnp] workers in the field nf sociology, nsv-

THE EXISTENCE and makeup of this group seems to challenge a statement made recently by Derek de Solla Price. As many of you may know, Derek Price is Avalon Professor of the History of Science at Yale, and he has done considerable work in the how and why of scientific communication, especially as regards the literature. After a preliminary analysis of the use of scientific and technical journals, Price concluded that scientists write but don't read, while engineers read but don't write. That's an oversimplification, no doubt, but I suspect there may be more than a mere grain of truth in it. If there is, I'm obviously left with the problem of determining what an IEEE “Group on Professional Communication” is all about. One way of doing that was to try and discover what engineering journals are all about Setting out to do that, I realized that I'd have to first come to some acceptable definition of “engineer.” That's where I got stuck. Perhaps my difficulty with that definition has its roots in some of the same problems which suggested to the IEEE that a two-day conference on the “Psychology of Technical Communications” might be a good and useful thing.

In his paper, “Motivating Engineering Students to Publish,” Dr. Herman A. Estrin describes the experiences that he has had in teaching engineering students to write, and particularly to write publishable material. This professional approach to writing has paid off, as Mr. Millard's article demonstrates.

Esso Production Research Company has found that video tape is an effective means of conducting technical training and transferring technology. Use of video tape reduces the cost of conducting technical schools. Engineers and scientists using video tape information seem to retain it about as well as they do when they get it by other means (live schools, technical reports). Limited results indicate that video-taped technical reports convey information about as well as do written technical reports. Some users prefer audio-tape cassettes and recorders for automatic audio synchronization with 35 mm slides. The general conclusion is that video tape is one more communications medium, but a good one, at the disposal of people concerned with technical training or technology transfer.

Existing literature in the technical publications field indicates large deficiencies in many areas. Technical writing, per se, is only a small portion of the technical publications field. This chapter, Research and Liaison Activities for Technical Publications, is an attempt to fill part of that gap. Research for raw source data inputs for the preparation of a technical manual involves special knowledge and techniques in dealing with other groups and departments. Since technical writing also requires support services such as art, editing, typing, proofreading, and production, liaison activities with such groups require knowledge of their special needs.

In a technical writing course, students analyze the classics of engineering literature, prepare annotated bibliographies of articles concerning engineering writing, write an in-depth technical report on a civil engineering topic, and analyze the various articles in science and engineering magazines. To acquaint the students with the different magazines to which they may submit manuscripts, they also analyze a professional magazine. In this way, they are prepared for publication. After having reviewed science books for children, the students prepare their own manuscripts of science literature and submit them to consultants at the Writers' Conference held annually at Newark College of Engineering during April.

In a technically oriented society, scientists and engineers must have up-to-date information available at all times. Because technology is in a constant state of flux, documentation support is often obsolete by the time it is printed. Since the burden of supplying current information rests with technical communicators, it is up to us to explore effective methods of disseminating data before they become obsolete. This article offers one plausible method.

The organizational position of the technical communication function can help or hinder its effectiveness. Positing a centralized unit comprising certain skills, this article explores various placements of the unit, and recommends one as superior.

Technical writing is a discipline with clear limitations in both language and ideology. These limits pose a special problem for the teacher, since he must keep his audience interested in a subject which does not permit a normal range of self-expression on either scientific or humanistic topics. A consequence of this classroom dilemma is that technical writing instructors tend to dwell at length upon the value of simple generalizations and also capitalize heavily upon the comic effects of bad writing. The vices of “easy generalities” and “easy comedy” must first be understood in order to be avoided.

Colleges of advanced technology in Great Britain became technological universities following the recommendation of the Robbins Report of the Committee on Higher Education in 1963. This paper discusses developments in communication studies in the context of general education for students entering commerce and industry. Central to the discussion is a description of the integration of courses in spoken and written communication at the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology. Specialists in technical communication in industry were consulted with the result that an existing degree course was adapted to meet the industrial challenge.

This approach to the control of writing costs is a systematized method to leaven and identify important cost factors to the management level. It periodically provides in-depth visibility into pertinent scope and productivity variations which have a significant impact on the success of writing programs. Elemental cost factors in consistent terms enhance the visibility as production quantities give measurements unusual objectivity in a relatively subjective environment. Because of the subjectiveness, data values at the program level must be management-tempered. Here they are used principally to flag problem areas where their meaning is paramount. Long term cumulative values (over many writing programs) become more meaningful as true absolute values. Because of this quality, they are used to set work standards, define writer productivity, and determine other departmental factors.

A great amount of a technical writer's time is spent in researching his subject. In many instances, that voluminous research can disrupt production and interrupt the personnel schedules of the client company. Creative Universal, Inc., provides a unique service for its staff of writers and producers. Through the use of portable television equipment, a permanent record of the technical task or process under analysis can be made. This Electronic Photography Research Technique ( EPRT) has application to several dimensions of the total communication process. Advantages accrued from the use of EPRT include: (1) significant savings in interviewing time, (2) substantial reduction of interference with the client's production schedules, (3) improved accuracy in data acquisition, and (4) extension of the researcher's perceptual field. The process brings to bear the unique contributions of the electronic age upon the world of technical writing.

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A good many teachers of technical writing are guilty of blindly following tradition and convention in teaching students to rely on the outline as an organizing device, in categorically condemning the passive voice, in magnifying the importance of form and format, and in insisting on a set of inflexible rules for grammar and style that ignore widespread usage. Implicit in the attack on shibboleths is a plea for honest pragmatism in determining effectiveness in technical writing.

A number of “shortcuts” to make technical writing easier or more effective are described. These have to do with such tasks as documentation, filling in omissions by asking questions, taking notes, organizing material, and writing introductions. Outlines are uniquely classified as review, planning, master, and writing outlines. The latter is particularly useful because it is dynamic. Its use eliminates much note taking, aids the organization of source material, and helps guide the writing. An annotated bibliography has been included.

This paper discusses an interdisciplinary program at Kalamazoo Valley Community College in which the student is trained in several communications media: data processing, engineering graphics, technical reporting (oral and written), as well as various options. Additional work in computer graphics and technical illustration is included.

The distribution of 13 million Australians over a land mass the size of the United States poses unique problems for the communication of technical information. Both industry and education in non-urban areas are being imaginatively served by telecommunication and non-linear techniques, but the needs of secondary and tertiary industries for technical writing capabilities have not been met. Vigorous efforts by federal and state governments, by academic and industrial training facilities, and by professional societies are being made to correct this recognized inadequacy.

Education in the field of technical communication has not kept pace with the growth of the profession. This is partially a result of an expected time lapse in the educational process for an emerging profession and partially due to mistaken attitudes. An examination of the qualifications of a professional technical communicator—i.e. a grasp of basic sciences, an understanding of communication theory and practice, and a sensitivity to people—provides the basis for a formal curriculum in technical communications.

Lack of unity and logic, wordiness and repetition, and lack of coherence are the most prominent weaknesses in technical writing. Adherence to the six C's—conciseness, completeness, concreteness, correctness, coherence and carefulness—will improve report writing. A list of periodicals and books useful in the field is given.

Six ideas for improving technical writing are presented, with illustrative material. Briefly they are: (1) arrangement, attention to logical sequence of ideas; (2) perspicuity, the removal of temptations to interpretation; (3) placement, where the words go for maximum intelligibility; (4) fortuity, the avoidance of pitfalls in writing, particularly accidental humor; (5) economy, the control of repetition and avoidance of the obvious; and (6) transition, the effect of proper connections among ideas how to get from here to there.

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