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CONTENTS
PART I: What's the matter with scientific and technical writing today, and what can you do about it?
1. 2. 3. 4.
How much does foggy writing really cost? Why bother to write clearly? How to overcome writing handicaps How to kick bad writing habits -- painlessly
Lesson 5. How to use a "marketing" or "top-down" approach to your Lesson 6. How to organize your paper or report Lesson 7. How to handle all those details Lesson 8. Checklists for specific writing tasks PART III: How to say it
writing
9. Write to analyze, not to catalog 10. Use the simplest word that will do the job 11. Pin things down with concrete nouns 12. Put active verbs to work for you 13. The dependent clause -- a natural way to write analytically 14. Step 1 to more informative paragraphs -- orient your reader
together
Lesson 15. Step 2 to more informative paragraphs -- tie your ideas Lesson 16. Step 3 to more informative paragraphs -- take it easy Lesson 17. Step 4 to more informative paragraphs -- arrange your ideas Lesson 18. Should you use a personal style in scientific and technical Lesson 19. Enhance your message with illustrations and tables Lesson 20. Some practical ways to get started PART IV: How to tell when you're done
in a logical sequence
writing?
rewrites
Lesson 21. How to edit -- and feel OK about throwing most of it away Lesson 22. How to use feedback to simplify approvals -- and cut back on Afterword Bibliography
since 8/17/99.
WHY 'ANALYTICAL'?
I wanted a word that communicates the idea of tuning your writing exactly to your readers' needs. Writing that tells your reader exactly what he wants to know, no more, no less, and leaves him saying, "That's exactly what I wanted to find out." Isn't that the effect you want your reports, memos and papers to have? The word I settled on is ANALYTICAL. When you analyze something, you take it apart and find out what's inside, how it works, what its purpose and meaning are. Your writing is analytical when you analyze the subject matter for your reader -- pre-digesting it, if you will. How many times have you read a report or memo and said, "What does this mean?" or "What am I supposed to do about this?" Analytical writing answers these questions for your reader. The word analytical has been used before to describe a certain writing style that is crisp, concise, to the point, and informative. In 1966, Thomas P. Johnson wrote a book called Analytical Writing (Harper and Row). In it, he explained how the analytical approach permeates every aspect of your writing, from your choice of words and phrases to the way you organize and present your paper or report. Much of what I will share with you here is an expansion of Johnson's insightful concepts. The idea behind analytical writing is easier to understand when you contrast it with its opposite: CATALOGICAL writing. The root word here is CATALOG. So catalogical writing looks like a catalog -an undigested list of facts or information -- like a dictionary or a phone directory, devoid of meaning and significance. When your writing resembles a catalog, your reader has to decode and interpret it, to insert her own meaning and significance. The way she interprets it may have little to do with they way you intended. The result of this mismatch is that you "disconnect" from your reader. The central idea in learning how to write analytically is putting yourself in your reader's place. This requires you to learn how to think like someone else. Because I can't stress the importance of this ability enough, I will seem to belabor it. Virtually every fault you will find in today's scientific and technical writing stems from the writer's failure to take the reader's point of view into account. Writing analytically requires you to change the way you think about your reader. Great scientific communicators, like Carl Sagan, James Burke, Isaac Asimov, George Gamow, and Richard Feynman, developed this instinct to a fine art. Their common-sense approach to bringing science and technology within the grasp of ordinary people is one you will learn to emulate.
"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; but teach him how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." -Mao Tse Tung Analytical Writing for Science and Technology Copyright 1996 by T. M. Georges.
Lesson 1
The hidden cost of foggy writing Case 1: Foggy proposal unread -- job lost Case 2: The instruction maunal that scared customers away Case 3: One Garbled memo -- 17 baffled phone calls Case 4: The bright young chemist who buried his results Case 5: Big science -- little education Case 6: Frustrated CB-ers What went wrong? What does poor writing cost you? What does it cost you to do something about it?
If you're eager to get to the meat -- where you actually learn some specific tools for improving your
writing -- you can skip ahead to Lesson 5 right now. However, I urge you to be patient and go through the first four lessons. They will prepare you for the tasks ahead by showing you what usually goes wrong with scientific and technical writing, what poor writing can cost you and your organization, and what rewards the clear, incisive writer can expect. Especially important are the strategies given in Lesson 3 for overcoming the writing handicaps we acquired in school and picked up on the job. Then Lesson 4 shows you how to use the systematic methods taught in this course.
But the losses are just as real -- in reduced productivity, efficiency and lost business. In more personal terms, the losses are measured in wasted time, work, money, and ultimately, professional recognition. If you think that inept writing can't do much harm, ask yourself how much money, time and work were were wasted in each of these instances of miscommunication:
Joann supervised 25 professionals in 6 city libraries. To cut the costs of unnecessary overtime, she issued this one-sentence memo to her staff:
When workloads increase to a level requiring hours in excess of an employee's regular duty assignment, and when such work is estimated to require a full shift of eight (8) hours or more on two (2) or more consecutive days, even though unscheduled days intervene, an employee's tour of duty shall be altered so as to include the hours when such work must be done, unless an adverse impact would result from such employee's absence from his previously scheduled assignment.
After the 25 copies were sent out, Joann's office received 17 phone calls asking what the memo meant. What the 8 who didn't call did about the memo is uncertain. It took a week to straighten out the mess.
The Superconducting Supercollider (SSC) would have been the preeminent instrument on the planet for probing the fine structure of matter and the nature of the early Universe. Its price tag was $10 to $15 billion. It was canceled by Congress in 1993 after
about $2 billion had been spent -- a worst of both worlds outcome. But this debate was not, I think, mainly about declining interest in the support of science. Few in Congress understood what modern high-energy accelerators are for. They are not for weapons. They have no practical applications. They are for something that is, worrisomely from the point of view of many, called "the theory of everything." Explanations that involve entities called quarks, charm, flavor, color, etc., sound as if physicists are being cute. The whole thing has an aura, in the view of at least some Congresspeople I've talked to, of "nerds gone wild" -- which I suppose is an uncharitable way of describing curiosity-based science. No one asked to pay for this had the foggiest idea of what a Higgs boson is. I've read some of the material intended to justify the SSC. At the very end, some of it wasn't too bad, but there was nothing that really addressed what the project was about on a level accessible to bright but skeptical non-physicists. If physicists are asking for 10 or 15 billion dollars to build a machine that has no practical value, at the very least they should make an extremely serious effort, with dazzling graphics, metaphors, and capable use of the English language, to justify their proposal. More than financial mismanagement, budgetary constraints, and political incompetence, I think this is the key to the failure of the SSC. CASE 6: FRUSTRATED CB-ERS
During the CB-radio craze of the 1970s, the FCC was flooded with phone calls from people trying to understand and comply with the voluminous and incomprehensible set of CB regulations. Five FCC employees worked full-time answering phones and explaining to citizens how to get their licences and install their radios to conform to the rules. Then someone decided that it might cost the government less money in the long run if the rules were rewritten so ordinary people could understand them. An attractive, well-organized booklet was prepared that spelled out in plain language all the rules and licensing procedures, and left out all the legalese that no one reads or understands anyway. After the new booklet was distributed, the phone calls dropped dramatically, and the five employees who spent all their time answering the phone now have more productive jobs.
WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU CAN'T FIND THE INFORMATION YOU'RE LOOKING FOR IN A PAPER, MEMO OR REPORT?
Are you having trouble finishing that progress report the boss wanted yesterday? Do you just go blank every time you sit down to work on it? Are the technical papers and reports you submit for publication consistently rejected, even though you know their subject matter deserves attention? Do your internal reports always come back for rewrites, often several times? Do your written instructions often get ignored because your employees can't figure out what you wanted them to do? Are you swamped with paperwork because you need a whole hour to compose a simple onepage letter? Have you lately overheard a colleague say of your carefully thought-out memo: "I just can't figure out what he's trying to say! Why doesn't he get to the point?" Does management consistently respond coolly to your written proposals for new projects and withhold support for your ideas, even though you know your ideas are sound?
Can you think of any recent examples in your own organization where poor writing was responsible for lost work, time or money? Write one such example from your own experience below:
Would you be willing to invest that much time to avoid most of that grief on your next paper? Fine. If you spend that much time doing the exercises in this course, I guarantee that you will save at least that much time on your next writing assignment.
"This passage has been made nonconducive to utilization for an indefinite period." - sign in Pentagon corridor
Lesson 2
Coping with the information explosion The most important skill you possess Advance and be recognized -- professionally Enlist others' cooperation Calling attention to your new results Plain-language laws require it Orders that can't be misunderstood Clear writing aids clear thinking
Look around at the professionals you work with. Whose work has the largest impact on your
organization's productivity? Who have the most influence with management? Who appear to be the most successful on their way up the organizational ladder? Who have achieved a reputation for getting things done? Nine times out of ten, the ones who stand out are those who communicate their ideas clearly and forcefully, both orally and in writing. Notice, too, how often success eludes those who can't express their ideas, or who do so only in pretentious, bureaucratic prose. It's not enough to be a good scientist, engineer, businessman, or whatever you do. You have to be able to make other people understand what you're doing -- and why it's important. No matter how competent you may seem in private, your hard work will usually go unrecognized, because others will step in and communicate it more skillfully.
By the same token, sloppy writing can hold you back, too. How often have you looked at a rambling, incoherent report and said, "What a jerk!" -- even though you never met the author. How do you feel about that person the next time you come across his name? Because your writing reaches far more people than you can personally contact, you are often judged solely on how clearly and effectively you communicate in writing. If your main point of contact with your professional world is through your writing, your professional image may well lie largely in your reports, memos and articles. To that world, your writing is you. Sooner or later, some client or manager will make a decision affecting your future based solely on something you've written.
Today, you can usefully assume that important people are buried in paperwork. If you want to get -- and hold -- their attention, you have to convince them that you're telling them something that will make their job easier. Give them information that helps them make decisions. Help them deal with your item as quickly and painlessly as possible, whether it's approving your plan, endorsing your product or just sending money for your charity. The clearer your message, the easier you've made their lives. They'll remember you for that. Decisions about really important issues are usually based on written documentation, simply because the spoken word is so imprecise and transient. Even if you're a forceful and convincing speaker, you still have to write your ideas down when decision time comes around.
It might never even occur to you that the way you wrote that memo was the problem. To understand how this can happen, put yourself in the receiver's shoes for a minute. Suppose you work in a research laboratory and you receive this memo:
This memo describes a method for time-domain convolution with certain classes of functions. Both analog and digital realizations of the method are presented. The digital realization is economical of computation time, whereas the analog method preserves certain mathematical properties....
You're not likely to read beyond the first sentence, unless this is exactly the problem you've been working on. You file it, perhaps in the circular file, or maybe under "Mathematical tools I might look at someday if I have time." To see what went wrong, let's go back to the author and ask him a pointed question or two: "Why should anyone be interested in your new result?" "Well," he answers immediately, "It's a great time saver. You can now put calculations on a computer that used to be done by hand. In a half-hour you can get answers that used to take a week. We can save thousands on data-reduction costs every week." "So who cares?" we continue to probe. "What do you mean? Lots of people care about saving money and work! Data processing is the bottleneck that keeps us from analyzing all those exploration logs. If we could find promising drilling sites more quickly, we'd have a competitive edge over everyone else....." Can you see how these words, rather than the ones he actually sent, would have commanded the attention he wanted? All he had to do was ask himself the right questions before writing his memo. Your new result may seem important and fascinating to you for many reasons that have to do with your background and the amount of research you invested in them. But you can be sure that if they're important to anyone else, it's for very different reasons. Your job, in communicating those new results, is to understand those many other points of view from which people see your result. How will a manager see them? A company customer? A computer programmer? The stockholders? Each lives in his own world, in which your result has unique implications. By linking your message with your readers' experiences and needs, you tune your message to your intended audience. Then the message gets through.
In 1978, President Carter issued an Executive Order called "Improving Government Regulations." This order directed government agencies to make sure that their regulations were worded in plain English, as simply and clearly as possible. This order placed responsibility squarely on each agency head to "determine that regulations are written in plain English and are understandable by those who must comply with them." Unfortunately, this Executive Order was revoked by President Reagan, but the Federal Communications Commission had taken it seriously and began revising the part of its regulations that apply to amateur radio. Here is a section of the old rules that defines the purpose of the amateur service:
The rules and regulations in this part are designed to provide an amateur radio service having a fundamental purpose as expressed in the following principles: (a) Recognition and enhancement of the value of the amateur service to the public as a voluntary noncommercial communication service particularly with respect to providing emergency communications. (b) Continuation and extension of the amateur's proven ability to contribute to the advancement of the radio art. (c) Expansion of the existing reservoir within the amateur radio service of trained operators, technicians and electronics experts. (d) Continuation and extension of the amateur's unique ability to enhance international good will.
Now, here's the proposed rewrite:
The Amateur Radio Service is for persons interested in the technical side of radio communications. They use the service only for their own personal satisfaction and get no financial benefit from its use. They learn about radio, communicate with other radio operators around the world, and find better ways to communicate by radio.
We can only hope that all government regulations will someday be so simplified.
Following suit, twenty-two states have passed laws that require consumer documents to be written in plain language. The Employee Income Retirement Security Act now demands that the pension plans it covers be written in easily understandable language. Several years ago, a Pittsburgh man filed a lawsuit that claimed he couldn't understand the credit agreement his local bank sent him. The case eventually got to the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court, which decided that the language was indeed incomprehensible. The bank had to pay the damages. In another case, a large railroad was charged with discrimination for writing training manuals that most of its employees couldn't understand. If your job requires you to write regulations for the government or a large corporation, it's not just a nice idea that they be understandable by those who have to comply with them -- it's the law!
To: All drivers of Interagency Motor Pool System (IMPS) Vehicles The General Services Administration (GSA) has a growing nationwide problem related to the number of reported lost or stolen U.S. Government National Credit Cards, Standard Form 149, which are furnished with motor vehicles assigned or dispatched from our Interagency Motor Pool System (IMPS). The most recent report from the credit card contractor shows that over 70 percent of the lost/stolen cards are those assigned to IMPS vehicles. In some instances, cards issued for the same vehicle have been reported lost/stolen two or
three times. This clearly demonstrates the failure of some drivers to realize the importance of safeguarding the credit card. This card, like any commercial credit card, provides easy access to goods and services, and we, the Federal agencies, are fully responsible for all charges when the lost/stolen card is fraudulently used. In addition to the possibility of fraudulent use, the added administrative costs in obtaining a replacement IMPS credit card are growing and are currently calculated to be at least $35 for each card. If the overall situation does not improve, GSA-IMPS will be forced to take administrative action by instituting a $35 charge against the user agency for every IMPS credit card that is reported lost or stolen. We are hopeful that with your assistance this problem can be significantly reduced or eliminated. If you have any questions on proper use or control of the credit card, please call.......
First of all, this memo is much to long for what it has to say. Many readers will simply store it in the round file, because they don't know what specific action to take. Although the problem is clearly (if somewhat laboriously) stated, the memo never really specifies a solution. The message here is worth no more than two clear sentences, for example:
To: Drivers of Government Vehicles Subject: Care of Credit Cards So many government credit cards have been lost or stolen lately that it's costing us a bundle to replace them. Please care for these credit cards as you would your own, so that we don't have to start charging your agency the $35 replacement cost.
This memo is much more likely to get the desired result.
Here's an old example of foggy government orders. During World War II, a Washington bureaucrat drafted these air-raid instructions:
Such preparations shall be made as will completely obscure all Federal buildings and non-Federal buildings occupied by the Federal Government during an air raid for any period of time from visibility by reason of internal or external illumination. Such obscuration may be obtained either by blackout contruction or by termination of the illumintaion.
President Roosevelt saw the draft and ordered a rewrite:
Tell them that in buildings where they have to keep the work going to put something over the windows; and in buildings where they can let the work stop for a while, turn out the lights.
So the point here is that your orders and instructions are much more likely to be understood and carried out if you write them simply and plainly, just as you would say them orally.
Lesson 3
Your biggest handicap of all: deciding to write Why writing seems like hard work for most of us Myth 1: Clear writing requires inborn talent Myth 2: That's the way they taught me in school Myth 3: That's the way we do it around here Myth 4: Form is more important than content Myth 5: Complex subject matter demands complex language Myth 6: Good, clear writing eventually comes effortlessly Some myths you might be telling yourself
This lesson calls attention to some harmful attitudes and conditioning that can handicap you from the
start and keep your scientific and technical writing from being as effective as it could be. Some of these
attitudes come from how you were taught to write in school. Others come from bad habits you picked up on the job. You'll have a hard time changing any of your writing habits until you free yourself of some of these writing hangups. At this point, you may be saying, "Let's get to the meat and stop belaboring these philosophical preliminaries!" If you feel that examining the reasons behind your writing problems is wasting your time, you can always skip ahead to the part that looks most interesting to you. But I urge you to be patient. You'll make much better use of the tools I'll give you later if you first get rid of these barriers that can keep you from even learning about clear writing.
So, even though writing is a terrible way to communicate, there seem to be times when nothing else will do. But when you do choose to write, recognize that you're depriving yourself of valuable feedback. The question is: what can you do to compensate for that missing feedback? You have several choices. One is to proceed without feedback. That, unfortunately, is most people's choice and leads to all the misunderstanding that written messages cause. Another choice is to make up feedback. Depending on how good you are at putting yourself in someone else's shoes, and imagining the responses you'll get, this can work pretty well. It can also backfire, if you anticipate incorrectly (or wishfully).
A third choice is to actually solicit feedback in advance from your audience, or at least a reasonable sample of it. As we go along, I'll give you more information about how to anticipate your readers' responses and how to get some real feedback while you write.
WHY WRITING SEEMS LIKE HARD WORK FOR MOST OF 1. Do you believe that clear writing US
If you find your scientific and engineering writing assignments difficult, even painful, it's probably because you're trying to do something you were never trained to do. While you were preparing for your present career, you probably never realized how important writing would be in your day-to-day job. If you're a scientist or engineer, you may have imagined your time being spent designing spacecraft or discovering cures for cancer. Whatever your dreams, no one ever told you how much of your time and energy would be taken up with various kinds of writing. 2. Can clear, effective writing be taught? 3. Is technical writing more like an art or a science? 4. Is it necessary to get "inspired" before you can get started on a writing assignment?
5. Do you think there are objective For most of you, your formal education didn't help much, either. Maybe you had to write lab reports, but no one really explained how ways to measure your writing's effectiveness? to do it. So the strategies you use to get through your daily writing assignments are based on a lot of myths and misinformation you picked up along the way. What you need now is a way to erase those inefficient writing habits and to replace them with new skills that will get you through your writing tasks quickly and efficiently. And more important, you need specific tools that will give your writing power. Take a look at the questions in the box at the right. Think about these or any other beliefs and attitudes you harbor about writing. Prepare to question and reject any that might be holding you back. This course is based on five premises: (1) inborn talent is not required, (2) techniques for clear, effective writing can be taught, (3) you can more usefully view technical writing as a science, (4) it is not necessary to "get inspired", and (5) there are objective ways to measure your writing's effectiveness. Let's look closely at six common myths that can get in your way and make writing harder for you than it has to be:
A first cousin to the "talent" myth is the "inspiration" myth. Many people think they can't get started on a writing task until they feel inspired. So they wait around and seek diversions until that "spark" arrives. Waiting for inspiration is OK for poets, but if you're trying to get a job done, it's just plain wasting time. This course replaces inspiration with specific procedures, so that you never have any doubt about what has to be done next.
Because the detailed process that a good expository writer goes through in organizing and communicating his thoughts has not yet been precisely defined, technical writing, as it is now practiced, must still be regarded as part art and part science. In this course, we'll treat the task more like a science by reducing it to a sequence of well-defined and teachable operations and by adopting objective tests for measuring how well you're doing. But before you can automatically write clearly, you'll still have to practice a lot -- as with any "talent". But I hope that the specific principles I'll give you here will make that task more systematic and purposeful and will help you treat the process more scientifically and less like an art form.
SPELLING GRAMMAR PUNCTUATION GRAMMATICAL USAGE "STYLE" READABILITY CLARITY VOCABULARY LOGICAL REASONING ORGANIZATION Can you see the inverse relation between the qualities that are easiest to grade and the skills you need today to communicate scientific and technological concepts clearly?
Notice that each of the three different kinds of writing has a different purpose. In a novel or drama, the purpose is narration; you're telling a story. In poetry, the purpose is quite different. The poet is not usually as interested in telling a story as in providing a kind of insight or personal perspective on some event. Poetry is usually so vague and subjective that each reader gets something different from it. Each interpretation is shaped by each reader's own experience. interprets a written passage in exactly the same way. In fact, as in the visual arts, ambiguity often enhances the artist's message. But in science and technology, it's a people: their ideas & things & lives and problems feelings developments disaster if everyone interprets what you're saying differently. So one good test of effective technical writing is: Will everyone who reads this message interpret it in exactly the same way? Novel/Drama Poetry Exposition This table lists the subject of each kind of writing you learned about. In the novel or drama, the subject is usually people and what they do with their lives. Otherwise, it's not very interesting. In poetry, the subject matter is usually a little more abstract -- universal ideas or feelings. Things that are subjective
The Subjects of Three Kinds of Writing In fiction, it doesn't matter very much whether every reader
and have different meanings for each reader. The subject of exposition is things or developments, and most often, things. What, then, is the character that results from the different purpose and subject matter of these different kinds of writing? A novel or drama is often suspenseful. The writer hopes that by withholding information he will make you hang in there until the end. So suspense is just a trick to hold your attention. Novel/Drama suspenseful, withholds information Poetry allusive, indirect, ambiguous, metaphorical
The character of poetry is allusive, or indirect. It's ambiguous and never gets directly to the point. It skirts around the point and gives you insight about a feeling or an abstract idea, but it never faces the point directly. In exposition, the character is objective, just the opposite of poetry. As you might expect, the structure of these three kinds of writing is entirely different, too. A novel "climbs up" from a beginning to an end, so you don't really get to the main point, or "punch line," until the end. When you go to a play, you don't leave before the end -- unless it's really boring -- because you'll miss the most important part. The same for a novel, especially a whodunnit.
In poetry, the structure circles around the main point and never faces it directly. It's not supposed to -- the purpose is to provide insight by comparing the author's subjective account of something with your own feelings about it. So what is the right structure for exposition? Contrary to what you may have learned in school, I will argue that the best structure is represented by a pyramid, in which the main point is supported by a base of amplifying details. In other words, you get to the point right away and then give the details. Can you see how much trouble you can get into if you apply what you learned about classical English composition to the task of writing a technical memo or report? Who will read your memos if you create suspense by saving your "punch line" until the end? What kind of impact will your technical papers have if you skirt around the main point and never face it directly? Or if you keep your reader in doubt by making your language deliberately vague and ambiguous?
When Miss Fernpot told everyone to write a thousand-word essay on everything you knew about the Spanish Inquisition, didn't you really feel that fifty words would have done the job? You were probably right, but that wasn't the proper attitude if you wanted an A. That's where you learned verbosity -the art of padding your writing to create the impression that you knew what you were talking about. There were no lessons on how to get an idea across as plainly and concisely as possible. Instead, you learned to write as though you were paid by the word. If you learned to use long words, verbose essays, suspense, and ambiguity to get an A in English, you've been conditioned to produce writing that conforms instead of informing. If spelling, punctuation and grammar were the "important" things in school, you missed the essential elements of informing clearly and logically.
Such devices are the useful tools of playwrights, novelists and poets, but have no place in today's science and technology. Another difference between the writing you did in school and the writing you do today is that in school you generally worked alone, in forced isolation from others. You wrote your composition, submitted it to the instructor and waited for your grade. That kind of isolation from your audience can be deadly in science and technology. You have to work with others, to find out in advance what they expect, and to learn how to tune your writing to their needs. No one taught you in school how to get the feedback you need in your writing today. Probably the most damage to your writing skills during your education was inflicted by those who taught you about the structure of the English language. Most grammar courses have left us with such a terror of rigid rules about dangling participles, split infinitives and sentence diagramming, that any mention of grammatical terminology immediately strikes fear into most of our hearts. (This, by the way, is a good reason to avoid books and courses put together by anyone who has ever had anything to do with teaching English.) Later on, I'll show you how to make grammar work for you, not against you, and how to fearlessly throw around subordinate clauses with the best of them. For now, my point is that most of your formal training about writing may be useless and even counterproductive, so don't be surprised if I give you new information that contradicts everything you learned in school. "I like the exact word, the clarity of statement, and here and there a touch of good grammar for picturesqueness." - Mark Twain Beginning of Lesson 3 || Contents || Continue with Lesson 3 Analytical Writing for Science and Technology Copyright 1996 by T. M. Georges.
Lesson 3
How to Overcome Writing Handicaps -- continued -MYTH NO. 3: THAT'S THE WAY WE DO IT AROUND HERE
Early in your career, you further formed your writing habits by copying the practices of your professional colleagues, by trial-and-error, and by adapting to the regulations, policies and practices of the institutions you've worked for. Unfortunately, that tended more to make your writing conform to some norm than to make it more effective. You learned to begin a letter like this:
Enclosed herewith please find the photographs per your request of 17 June....
instead of in plain English:
What about this longer passage in "standard" format for the beginning of a report?
The purpose of this report on procedures for analyzing the statistical properties of certain population samples is to outline methods for analyzing the data and to show by examples how these techniques might be applied to situations commonly met in demographic analysis.
Look familiar? Do you see anything wrong with this way of beginning a report? What questions does it raise?
If this opening paragraph seems OK to you, you've been conditioned by "the system" to accept writing that conforms but contains little useful information. What's missing here are the specifics that let the reader know whether the rest of this report will be useful to him or whether he would be wasting his time reading it. This kind of stilted, institutionalized writing has become an accepted standard in large organizations, governments and publications, who resist change because "That's the way we've always done it here."
Some questions about the way things are done in your organization
By asking you these questions, I'm not encouraging rebellion. I just want you to think about the subtle influences your working environment has on your writing. 1. Have you ever questioned any of your organization's policies or rules about the way things should be written, because they don't make any sense to you? If so, write down some of those policies here:
2. Do you automatically write your memos, papers or reports in the same format and using the same style as those that have gone before you?
3. Do you take it for granted that those formats and styles are the best ones for the job?
4. What happens in your organization when someone tries to deviate from established procedures?
5. Does your organization have (at least unwritten) rules against being personal in company writing -for example, using "I" -- so that it's hard to find out who's responsible?
Most organizational policies just limit your flexibility and give you fewer options than someone with a full range of choices. A good example of an institutional taboo is the widespread rule against using "I" in formal publications and even in some internal memos. Such rules not only lead to convoluted writing but also make it hard to find out who is actually responsible for the views being expressed.
The purpose of this Administrative Order is to prevent reoccurrences of recent incidents in which damage to computer equipment was sustained as a result of spilled beverages. Therefore, effective immediately, it shall be laboratory policy to prohibit the presence or consumption of any food or beverages in the computing facility.
Is it clear how the formal tone of this memo wastes time and inhibits understanding, when what the sender obviously meant was:
Don't bring food or drinks into the computer room any more -- they can damage the machines.
False modesty, false courtesy and the need for business and technical writing to remain impersonal and "objective" are institutional inventions designed to let people avoid taking a stand or saying anything controversial. Unfortunately, they also keep people from being understood. Don't blindly accept any local customs, policies or rules about business or technical writing, including the ones in this course, if they simply violate common sense, or if they result in writing that obscures instead of clarifying.
The World Wide Web is the publishing medium of the future. Unfortunately, it's easy to fall into the media trap of substituting glitzy graphics for substantial information content. All of the principles given You'll be happy to know that I'm not going to spend a lot of time on in this course apply to web those rules here; that's beyond the scope and intent of this course. publishing in spades. Web surfers If you do decide you need to brush up on your basic English, I want have shorter attention spans than a to recommend an excellent and enjoyable way to do so. Get a copy CEO and are impatient with information that fails to get to the of Practically Painless English by Sally Wallace (a Prentice-Hall paperback, 1980). Would you believe that learning grammar can be point or is not efficiently organized. fun? Buy this book and find out. Hypertext provides a new, efficient way to stick to the point while For now, it won't hurt if you go with what you have, even if English making the details available to those is not your native tongue. Many of the organizations you work for who want them. have a staff of editors who will go over your writing for you and fix up your spelling, grammar and elementary construction errors. So you don't really need to worry very much about grammar, because that's something someone else can fix for you. Don't get me wrong. Ungrammatical writing and spelling errors can make you look like a jerk, if you let it get out. So if that's a weak area for you, you'll have to fix it up sooner or later. In the meantime, if you can get someone to proofread you copy for grammatical and spelling blunders, you can focus your attention on those things that only you can do. The kinds of things we will concentrate on here are the things you have to do yourself -- making a point unambiguously, presenting ideas clearly and logically, astutely handling details, and sorting the essential from the irrelevant. No one else can read your memo and rearrange it so it
seems more coherent or decide which details are important and which are not; you have to do that yourself.
All sorts of limestones are composed of more or less pure carbonate of lime. The crust which is often deposited by waters which have drained through limestone rocks, in the form of what are called stalactites and stalacmites, is carbonate of lime. Or, to take the more familiar example, the fur on the inside of a tea-kettle is carbonate of lime; and for anything that chemistry might tell us to the contrary, the chalk might be a kind of gigantic fur upon the bottom of the earth-kettle, which is kept pretty hot below. Let us try another method of making the chalk tell us its own history. To the unassisted eye chalk looks simply like a vey loose and open kind of stone. But it is possible to grind a slice of chalk
down so thin that you can see through it -- until it is thin enough, in fact, to be examined with any magnifying power that might be thought desirable. A thin slice of the fur of a kettle might be made in the same way. If it were examined microscopically, it would show itself to be a more or less dictinctly laminated mineral substance, and nothing more. Clear writing requires No matter how complex your message, you can always benefit clear by making it understandable to the widest possible audience. thinking.
This example shows how to use familiar imagery to make the reader comfortable with complex ideas that would otherwise be hard to visualize. If you can't explain your work at a cocktail party, you don't know what you're doing. Clear writing means more than paying attention to some arbitrary rules. Poor writing demonstrates sloppy thinking. You can't write clearly unless you can think clearly. MYTH NO. 6: GOOD, CLEAR WRITING EVENTUALLY This course can't teach you clear COMES EFFORTLESSLY thinking, but if you'd like to learn more about clear, logical thinking in Many writers feel that they've done something wrong if their drafts science and technology, try these need repeated editing. They think that, with practice, they should be books: able to turn out finished drafts the first time around. Weinberg, G. M., An Introduction to Unless you write constantly, like a newspaper reporter or a novelist, General Systems Thinking, John that isn't likely to happen. Good writing will always demand Wiley and Sons, New York, 1975. clear, organized thinking and plain hard work. You'll always write and rewrite, revise and shuffle ideas and words. Sagan, Carl, The Demon-Haunted World, Random House, 1996. Clear writing, like a fine sculpture, grows and evolves out of the crude raw materials you first put down on paper. The difference you I hope you'll find, as most do, that can expect after taking this course and doing the exercises is that there's a two-way connection your revisions and shuffling will become more systematic and between clear thinking and clear purposeful, guided not by what feels right, but by the specific writing. As you exercise more principles you will learn in the following lessons. Another difference precision and care in your writing, you can expect is that you will no longer feel discouraged or your thinking will get clearer as overwhelmed by writing tasks. Instead, you'll be able to summon well. systematic, step-by-step procedures for getting the job done. It's easy to underestimate the time and effort required to report results of your projects. When you plan your projects, how often do you allow enough time and resources to do a decent job reporting the project's results? Do you treat the writing parts of your project as afterthoughts, neglecting to give them the amount of attention that their visibility deserves? An old saying is relevant here: There's never enough time to do a job right but always time to do it over.
Another myth is perpetuated by books, articles and courses designed to teach you quickly how to write better. You often hear about simple mechanical rules for helping you improve your writing without having to think much about what you're doing. It's easy to be misled by devices like "Keep your sentences short," and "Don't use long words," and to substitute them for thinking. Quick fixes seduce the TV generation that is used to seeing the most complex problems solved in an hour. At the other end of the spectrum are those who insist there is no quick fix, no royal road to good writing, and that there is no substitute for a lifetime of disciplined learning and practice. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between. There are indeed some simple strategies that you can learn from those who write well. They can improve your writing a lot with just a little practice. I've tried to collect some of those strategies here.
Do you need to impress others with the difficulty and importance of your job by describing your work in terms intelligible only to yourself? If any of these questions strikes a nerve, that may be where you need to examine your feelings and beliefs more carefully.
Lesson 4
You've got to get involved Writing to inform -- an art or a science? Break down a complex task into simple steps Use systematic methods to get the job done Measure your success with objective tests Some practice expressing yourself in writing A new point of view -- your reader's Your mission, should you decide to accept it... Set some goals and stick to them
Let's face it -- you've been writing the way you do for a long time, and you're not likely to change those
habits unless (1) you can see a good reason to do so and (2) you can see some immediate payoff that makes your effort seem worthwhile. Fair enough. I hope that the preceding lessons, along with the experiences that led you to take this course, have convinced you that there are many good reasons to learn clear and effective writing -reasons that benefit both your organization and you personally. As for the amount of work you have to do, I assume that you're willing to put some work into changing those bad writing habits, as long as you can see that it's doing some good.
That's why this course is full of exercises for you to do as you read along. I call them exercises, rather than problems, tests or games, because their purpose is to exercise skills you have recently acquired. Behavior changes only as a result of repeated and active effort, coupled with a consistent reward system. I have built into the exercises in this course both the structure for practicing new writing patterns and the reward system that is so important for reinforcing them. But the effort has to come from you. It can't work any other way. If you do these exercises, you'll get the immediate feedback that shows you how well you're doing. Then you'll be well on your way to changing your writing habits. I know the temptation is great to simply read through the text and pass over the exercises. If you do that, any skills you learn will fade very quickly, and I guarantee that the time you spend taking this course will mostly be wasted. So, as you study these lessons, set aside enough undisturbed time, not only to read a lesson or so, but to do all the exercises you encounter. I promise you that I have made them as painless and enjoyable as possible.
Breaking down a huge, overwhelming writing project into small, manageable tasks. Defining specific procedures for getting the job done. Measuring how well you're doing with objective tests.
Of course, the exact science of effective writing has not yet been precisely spelled out. No one knows for sure what the specific ingredients of the most successful writing are. That's probably why Gunning said that writing is still an art. But most sciences were arts before they became sciences. Mysticism and magic consistently give way to systematic and precise models. The same process is needed to convert the art of business and technical writing into a science. So, before I can get anywhere in teaching you how to write, I have to break down the teaching process into elementary, understandable steps and present the material in specific, concrete terms you can immediately apply and test for yourself. That's what this course is all about. There are no rules in this course -- only models for you to test to see if they work for you. See if they produce the results you want better than what you're using now. You'll find that some will work better than others. Keep the former and modify or discard the latter.
BREAK DOWN A COMPLEX TASK INTO SIMPLE STEPS -- DIVIDE AND CONQUER
Have you ever been curious (and brave) enough to open up a fine watch and look inside to see how it works? Most of us have been overwhelmed by the intricate array of tiny gears, springs and ratchets that somehow all work together to tell us what time it is. Or have you ever taken the back off a television set to see the maze of wires and electronic components that are all hooked together in just the right way to display the pictures and sounds we all take for granted? Viewed as a whole, these devices at first glance seem incomprehensible. But if you begin to break them down into smaller and smaller pieces, you eventually reach a level you can easily understand. Everyone can, after a few minutes of explanation, grasp the purpose of a coiled spring or an electrical resistor. Once you understand the principles behind many such small parts, you can advance to learning how they function in combinations. Eventually, you can develop, in building-block fashion, an understanding of large, integrated systems. This is how most scientific learning proceeds: break down difficult concepts into simple, manageable pieces. If we decide to approach our writing tasks in this same way, a large, overwhelming task like writing this course just becomes an assembly of lessons, which in turn are made up only of paragraphs, sentences and words. Each module serves its own well defined function, which is defined in advance. The easiest way to break down a complex writing task is to begin with an outline. I'll show you a generic outline that's not only designed to inform your reader more effectively, but is also easier to use than the traditional one. In the rest of this course, you will spend a lot of time dealing with the smaller, more manageable pieces of your document -- words, sentences, paragraphs and sections. These are the building blocks of all effective business and technical writing. If your building blocks are made of Jello, no amount of attention to the larger-scale architecture can make your paper or report a coherent unit. But if your building blocks are sound, you stand a pretty good chance of putting together a sound structure. The problem of
organization is then one of designing a logical structure for these modules. The mortar is made from connective words and phrases and from the logical thread you establish through your ideas.
Just let all the disconnected feelings flow out onto the paper, and forget entirely about organization, By learning how to place yourself in your reader's position and grammar, spelling, punctuation or neatness. You can even draw to ask and respond to the questions he might ask, you will pictures. It sometimes helps to make his path through your paper smooth and free of obstacles, dead ends and time-consuming detours. You'll also pretend you're five years old. Repeat this exercise at regular intervals until stand a better chance of winning him over to your point of you feel completely comfortable view. doing it. Remember this Golden Rule of all Scientific and Technical Writing: Write unto others as you would have them write unto you.
From then on, add that particular skill to all the writing you have to do. Don't go on to the next lesson until you feel comfortable with everything you have learned up to that point. If you need to at any time, go back and review any material from previous lessons that you might not yet feel comfortable with. Here are a couple of other things for you to do right now: Accumulate and keep handy a collection of writings of others who express themselves with a clarity you particularly admire, especially in the kind of writing you have to do. Write down below a brief but precise description of exactly what appeals to you about their writing.
Could you incorporate any of it into your own writing? Before beginning your next writing assignment, read a few pages from your collection and focus on what you like about the writer's style. Try to imitate that style in your assignment. (Don't laugh -- this really works!) Finally, you will need some real tools to do some of the exercises coming up. Get four differentcolored highlighting pens (the nonpenetrating kind used for emphasizing reading material). The colors I recommend, and which seem to be readily available, are pink, yellow, green and blue.
Next, write down how you will know when you get the changes you want; that is, what specific feedback from those you write to will tell you that your writing is being more effective?
Finally, write down how much time you are going to spend working on the lessons in this course. Also write down your timetable for finishing the course.
I wanted you to do that so you will be able to tell whether you're getting what you want from the work you put into the lessons in this course. If, as you go along, you feel overwhelmed or are losing sight of your goal, come back here and read over what you have written. Of course, feel free to change or modify you goal at any time, if you wish.
You stand a better chance of mastering complex technical writing tasks if you approach them scientifically. That means breaking them down into elementary, well specified and manageable subtasks, defining specific and concrete procedures for performing each task, and getting feedback that tells you when you've done it right. In the following lessons, we'll get down to the nuts and bolts of writing coherently. There are four lessons that help you decide WHAT TO SAY and nine to show you HOW TO SAY IT. "If language is not used rightly, then what is said is not what is meant. If what is said is not what is meant, then that which ought to be done is left undone. If it remains undone, morals and art will be corrupted. If morals and art are corrupted, justice will go awry. And if justice goes awry, the people will stand about in helpless confusion." -- Confucius
Lesson 5
Why are you writing? Start by deciding what results you want
Your commitment to your readers Get a clear picture of who you're writing to What are you selling? Three wrong reasons for writing
So how can this proven strategy be applied to your scientific and technical writing tasks? Start by asking yourself some simple questions about who you are writing to and the effects you want your writing to have. Then ask what you need to do to get that response, and then break down that task into problems and subproblems you need to solve to accomplish that task. The questions may be simple, but the care you take in answering them determines how successfully your document will be designed and the impact it will have.
and technical writers fail to understand the basic needs of their readers, most scientific and technical writing says far too much and wastes both the writer's and the readers' time with useless information. They think it's safer (and easier) to just write everything than to discriminate and analyze. These people forget that one of the things all scientific and technical readers want is to get through their reading as efficiently and painlessly as possible. (Don't you?) That's your first responsibility to your readers. So one of your first objectives, no matter what your subject matter is, is to help them do that. As you will find out in Part Three of this book, this means analyzing and interpreting what you have to say and telling them what's important and why without forcing them to wade through swamps of undigested data or seas of technical jargon. But for now, let's concentrate on WHAT TO SAY. We'll get to HOW TO SAY IT in Part Three.
AUDIENCE NO. 2
AUDIENCE NO. 3
Next, fill in the responses you want from these people. If you can, tell exactly what you expect them to do in response to your writing: AUDIENCE NO. 1
AUDIENCE NO. 2
AUDIENCE NO. 3
Finally, write down the responses you actually get from these audiences:
AUDIENCE NO. 1
AUDIENCE NO. 2
AUDIENCE NO. 3
If the responses you want don't match up with the responses you actually get, then you need to pay more attention to finely tuning your message to those particular audiences.
Scientists and engineers, more than business people, tend to adopt a passive attitude about their work. It's as though they're saying, "I shouldn't have to sell my work; it speaks for itself. My business is knowledge, not manipulating people." Although a few scientists are able to build successful careers on this ivory-tower strategy, most soon find their advancement blocked and their work ignored unless they are able to orient their outlook toward those who might ultimately use their results. The truth is that, unless you're a hermit, it is impossible to avoid influencing others. Everything you do has some impact on those you contact. If that impact is not well thought-out and planned, a person's response is likely to be assembled from random combinations of his predispositions and accidental details of your actions. For example, a weak, noncommittal memo to your boss might cause him to decide that you have few convictions and to ignore your ideas. So would you rather have some random, unplanned influence or the specific influence you desire?
To get some practice designing documents for a specific audience and purpose, find a recent sample of your own professional writing and write its title here so you'll know later which one it was, if you come back to it.
Now answer the following questions about it: 1. Why did you write it?
3. Exactly what level of knowledge and experience does this reader have in the subject you are writing about?
4. Did you make any effort to find out exactly what your audience expected from you when you wrote this?
5. Can you form a clear picture of a particular reader and hear that reader saying something while he reads your paper? What is he saying?
6. What specifically did you want your reader to do differently as a result of reading your piece?
7. Are there any specific responses from your reader that you want to avoid?
8. What do you think it might take to get the response you want from your reader?
9. How will you know if your writing had the effect you intended; that is, what particular feedback mechanisms tell you whether your writing accomplished its objective?
10. How might you change your document to more clearly tell your reader your purpose in writing?
11. Might you have communicated the same message more efficiently, and at the same time provided for immediate feedback, by personally contacting your audience, instead of writing?
Have you ever thought specifically in these terms before you begin a writing task? I assume that when you sit down to write, you have some reason for doing so. Maybe you just feel like getting something off your chest. Or maybe your boss told you to write something. Or maybe you think it's time you recorded some result or thought for posterity. Because none of these reasons expresses a specific outcome, none is really a valid reason for writing.
Many organizations reward paper generators, both because memo and letter writers get more visibility and because report and article writing is used to measure productivity. But unless you have a better reason for writing, playing this game will eventually get you into trouble, because most of your writing will lack substance and purpose. TO RECORD YOUR RESULTS OR VIEWS FOR POSTERITY This may at first seem like a reasonable reason for writing, especially if you've just made some measurements or discovered something new. Many people like to imagine that their work will someday be uncovered and carried on by some later generation. Not very likely. We'll see later, however, that without the focus of a specific, well defined audience, your paper or memo can easily turn into a pointless "memory dump". Your readers will invariably ask, "So what?" So these are all the wrong reasons for writing. They may have some therapeutic effects on you, but they won't help you get the results you want from others.
The next step in tuning your writing to your audience is creating the most logical package for your message. In other words, what is the most effective way to organize the information you have to present? Your package must be carefully designed if it is to accomplish your purpose in writing. Alice: Will you tell me which way I ought to go from here? Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to go. Alice: I don't much care ... Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't matter which way you go. -Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Lesson 6
The most frequent complaint -- poor organization Just the facts, Ma'am! Pitfalls of the traditional approach The Analytical Outline How to get started It's what's up front that counts!
In this lesson, you'll learn that organization just means creating a logical structure to fit your facts or data into, and that the most sensible structure is determined not by the facts or data themselves, but by your purpose in writing. You decided what that purpose is in the last lesson, so half of your organization problems are solved already.
Dear Mr. Snarf, Six months ago, we bought some temperature transducers from your company to monitor the temperatures in our brewing vats. As these transducers are constantly on line, the solid-state sensing element (part number 75-8354) is subjected to an abnormally corrosive environment. Something in our beer seems to eat through the stainlesssteel case and short out the transducer. As a result, these transducers have been failing at an average rate of one a month. We usually keep at least a dozen transducers in stock for routine replacement purposes, but through an oversight of our storeroom manager, the stock has dropped to three. Because it usually takes a month or two to reorder these parts, we are in danger of running out before new sensors arrive through normal purchasing processes. Therefore, we wish to special order two dozen transducers and ask that you ship them at once by air express. Very cordially yours, J. B. Gronk, Production Supervisor JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM!
Poor Mr. Snarf! Let's hope he doesn't have to deal with too many of these sad stories every day. Unlike the audience for a play or novel, he has no use for suspense. How much easier his life would be if all his orders looked like this instead:
Please ship 24 Model 75-8354 temperature transducers immediately by air express. Here is our purchase order.
Although this example is a short business letter, it illustrates a structural flaw that shows up in many longer scientific and technical reports. All of us learned how to back into our writing assignments in school when we wrote essays and stories, and later, scholarly papers and college theses. The structure we were taught goes something like this:
THE TRADITIONAL OUTLINE 1. Introduction (Historical background) 2. Statement of the problem (Why are you doing this?) 3. Technical background (How far have others gotten on this problem?) Usually a historical account 4. Description of your analysis, development, or measurements (What have you done? How did you do it?) ..................... ..................... ..................... Supporting details ..................... (the bulk of your paper) ..................... 5. Results (What did you find out?) 6. Discussion and interpretation (What do your results mean and how do they relate to the stated problem?) 7. Conclusions and recommendations (What should be done next?)
If you follow this outline, that is, if you write in answer to this sequence of questions, then your paper may come out OK. At least it will conform to the classical conventions for organizing a report on a technical project or a scientific investigation.
The first is that you are forcing your reader to wade through the same process you did to get to your results and conclusions. It's almost as though you were saying, "I had to go through this painful process to reach my conclusions... why shouldn't you?" When you let the facts or the data themselves determine the structure of your writing, your paper, in effect, says no more than "Look at my wonderful data!" How many papers have you seen that seem to say nothing more than this? Aren't they really just catalogs of undigested facts? So many writers simply catalog facts that readers, in defense, have learned a trick to subvert the problem: To find the main conclusions, results and recommendations, they skip to the end! If they can't find them there, they often give up, because they don't feel like digging through the whole text to find the few important facts they're looking for. Take a longer report or paper you have written, and underline the sentences that give your main resuls, conclusions, interpretations, and recommendations. Before you begin, start timing yourself. Go ahead... I'll wait here for you. ...dum-de-dum... Done? How long did that take you? Now multiply that number by 10: That's roughly how long it will take someone not familiar with your paper to do the same thing. Are your readers likely to hang around that long? Where in your paper did you have to go to get that information?
That exercise assumed that you can in fact find sentences that clearly tell what the results, conclusions, interpretations and recommendations are. You could find them, couldn't you? If you couldn't find them, think how frustrated your readers will be when they try! In an environment where your paper is competing with the millions of others that form the literature explosion, can you really afford to hide what you have to say?
If you have trouble deciding how to answer the first question -- telling what's important and why -write a cover letter to accompany your paper or report. Address this letter to the person you most want to understand and appreciate your message. You have only one page to get it across. When you finish, you will have your first couple of sections. Here's another exercise to help you organize facts into a coherent, logical and informative structure. This is a list of key sentences from a research paper on a new kind of ocean buoy that echoes its drift speed when interrogated by a special radar. The sentences are jumbled up, so they're out of order. Your job is to reorder them so they conform, as nearly as you can make them, to the Analytical Outline. You don't have to rewrite the sentences; just list the new sentence number in the blank ahead of the old. The Doppler shift of the radar echo from a moving target is proportional to its radial velocity. High velocity resolution is possible using very short echo samples through the use of Maximum-Entropy Spectral Analysis. The 40-Watt pulse transmitter uses VMOS transistors and a solid-state T/R switch. Doppler transponders offer tracking abilities superior to systems using passive reflectors and don't cost much more. A unique feature of the transponder is the frequency offset of the re-radiated signal, designed to remove the echo from the frequency range occupied by the sea clutter. One use of such a transponder might be to help monitor ship traffic in congested areas, such as the English Channel. We have developed a compact Doppler radar transponder that can be mounted on ships or small buoys to provide a larger radar target and to permit instantaneous velocity measurements. Field tests of a prototype transponder in Puget Sound show that radial position can be tracked within 10 meters at a range of 20 km. The cost of production transponders should not exceed $250 per unit. More tests are necessary to precisely establish the range limits under many sea conditions. When ordinary radars attempt to track buoys or floating objects, their echoes are often obscured by echoes from the sea itself, so that small objects cannot usually be detected to ranges greater than a few kilometers. To improve signal-to-noise ratio, the complexreceived signal is averaged over 128 pulses and weighted using a Blackman-Harris window. Our transponder consists of a small transceiver, a delay line, and a whip antenna, all packaged in a 5cm diameter cylinder 80 cm long.
When you finish, read the sentences in the new order to make sure they follow the Analytical Outline. Can you see what a difference you can make in clarity, simply by rearranging the sentences in a logical order? Find a paper you have written or are working on. Let's find out how it is organized. First, number each paragraph sequentially. Then look at each paragraph and label it according to the subjects described in the Analytical Outline above. For example, write a "3" next to a paragraph if its content falls under "recommendations," or a "5" if it seems to fall under "conclusions." If it does not fall into any of the Analytical categories, put an "X" next to that paragraph. Then list those labels below in the order in which they appear in your paper, for example 4, 4, 3, 5, 2, X, 6, etc.
Now rearrange the paragraphs you just classified to make your paper's organization more Analytical. Put all the (1)s together, then all the (2)s, etc. If a paragraph or section does not fit any category (X), leave it out. YOUR NEW PARAGRAPH ORDER:
Now rearrange your paper according to this outline (cut and paste, if you want) and ask yourself if this new version gets your message across more effectively.
Here's an exercise to help you apply these principles. These opening paragraphs for a product announcement are badly organized and are littered with useless details (which should come much later). Go through them and mercilessly cross out all the deadwood, leaving only the most important information about the what and why of the new product:
1. Production of a revolutionary new portable microcomputer, the GORN-3, has been announced the the Data Products Department, Industrial Research Division, of the Megabux Corporation, a Peoriabased electonics company with worldwide branches. The new machine, a product of three years of intensive research, is housed in a tan, molded plastic case. It is small enough to fit under an airplane seat and can be operated from internal battery packs. 2. Manufacturing has begun in the Megabux 75,000 square-foot factory in Uggabugga, Tanzania, where local labor costs are expected to keep the unit cost under $5000. 3. Each unit, which is one-third the size of a standard desktop computer, contains its own keyboard, video display and two diskette drives, which can store word-processing programs, text, accounting and scientific software, as well as
'space monsters.' The machine's advanced CPX-3000 operating system is compatible with many existing business and scientific software packages, but also features advanced graphics capabilities and a voice synthesizer. 4. Megabux president, I. C. Sparks reports hundreds of advance orders for the new product from business and industrial firms that see a wide variety of uses for a low-cost, portable microcomputer like the GORN-3. Deliveries are expected to begin this fall.
YOUR REWRITE:
Now look at the opening paragraphs from a longer article you have written. Attach them here and go through the same weeding-out process, leaving only the essential what and why of your message. If you can't find that information in your opening paragraphs, add the appropriate sentences.
Lesson 7
Where's the beef? How much detail? Which details? Ranking details
Here you'll learn how to communicate details efficiently. This means giving your audience exactly the amount of detail they need -- no more, no less -- and in the order they expect.
1. Your boss 2. Scientific peers 3. Specialists in your field 4. The general public 5. Potential users of your result 6. Scientific administrators 7. Congressmen 8. Students
Naturally, the audience you select will determine not only your choice of details, but also your publication medium.
a showroom brochure the owner's manual a TIME magazine ad the shop manual
Now go down the list again and add a second number to each box that tells how big the audience is for each document. Put a 1 next to the one with the largest audience and so on, up to number 6 for the one with the smallest audience. If you did it right, you should end up with the same numbers paired up next to each document, or be off by no more than one. Now do you see how the amount of detail is related to the size of the audience? If you have a specific person in mind as your audience, and if you are able to place yourself in his position, you should be able to evaluate every detail by asking how much he wants to know about it. One way to do this is to start out by listing your details (just some key words) and scoring them according to the level of interest you think your audience has in each. If your interest score goes from 1 to 10, cut out the items that score less than 4 or 5. If your imagined audience has little or no interest in a particular detail, leave it out, even if it represents years of your hard work.
WHICH DETAILS?
Here's an exercise to clarify the connection between specific details and the audience you have in mind. Below I've listed a collection of details about a research project you have just completed on thunderstorms. Imagine that you're having a conversation with each of the 8 audiences listed above. What information about thunderstorms might each ask you for? As you go down the two lists, write in the blank spaces in front of each detail the numbers that correspond to the audiences that you think would score that detail at least a 7 (on a scale of 1 to 10):
DETAILS ABOUT YOUR RESEARCH PROJECT ON THUNDERSTORMS: The dollar damage caused by thunderstorms each year. A history of your previous research on thunderstorms. Descriptions of calibration procedures for your instruments. Some basic physics of how thunderstorms work. How much your project costs. A log of all your measurements during the whole project. A list of everyone who worked on the project. Specifications of a new instrument to measure hail size. A new result showing a connection between lightning intensity and total rainfall. A new result showing how to suppress hail. New insights into the flow patterns around thunderstorms. Procedures you used to avoid statistical biases in your data. Your plans for further measurements. Your recommendations for future research. Now, imagine that you are writing, in turn, to each of those 8 audiences. Go down the list of details and notice which ones are the most interesting to each audience. Those are the details you would most likely emphasize in the early sentences you would write to those audiences. Notice also which details you could leave out or relegate to subordinate roles.
RANKING DETAILS
Now that you have coded each detail according to the audiences it appeals to, make 8 lists, one for each audience, in which you write out the top four details that you want to present to each audience. In addition, rank the details by putting the most important one (to that audience) first, and so in. The list you come up with for each audience is the order you would present these details if you were writing to that audience. 1. Your boss
2. Scientific peers
6. Scientific administrators
7. Congressmen
8. Students
Take the same paper or report you used to answer the questions about your audience in Lesson 3. Make a list of key words or phrases that describe all the details you have reported. Now rank those details according to how interested you think your audience is in those details. Throw out the bottom half. Now compare that list with the details that actually appeared in your paper or report.
Lesson 8
PROPOSALS RESEARCH REPORTS INSTRUCTION MANUALS PROGRESS REPORTS FEASIBILITY STUDIES JOURNAL ARTICLES EVERYDAY CORRESPONDENCE
Some have large audiences; some very limited audiences. All of your readers will have different levels of understanding about your area of expertise and different needs and predispositions toward what you have to say. Yet the audiences for each of these categories tend to have some needs in common. That makes it possible to make a checklist for each category that addresses those needs -- the most important things to pay attention to as you put your pencil to paper (or finger to keyboard). You can use these checklists in three ways: Fill one out before you begin work on your next paper, to form the core outline. The more detailed and specific your answers, the more useful they will be for putting your outline together, and the less work you will have to do to flesh it out. You can also use it to check completed papers. And third, you can even attach a blank checklist to copies you submit for review or approval, to speed the review process.
Here, then, are seven checklists you can use on the job to make sure you're including the essential elements of your particular writing task. Look them all over. Then we'll practice applying one of them to a writing task of your own.
HOW WILL YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE MAKE YOUR CUSTOMER'S LIFE EASIER?
IF YOU ARE OFFERING A SERVICE, HOW WILL YOUR CUSTOMER KNOW WHEN THE JOB IS DONE?
WHERE ARE THE COSTS OF THE PRODUCT OR SERVICE CLEARLY SPELLED OUT?
WHERE HAVE YOU CONVINCED YOUR CUSTOMER THAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY SUPPLY THE PROPOSED PRODUCT OR SERVICE?
WHERE ARE COSTS BROKEN DOWN SO THAT THE CUSTOMER CAN SELECT PARTS OF YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE THAT BEST SUIT HIS NEEDS?
WHERE DO YOU CLEARLY STATE HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE YOU TO DELIVER YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE?
IF YOU ARE SELLING A PRODUCT, WHAT AFTER-SALE ARRANGEMENTS DO YOU OFFER FOR TRAINING, MAINTENANCE, PARTS AND SERVICE?
WHAT EXTRA-COST ITEMS ARE LIKELY TO BE NEEDED, WHICH ARE NOT INCLUDED IN YOUR PROPOSAL?
WHAT BEST QUALIFIES YOU TO SUPPLY YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE, RATHER THAN ANY OF YOUR COMPETITORS?
IF YOU ARE PROPOSING A RESEARCH PROGRAM, DO YOU AVOID VAGUE WORDS LIKE "INVESTIGATE" OR "DEVELOP" WITHOUT BUILT-IN INDICATORS THAT TELL WHEN THE JOB IS DONE?
SUPPOSE YOU ARE THE ONE YOU ARE WRITING THIS REPORT FOR. WHAT WILL YOU LOOK FOR FIRST AS YOU BEGIN READING THIS REPORT?
STATE THE PROBLEM YOUR RESEARCH PROJECT ADDRESSES, IN THE FORM OF A QUESTION.
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT YOUR READER, DEFINED ABOVE, TO DO ABOUT YOUR RESULT? HOW MIGHT HE USE IT?
LIST SEVERAL IMPORTANT DETAILS ABOUT WHAT YOU DID, AND HOW YOU DID IT, THEN ARRANGE THEM IN DESCENDING ORDER OF IMPORTANCE TO YOUR READER. LIST THE FIRST THREE HERE.
(IF REQUIRED) HOW MUCH DOES YOU RESEARCH COST, IN EQUIPMENT, MANPOWER, TIME AND DOLLARS?
ARE DETAILS THAT ARE OF INTEREST TO ONLY A SMALL PART OF YOUR AUDIENCE PUT INTO APPENDICES?
WAS THIS MANUAL WRITTEN AS AN AFTERTHOUGHT, OR WAS IT INTEGRATED WITH THE PRODUCT DESIGN?
DO YOU CLEARLY UNDERSTAND THE BACKGROUNDS AND DIFFERENT LEVELS OF EDUCATION OF THE USERS OF YOUR PRODUCT? HOW IS THIS DOCUMENT DESIGNED TO ACCOMODATE THOSE LEVELS?
SUPPOSE YOU ARE THE USER FOR WHOM THIS MANUAL IS WRITTEN. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU WILL LOOK FOR AS YOU BEGIN TO READ THE MANUAL?
HAVE YOU ADEQUATELY EXPLAINED THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF HOW YOUR PRODUCT WORKS AND WHERE TO FIND MORE DETAILED EXPLANATIONS?
HAVE YOU THOROUGHLY TESTED YOU PRODUCT UNDER ACTUAL FIELD CONDITIONS AND MADE FULL USE OF FEEDBACK FROM THOSE TESTS?
HAVE YOU TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT ALL THE DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENTS YOUR PRODUCT MIGHT BE USED IN?
HAVE YOU INCLUDED A CLEAR STEP-BY-STEP SET OF INSTRUCTIONS FOR GETTING STARTED USING YOUR PRODUCT FOR THE FIRST TIME?
HAVE YOU MADE FULL USE OF PHOTOGRAPHS AND DRAWINGS TO INTRODUCE DIFFICULT OR UNFAMILIAR CONCEPTS OR PROCEDURES?
IF YOU ARE DOCUMENTING A COMPUTER PROGRAM, HAVE YOU INCLUDED A SAMPLE RUN WITH INSTRUCTIONS FOR DUPLICATING IT? ARE ANY MACHINE-DEPENDENT ASPECTS CLEARLY SPELLED OUT?
HAVE YOU ANTICIPATED USER DIFFICULTIES AND PROBLEMS AND TOLD THEM WHERE TO FIND ADDITIONAL HELP?
DOES YOUR MANUAL PROVIDE FOR UPDATES AND IS IT MODULAR SO THAT NEW SECTIONS CAN BE EXCHANGED FOR SUPERSEDED ONES?
HAVE YOU CLEARLY EXPLAINED WHAT ADDITIONAL OPTIONS MIGHT BE AVAILABLE TO ADAPT YOUR PRODUCT TO SPECIAL USES?
HAVE YOU CAREFULLY EXPLAINED ANY DANGEROUS ASPECTS OF USING YOUR PRODUCT?
SUPPOSE YOU ARE THE MANAGER OR SPONSOR YOU ARE REPORTING TO. WHAT DO YOU MOST WANT TO KNOW ABOUT HOW THIS PROJECT IS GOING RIGHT NOW?
IF NOT, WRITE YOUR EXCUSES IN THIS SPACE > (NOT IN YOUR REPORT). WHAT IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT THING THAT HAPPENED SINCE THE LAST REPORT?
HOW DO NEW DEVELOPMENTS AND UNFORESEEN DIFFICULTIES AFFECT THE OVERALL OBJECTIVES, MILESTONES, BUDGET AND TIMETABLE?
You might want to give this form to those who write progress reports to you.
ARE THE CONSEQUENCES GRAPHICALLY DISPLAYED, WHERE POSSIBLE, TO MAKE COMPARISONS EASIER?
WHAT ARE THE PARTICULAR INTERESTS OF THE READERS OF THE JOURNAL YOU HAVE SELECTED?
HOW HAVE YOU EDITED AND ARRANGED YOUR DETAILS TO TUNE YOUR PAPER TO THIS AUDIENCE?
HAVE YOU CLEARLY PUT YOUR WORK IN PERSPECTIVE WITH THAT OF OTHERS WHO HAVE GONE BEFORE?
DO YOU CITE REPORTS THAT CAN SUPPLY MORE DETAILS FOR ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED?
WHAT WILL A READER LEARN WHO JUST LOOKS AT YOUR ILLUSTRATIONS AND READS THEIR CAPTIONS?
DO YOU HAVE AT LEAST ONE ILLUSTRATION THAT SHOWS THE BASIC CONCEPT BEHIND YOUR PAPER?
DOES YOUR MEMO HAVE A TITLE THAT SAYS WHAT YOU WANT?
DOES YOUR FIRST SENTENCE TELL WHAT {ACTION} YOU WANT THE RECEIVER TO TAKE?
HAVE YOU CLEARLY ANSWERED YOUR READER'S QUESTION: "WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS?"
HAVE YOU CLEARLY STATED WHETHER YOU EXPECT A RESPONSE AND WHAT KIND?
ARE YOU ABLE TO LIMIT YOUR RESPONSES TO JUST THE INFORMATION REQUIRED, WITHOUT INSERTING IRRELEVANT BACKGROUND AND PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY?
DO YOU MAKE FULL USE OF MEMO FORMS WITH BUILT-IN REPLY SHEETS?
Here's a checklist to help you get through the correspondence you receive more efficiently: DO YOU AND YOUR ORGANIZATION HAVE A WAY TO DISTINGUISH CLEARLY BETWEEN CORRESPONDENCE THAT REQUIRES AN ANSWER AND THAT WHICH DOESN'T? (ACTION MEMOS, ETC.)
DO YOU MAKE SURE YOUR "IN" BOX IS EMPTY AT THE END OF EACH WORKING DAY?
Now that you've looked over the checklists, pick a sample of your own scientific or technical writing that falls into one of the seven categories. Apply the appropriate checklist to your sample and note with an "N" or "Y" on the checklist which items your piece clearly addresses -- and which have been left out. After each "N," briefly explain how you will take care of each point you left out.
Now you're going to spend a lot of time learning HOW TO SAY IT. The impact of your message depends as much on the way you choose your words and put them together into coherent sentences and paragraphs as it does on the message itself.
Lesson 9
difference between simply listing or cataloging details and analyzing and interpreting them for your reader. I talk to many writers who feel that if someone doesn't understand their writing, "That's his problem. The information is there, if he will just read it." They fail to recognize that a technically correct and precisely written paper can at the same time be incomprehensible to everyone but an expert in the field. They also fail to realize that the only test of a document's success is whether the desired audience will actually read and understand it and take appropriate action. The Analytical Writer acknowledges his responsibility to his readers. Instead of throwing them some undigested data and saying, "Here are my results...you figure them out," save your readers the work by analyzing and interpreting those results for them. To appreciate this point more fully, place yourself for a moment in the role of a busy scientist as he browses through some journals and technical reports that have shown up in his morning mail: All of the material that has reached your desk is of broad interest to anyone in your field, or it wouldn't have reached your desk in the first place. What now determines which articles and reports you will read and how carefully, and what impact each one will have on you? You may at first think that it is solely the technical relevance and significance of each article to your own work that determines how much attention you pay to it. But suppose that you come across an article that direcly relates to your field of interest, but that its author forces you to wade through a long catalog of technical details without defining terms, without telling you which are important and why, or how they relate to what you already know. Suppose the writer hasn't bothered to analyze or interpret any of the information he presents. You quickly get the impression that you've been presented with a list of facts and told, "Here are the results. You figure out what they mean." You decline to accept the challenge and move on in disgust, or perhaps ask one of your engineers to figure it out because you don't have the time. To show you that such things actually happen, here is an abstract of a technical report that I actually encountered in my work. An abstract is supposed to tell you enough about a paper's contents to let you decide whether to go on or not. Read this one and see if you can tell what the paper is about:
New and old system designs are distinquished by how well the inerrelations among the variables that are available for observation are exploited. It is, therefore, reasonable to expect new system designs to be closely coupled to improvements in techniques for representing and analyzing these interrelations. The algorithm discussed in this paper is an example of such an improvement. It is designed to extract information about the spatial and/or polarizational characteristics of the fields of emitters in a multiple-emitter environment. Its capability to determine the number of emitters
present, the strengths of their fields, and the direction of arrival of their fields is an example of one of its applications. However, many aditional applications suggest themselves.
At this point, you may feel only a vague sense of discomfort and annoyance on reading this. But can you identify specifically why this abstract fails to inform?
This abstract doesn't do its job because it's a list or catalog of indigestible generalities. The difference between cataloging details and analyzing them shows up in this example on all scales -- from the choice of words and sentence structure to the way the paragraph is organized. You can be sure that the paper it refers to is poorly organized as well.
Representatives of the United States and the Soviet Union met in Geneva this week for the third round of negotiations on Strategic Arms Limitation. The meeting was cordial, and discussion was reported to be frank and open, with both sides reiterating their commitments to easing the international tensions produced by the nuclear arms race. The negotiators agreed that the critical issues to be examined are the questions of verifying warhead quotas and arriving at mutually satisfactory methods of on-site inspection Discussions will resume in two months.
What really happened at this meeting? Nothing, of course! The purpose of the communique was to assure the public that the two countries were still speaking to each other, and to report what didn't happen at the meeting (a total breakdown of negotiations). Look at this President's Message from a mutual fund annual report:
Despite one of the most volatile years in the domestic economy, characterized by swings in business activity and interst rates, your Fund moved forward into the new decade, overcoming several of the challenges with which it was confronted during the past year. I am pleased that the steady progress we have made on your behalf is evidenced by major steps toward strengthening of the Fund portfolio for the ultimate realization of the long-term objective of capital appreciation.....
Everyone knows the name for this kind of writing -- it's simply bullshit. It's easy to assume that diplomats, politicians and executives talk this way because they don't know what they're talking about. Don't be fooled. Usually, such people have risen to positions of power precisely because they know how to communicate ambiguously, and so that anyone hearing the message will interpret it positively, in terms of his own values. This is known as content-free communication. It is specifically designed to let the receiver supply its substance and meaning. Such a strategy is perfectly appropriate for anyone who has to keep a large audience happy. Laying all your cards on the table simply doesn't work if you can't afford public criticism and dissent. Television networks and airlines have developed this ability to a fine art. Notice the properties of these special languages that keep them from informing -- vague, nonspecific nouns, impersonal and passive constructions (to avoid responsibility), and usually a special jargon designed to keep the reader ignorant of the facts. If your goal is to write to inform, you would do well to notice and avoid all these devices.
Your tools for writing more informative sentences will be: THE DEPENDENT CLAUSE (Lesson 11) THE ACTIVE VERB (Lesson 12)
Your tools for writing more effective paragraphs will be: ORIENTING YOUR READER (Lesson 15) TYING IDEAS TOGETHER (Lesson 16) CUTTING DOWN TECHNICAL DENSITY (Lesson 17) ARRANGING IDEAS IN A LOGICAL SEQUENCE (Lesson 18)
And your overall organization is a design for informing quickly and efficiently. We covered that in the last lesson. In Lesson 19, I'll show you how to make your illustrations inform rather than baffle, and in Lesson 20, I'll give you some hints about the mechanics of getting started on your writing jobs.
Lesson 10
Find the overblown words Will the real word please stand up? Loaded words Meaningless comparatives What about building my vocabulary?
Whether you know it or not, you've already started writing your paper by answering the questions in Lesson 8. (Now you don't have to worry about getting started!). Chances are, your answers are already in plain language, because you thought you were just carrying on a conversation, not writing your paper (fooled you!). The lesson here is that when you write the way you talk, you usually choose the plain, simple words that everyone can understand. Keep it up. You don't have to shift gears to that dull, formal style you're used to writing in.
accelerate accumulate acquire adjacent anticipate approximately ascertain characterize component concept culmination demonstrate designate determine disseminate endeavor (v) evaluate expedite expenditure fabricate facilitate facility finalize formulate impact (v) implement (v)
indicate initiate interface (v) necessitate operable personnel presently prioritize projection requirement subsequent terminate
Do you see how you can simplify your writing by substituting the short-and-sweet word for its lofty equivalent? How many of the words in the list above clog up your writing? Who will miss them if you use the simpler versions instead? Even our machines are being taught to speak in inflated language. I recently noticed an ad for a new copier that coos: "Replenish paper!" when it's out of paper.
a large/small number of a sufficient quantity of along the lines of at an early date at this point in time be cognizant of due to the fact that for the purpose of has an ability to in conjunction with each other in order to in spite of the fact that in such a manner in the event that in the near future in this day and age increased by a factor of two is capable of leave out of consideration
most of the time of the order of magnitude of rate of speed reiterate again subsequent to surround on all sides taken into custody with respect to FIND THE OVERBLOWN WORDS
Now read these sentences, paraphrased from real-life business and technical writing and find the overblown words and phrases. Then write the simple and direct equivalent below each one:
We should formulate an alternative plan in the event that the stockholders vote the president out.
In view of the fact that solar energy is not yet fully developed at the present time, we will have to continue utilizing fossil fuels well into the next century.
The tests were conducted in conjunction with the employees' routine checkups.
The report recommended a substantial reduction in the remuneration received by the vicepresidents.
It has been brought to my attention that the employees' cafeteria needs to be painted.
Aluminum is used for transmission lines in order to reduce weight and corrosion.
The new project is designed to institute improvements in the taste of cat food.
Prior to the time when the chairman of the board submitted his resignation, stockholders were of the opinion that it was time for a change.
In the event that the photo lab cannot accommodate the increased work load, it is within the realm of possibility that their facility will be enlarged.
The number of stars in our galaxy is of the order of magnitude of a hundred million.
This is to acknowledge receipt of your order for a new model 505 copier.
It has been shown by Smith and Brown that high-speed neutrons retard the spoilage of guacamole.
Building a microcomputer involves the necessity of packing thousands of components on microscopic chips of silicon.
It seems reasonable to assume that the radar target is much larger than a breadbox.
The team decided to perform an analysis of the car's wind resistance for the purpose of reducing aerodynamic drag.
It is often the case that migrating whales gather in the vicinity of nude beaches.
execute, put to sleep, terminate, rub out gay halitosis inoperative economically disadvantaged ladies of the night, call girls, hookers limited success misinformed, misguided pacification pass away, pass on, expire personal flotation device pre-owned print-media center protective reaction strike rest room, powder room, commode senior citizen smoking materials underachiever
Write down here five commonly used euphemisms for war:
You may not need to use many of these words in your work, but this will give you an idea of how we camouflage and soften unpleasant ideas with foggy words. In the scientific and technical world, we often invent special jargon to cover up situations or facts that we may not want our audience to be exposed to directly.
LOADED WORDS
Another kind of word to avoid in business and technical writing is the word that is loaded with positive or negative emotions. When you use such loaded words, you guarantee that each reader will interpret then according to his own feelings and biases, not the meaning you intended. Look at this list of words and mark a plus next to the ones that you have positive feelings about and a minus next to the ones you have negative feelings about. If you think you are neutral about a word, put a zero next to it:
crackpot creative thinker poor and needy lazy bums working class communists freedom fighters terrorists politician statesman delapidated rustic firm obstinate conglomerate diversified industry conservationist eco-freak
Do you see that each pair of words on the same line often refers to the same thing? If your scientific and technical writing is to remain objective, you have to avoid words that reveal your own emotional biases and stir up those of others.
MEANINGLESS COMPARATIVES
Avoid using comparative or relative words whose meanings depend on your readers' subjective interpretations of quantity or quality. Here are the more common comparatives to avoid:
large, small high, low most, some few, many slow, fast near, far good, bad seldom, often long, short hot, cold sooner, later
To find more specific substitutes, ask yourself how large, how fast, or compared with what Also avoid using words that imply value judgments without specifying what the value is, compared with what, or who is making the judgment. Here are some examples of these words:
Please don't...
Actualize, verbalize, finalize, prioritize, schedulize, contemporize, utilize, formalize, qualitize, containerize, operationalize, parameterize, concretize, conceptualize, definitize, militarize, annualize, accessorize, computerize, or standardize. IZE is a drug consumed in large quantities by business and technical speakers and writers. It turns ordinary people into officialsounding authorities and lets them talk for hours without saying anything.
people that you know what you're talking about. Since we tend to think in words, a large vocabulary also makes your thinking more precise and expands its range. The trick is to use words that are designed to express rather than to impress. If you know a big word that exactly expresses your idea, and no little word will do, use it. Your readers will appreciate your precision. But if you have a simple idea that can be expressed in a few one-syllable words, putting it in flowery, convoluted language just reveals your insecurity with the language. The pompous words and phrases you've corrected in this lesson are examples of puffing up the language to impress people. But when are high-powered words justified? Here's an exercise to give you practice choosing the precise word and recognizing when such words are necessary. Listed below are some definitions that are specific enough that only one word will fit it exactly. Try to find that word and write it in the space following each definition:
To force into or deter from some action by inducing fear A confusing network of interconnecting paths or passages The external boundary of any surface or area Continuing or enduring forever or indefinitely Composed of parts of widely different elements Derived from experience, experiment or observation alone LESSON SUMMARY AND WHERE WE GO FROM HERE
Words, of course, are the basic modules of all writing. The care you use in choosing them reveals a lot about your background, your competence, and the crispness of your thinking. Generally, the simple, direct word should replace the stuffy, impressive one. But there are many times when you'll have to dig deep into your vocabulary and pull out precisely the word you want. In the next lesson, you'll learn to substitute specific, concrete words for vague, abstract ones. "Short words are best, and old words, when short, are best of all." -Winston Churchill
Lesson 11
What's an abstract noun? Use terms your reader can picture Eliminate vagueness and costly ambiguity If you must generalize...
In this lesson, you'll learn how to substitute specific and concrete ideas for vague, abstract ones. When you do so, you'll eliminate one of the most common sources of fog in business and technical writing. The more specific and concrete your words, the more informative your writing will be.
These suffixes "kill" verbs and adjectives by turning them into nouns.
Write the verbs that are the roots of these commonly used abstract nouns: Relation Recommendation Improvement Observation Reference Application Development Connection Analysis Utilization Variability Conformity
Whenever you see a word with one of these suffixes, see if you can rewrite the sentence to use the verb root instead.
Look at this list of words and number them, with 1 indicating the most abstract and 8 indicating the most specific and concrete: machine station wagon product vehicle conveyance Edsel car rusty green Volkswagen If you had trouble, go back and try to form a picture of each word. Use the clarity of your picture to guide your numbering.
Look at this abstract for a technical paper and try to identify specifically why it fails to inform as well as it could:
The recent identification of high concentrations of aged urban pollutant haze in the Arctic Basin suggests the possibility of climate modification through the interaction of the haze with solar radiation. The presence of the absorbing aerosol layer over a high-albedo surface will lead to an enhancement in the absorption of solar radiation by the atmosphere and surface surface system. This additional heating will manifest itself as an increase in the temperature of the atmosphere and an increase in the rate of ice melt in the spring.
Notice all the abstract nouns in the passage above. (If you have trouble, look for words ending in the suffixes in the table at the beginning of the lesson.) Virtually all of the information in this abstract is buried in its abstract nouns. Although you can figure out what it is trying to say if you read it carefully, the stilted tone that results from all those abstractions hinders understanding rather than making it easier. What if the abstract were rewritten this way?
Recent increases of urban pollutant haze in the Arctic Basin could modify the Arctic climate by absorbing more sunlight. The additional heating could make the ice melt faster in the spring.
What do you think about this new version? Does it contain all the information the first one had? Does it sound somehow "less professional"? Is it easier to read? Is it clearer and more informative? Write your impressions as specifically as you can in the space below:
This laboratory is conducting research with certain new materials that may combine one or more properties previously requiring separate production processes. These developments promise improved efficiency in manufacturing and will eventually lead to products with exciting new possibilities and even some that are revolutionary in concept.
Now rewrite this passage, making up some concrete facts to substitute for all the abstractions in the passage.
Which version would you, as a reader, prefer, assuming that you wanted to be fully informed about this laboratory's activities? Which one would you, as a writer, use if you wanted to confuse your reader and keep the laboratory's work secret?
1. Remove as many abstract nouns as you can. 2. Sharpen its focus with representative examples and concrete illustrations.
Look at these "before and after" examples and learn how to replace generalizations with concrete specifics. Mark the abstract nouns in the "General" examples with your green highlighter. Underline the concrete nouns in the "More specific" examples: General: New circuit-testing methods are much faster than the old procedures, but they often overlook faulty components. More Specific: The computer-controlled circuit tester checks out our memory boards ten times faster than technicians could, but it passed twenty percent more faulty regulators last month. General: Pesticides increase crop yields, but often cause damage to the environment and sickness in people.
More Specific: Since 1975, when malathion was introduced in India, 65 percent more corn was produced, but birth defects increased fourfold. General: With reference to your request for information about our new product line, we are happy to send you our new catalog, in which prices have been substantially reduced. We would appreciate your business. More Specific: Thank you for asking about our new copiers. We think the Snazzo Model 820 will suit the needs of an office your size. Our new catalog describes a special 20-percent discount on copiers purchased during December. May we call you to demonstrate the 820 in your office? Notice how often abstractions appear in the general statements above and how they contribute to their vagueness.
1. Abstract subjects attract weak verbs. 2. Awkward phrases find their way into the sentence. 3. The real subject of the sentence has been relegated to a subordinate detail (usually the object of a preposition). 4. The sentence structure becomes convoluted and loses its force.
In this exercise, mark all the abstract nouns in green. Then rewrite each sentence to remove all of the above faults: The situation with regard to the fish in the water cooler came up in the meeting.
All responsibilities connected with the recruiting of new members rest with the club chairman.
The condition of the reactor is such that extensive repairs are required.
The reason the missile was not launched was due to the fact that mice had eaten the cables.
Find a couple of paragraphs from your own writing, and mark all the abstract nouns with your green highlighter, and underline the weak verbs and awkward constructions that accompany them. Rewrite the passage, removing as many of the abstractions as you can, and amplify any general statements with concrete examples. This space is for your rewrite:
Here is a table of some common abstractions that often show up in scientific and technical writing. Avoid them. Look through it and check the ones that you use most frequently: ability approach character concept condition course effect employment extent intent manner measure nature order position practice procedure reason relation responsibility situation use activity case circumstance concern connection degree effort environment instance interest dummy method necessity policy possibility problem question reference respect result substance utilization
And here is a table of awkward phrases that creep into a lot of scientific and technical writing. Read through the list and check the ones you recognize from your own writing:
as regards of the order of by means of relative to in connection with the nature of in case of to the extent that in the form of with respect to
in view of as to on the part of for the purpose of the fact that in relation to through the use of in the course of with regard to in the light of
associated with on the basis of due to the fact that such that in order to the reason for in terms of with reference to in the interests of with a view to
Abstract nouns are never as informative as concrete, specific nouns. The more concrete facts and specific examples you put into your writing, the fewer people will misinterpret it. In the next lesson, you'll learn how to make your sentences more concise and more informative by using active verbs.
Lesson 12
Active is good; passive is bad Passive verbs attract abstract nouns Passive verbs attract awkward constructions When to use passive verbs Liberate disguised verbs
In this lesson, you'll learn how to eliminate most of the passive verbs in your writing. It's not that passive verbs are bad in themselves, but when they are overused, they hide the identity of the doer, they invite roundabout sentence construction, and they lead to awkward, unnatural-sounding prose. At least half of the passive verbs in scientific and technical writing should be changed to active forms.
The explosion was caused by a kerosene lamp. The technicians demanded longer coffee breaks.
The first sentence has a passive verb was caused, and the second sentence has an active one demanded. Notice the flag by in the first sentence? Now let's practice converting passive verbs to active ones. Each of the following sentences has one passive verb. On your printed copy of this lesson, use your pink highlighter to mark each passive verb, then rewrite each sentence so that the verbs are all active.
When the atmospheric pressure drops, the barometer needle is observed to swing to the left.
A micrometer was used to make sure the machine parts were within tolerances.
Did you notice that finding a new subject for these sentences was easy when the word by followed the passive verb? You just used the noun that followed by. But when no by was present, you may have had to imagine a subject. Another tip for finding passive constructions is to look for forms of the verb to be, for example, is, am, be, being, were, was, been.
In the last lesson, we learned how to substitute concrete nouns for abstract ones. Passive verbs seem to attract abstract nouns, so that when you eliminate one you often have to change the other. Here are some sentences with abstract noun/passive verb pairs. On your printed copy of this lesson, mark the abstract nouns in green, as before, then mark the passive verbs in pink. Finally, rewrite the sentence to remove both.
The practice of filling out work orders in triplicate is disliked by the machinists.
The ability of the aircraft to survive spears and arrows was stressed in the design.
The chief measure of the new economic program's success will be indicated in the reduction of inflation.
through the use of in order to on the part of as to whether in the case of for the purpose of
In the following sentences mark and remove each passive verb, noticing how, at the same time, you no longer need such awkward constructions:
In the laboratory, a high safety record is achieved through the use of double-shielded walls.
The pilot was questioned as to what action would be taken in the event that he saw a UFO.
When disinfectants are used in connection with hospital cleaning programs, supplies seldom become contaminated.
(1) The Cosmic Company installed a new word processor. (2) A new word processor was installed at the Cosmic Company.
Which sentence emphasizes the word processor, and which focuses attention on the company? You naturally expect the sentence following (1) to continue talking about the Cosmic Company, whereas the one following (2) would logically talk some more about the word processor. Suppose you wanted to write about the 85% accuracy a forecaster achieved in predicting snowstorms. How would you write the sentence to emphasize the forecaster?
Now suppose you were writing mainly about snowstorms and wanted to emphasize them?
Can you see how the emphasis you want affects how you choose the subject of each sentence and consequently your choice of an active or passive verb?
make a recommendation formulate an argument raise an objection make restitution express resentment arrive at a conclusion perform an analysis develop a plan exercise conformity undertake a development find a solution make a decision
Find a few paragraphs you have written recently and use your pink highlighter to mark all the passive verbs. Notice how the passive verbs have attracted awkward constructions and abstract nouns. Rewrite those paragraphs using the techniques you have learned in this lesson. Get into the habit of using your pink highlighter to flag passive verbs in your own writing.
Lesson 13
What's a dependent clause, anyway? How they amplify, explain, and analyze Find the dependent clauses Defining relations among ideas The enemy: prepositional phrases Avoid strings of adjectives
In this lesson, you'll learn how to use a powerful tool for analyzing the details you have to write about. It's called the dependent clause. Don't worry about the formidable name -- it's just the same way you use to describe relations between ideas in ordinary conversation.
The project was not completed on time, because the machine parts were stolen. If at first you don't succeed, try something else. A helium nucleus has two protons, whereas hydrogen has only one. Although Klingon battle cruisers are not very maneuverable, they can make themselves invisible.
Where were you when President Kennedy was assassinated? Energy supplies will dwindle, unless we conserve.
Notice how each dependent clause can't stand by itself, even though it has a subject and a verb of its own. Instead, in some way it amplifies or qualifies the statement in the main part of each sentence. The first boldface word in each case is the key. It goes by the horrible name of subordinating conjunction, but don't worry about that. Dependent clauses can also begin with relative pronouns, as in these examples:
Where are the parts that I ordered? The uranium nucleus, which contains 92 protons, is unstable. Most people don't know who their senators are. What the aerospace industry needs now is more friends in Congress. HOW THEY AMPLIFY, EXPLAIN AND ANALYZE
You don't need to worry about the grammatical terminology -- you just need to understand how dependent clauses qualify, limit, expand and explain detail -- how they highlight the important and suppress the incidental. And that's what Analytical Writing is all about. All you really have to remember are these surprisingly short tables of words for linking ideas and showing how they are related: SO ALTHOUGH AFTER BECAUSE IF WHERE THAN SINCE AS BEFORE THOUGH WHEN WHEREAS
THAT WHY
These are the good guys! If you start using these words to introduce dependent clauses, I guarantee that your writing will improve. Copy this list and keep it in front of you during your writing assignments. Make a conscious effort to use words from this list to relate and amplify your ideas.
I want you to remember how you tuned the transmitter. The reaction took longer than he expected. If I have time, I will buy the dynamite. We found the parts that you ordered, but they were radioactive. Chamberlain defied the pessimists who predicted that he would fail. We searched the spot where I lost the bagels. Employees who work hard will receive a gold star. Michelson said that he knew why the experiment burst into flames. That the cast-iron airplane would fly was doubtful. DEFINING RELATIONS AMONG IDEAS
There are many ways to combine related ideas. The best ways are the ones that precisely define relations among ideas, by explaining, contrasting, limiting and expanding. Consider the string of ideas in these isolated sentences:
Eunice set fire to the cat. The cat jumped into the pool. The cat could not swim. Rodney rescued the cat.
You could combine the ideas, linking them with semicolons:
Eunice set fire to the cat; the cat jumped into the pool; the cat could not swim; Rodney rescued the cat.
Or you could combine them as independent clauses, using only and:
Eunice set fire to the cat, and the cat jumped into the pool, and the cat could not swim, and Rodney rescued the cat.
Eunice set fire to the cat, and he jumped into the pool, but the cat could not swim, so Rodney rescued him.
Finally, dependent clauses make things even more vivid:
After Eunice set fire to the cat, he jumped into the pool, but because he couldn't swim, Rodney rescued him.
Do you see the difference between simply listing the four ideas and linking them together with words that define precisely how they are related? Practice forming dependent clauses by combining each of the following sets of isolated ideas into one sentence. Use the subordinating conjunctions from the above list (or make up ones of your own) that best describe the probable relations among the ideas.
The airplane landed. We got off. We discovered we were not in Pittsburgh. We were in Havana.
The program was written in FORTRAN. It is longer than a machine-language version. It can run on many different computers.
Computer maintenance costs kept increasing. Georgette complained about peanut butter on the diskettes. Mr. Figby banned food from the computer room.
Doppler radars measure radial velocities. A conventional radar cannot. Doppler radars are useful for remote sensing.
The goat ate Bertha's leotards. Bertha couldn't perform in the comapany ballet. Bertha went to the movies instead.
The operating manual contains some simple maintenance procedures. We urge you to call a service man for repairs. Unauthorized service may void your warranty.
Another useful linking word is but. Technically, it's a coordinating conjunction, used to join independent clauses. Use it, along with your other tools, to contrast ideas, as in the following exercises:
Word processors permit efficient manuscript typing. They make revisions a lot easier. They require an investment of several thousand dollars. The operators must be trained for a week.
Janice read the instruction manual very carefully. She hit the ! key. The terminal exploded.
CAUTION: I am not generally urging you to patch several short sentences into one long one. You will need to decide in each case whether doing so will help you define more clearly the relations among ideas.
Find a paragraph or two that you have written recently and underline all the dependent clauses. If you don't find very many, you can be sure that your sentences aren't informing as well as they could. Try rewriting your paragraphs so that at least half the sentences contain dependent clauses.
NOT-SO-COMPLEX SENTENCES
You learned in grammar school about simple, compound and complex sentences. It's too bad that sentences with dependent clauses in them got the label complex. Most people are frightened by the word complex, because it usually means complicated. Why use a "complex" (meaning complicated) sentence when you can use a simple one? Well, here's another fine mess grammatical terminology has gotten us into!
in progress on the floor beside the garage between the cities of data-processing equipment to a Martian by walking on hot coals
The first word in each phrase is the preposition. Notice that these phrases have no verbs in them. Clauses always do. (In the last example, walking is formally a noun.) One way to tell that ideas are being merely listed or cataloged is to notice how many prepositional phrases you have. When there are too many of them, you know that all ideas are being treated as grammatically equal. There's no discrimination, no emphasis among qualifying details. When you don't supply that discrimination and emphasis, your readers have to do that themselves. And that's just what you want to avoid.
So here's a simple rule for improving the way you present details:
In their specifications for engine parts, titanium is often requested by engineers because of its resistance to the effects of high temperatures. (6)
Uncertainties in the market for American cars is of concern to leaders of the industry, due to the increases in the costs of labor and raw materials. (8)
In the design of components for warp drives for starships, increasing attention is being given to the employment of dilithium crystals because of their high power output in relation to their weight. (9)
The emphasis of this research is on new ways of measuring currents in the ocean with radar for the purpose of studying their effects on climate.(8)
Take a paragraph or two from your own writing and mark all the prepositional phrases in yellow. Try rewriting your paragraphs, removing as many of the prepositional phrases as you can.
agency management planning system enhancements inferior product labeling requirements multichannel complex maximum-entropy (autoregressive) spectral analysis digital 8-pole variable-bandwidth lowpass filter surface water quality protection procedures development canister/missile launch support stand (TSE4508) interface design
They don't make any more sense when you see them in context, either. Here are a few sentences that cause most readers to do a double-take. Underline the piled-up adjectives:
The QX-7 is the first extra-long range (800-1000 miles), low-silhouette pilotless target aircraft to be built entirely of fiberglass. The top-level fire-control-related generic requirements are stated explicitly in the proposal. The detail media measurements are particularly useful in the continuous refinement of one and two-dimensional laser peformance calculations. It was necessary to run the transient counterflow program to obtain the average temperature history of a mass averaged nozzle and the deuterium coolant exit temperature history. The closed-cavity power data base was used to establish the gain generator run conditions at the various power points specified.
In these examples, technical adjectives are so crammed together ahead of nouns that it's not even clear what they mean. What can you do about strings of technical adjectives? If you're tempted to translate them into strings of prepositional phrases, don't! That's sometimes an improvement, but as you just learned, prepositional phrases are catalogers of ideas, too. The first example above can be rewritten using a dependent clause:
The QX-7, which is the first pilotless aircraft to be built entirely of fiberglass, combines a range between 800 and 1000 miles with a low radar silhouette.
Go ahead and rewrite the other four sentences, using dependent clauses to clarify the relations among ideas.
Now, take a paragraph or two of your own writing and underline any strings of technical adjectives. Rewrite those sentences using more analytical constructions.
Lesson 14
In this Lesson:
Should rules determine paragraph length? Make your reader comfortable Use orienting words and phrases Let the new amplify the old Add explanatory words and phrases
Groups of paragraphs make up the sections of your paper, which are its next larger logical units. Most of the principles for writing informative paragraphs apply to whole sections, too, so we won't deal separately with putting sections together. Whatever I say about putting sentences together into paragraphs applies also to putting paragraphs together into sections.
Orient your reader to the subject. Tie your ideas together. Take it easy through technically dense passages. Arrange your ideas in a logical sequence.
Now we'll go through these four steps, one-by-one, and find out exactly how to incorporate them into your own writing.
Everyone needs to take stock of the present situation and to have some idea where they're going before plunging off in a new direction. That's why you need to give your readers signposts that tell them where they are and where you're going to lead them, not just at the beginning of your paper, but frequently along the way. Have you noticed that, at the end of each lesson in this course, I stop and summarize what we've just covered and tell you what's coming next? This is one kind of orienting signpost to help you keep your perspective as you work through the lessons. Since paragraphs and sections are the logical modules of your paper, each one should contain some kind of orienting material to keep your readers in touch with the old and familiar, as you lead them into new and unknown territory. Whenever you introduce a new idea, your readers will appreciate definitions, examples and comparisons with things they already know. They will feel more comfortable with your new information if they have a familiar reference to hang on to. Three ways to do this are with orienting words and phrases, by letting the old amplify the new, and by adding explanatory words and phrases, where necessary.
of course as you know until now obviously normally previously everyone is familiar with remember that
In this exercise, ideas labeled THE OLD and THE NEW are paired together so that THE OLD idea introduces and forms the background for THE NEW idea. Fill in the blanks with the most suitable orienting word or phrase from the list above. Pick the one that best introduces THE NEW idea. THE OLD: drifting buoys have been used to monitor surface currents in the ocean. THE NEW: Now, high-frequency radars based on the shore can remotely map currents over large areas. THE OLD: microcomputers have been getting smaller and lighter. THE NEW: The latest models are so light you can carry them around like a notebook. THE OLD: our typewriter cases have been made of cast aluminum.
THE NEW: This year's widget sales jumped to 86,000. THE OLD: last year, we sold only 42,000 widgets. THE OLD: standard periodogram analysis, which gives the frequency components of a time series. THE NEW: The fast Fourier transform gets the same results with much greater computational efficiency. THE OLD: computing the payroll for 500 employees would take two days. THE NEW: The new computer does it all in an hour. THE NEW: Our new camera automatically determines shutter speed and f-stop for every shot. THE OLD: you can still set your exposures manually, if you want to. If you think of words like these while you write, orienting material will naturally come to mind.
As you link the old with the new, avoid the traditional chronological approach that lists the old things before the new. Usually, you are interested in the old merely as a contrast with the new. For example:
The new Videx compact video disk player weighs one-third and costs less than half of the 1992 model. Furthermore, it can hold up to six times as much programming and uses tiny 3-inch disks instead of the bulky 12-inch ones.
Isn't this version much more informative than one that would begin by listing the undesirable characteristics of the old machines, then told you what the latest ones are like? How often do you begin your news with a long historical background? Such background information is most useful if it is strategically placed to reinforce and contrast with your message, not as a single lump at the beginning.
The EC-153 aircraft will be developed to provide electronic countermeasures (ECM) in tactical theaters for the purpose of defending ground-support aircraft against radar-vectored SAMs.
Depending on what audience is being addressed, the meanings of these terms may not be clear: electronic countermeasures, tactical theaters, ground-support aircraft and SAMs. If not, the passage should be expanded with definitions, like this:
In local military actions called tactical theaters, aircraft that provide reconnaissance for ground troops are vulnerable to surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) guided by enemy radars. The EC-153 aircraft will generate jamming signals to confuse enemy radars -- a function known as electronic countermeasures (ECM).
To decide how much explanatory material you need, you have to form a clear picture of your audience and how familiar they are with what you're saying. In general, it's a good idea to put in more explanations than you think you need, because your writing is often read by people outside your expected audience. For example, the first version of the passage above would probably be OK for military field commanders, but woefully inadequate for a congressional briefing to secure funding for such an aircraft. Now find a sample of your own writing and underline any technical terms that need to be expanded, explained, or more clearly defined for the particular audience you were writing to. Write down those technical terms and explain and amplify them with a few words that give that audience a clearer picture of what you're talking about. Try using explanatory phrases like in other words, for example, that is, and this means that...:
Here's an exercise to give you practice constructing coherent paragraphs that contain enough orienting material. The list below gives some facts that you want to communicate to your customers about a new computer system. Construct one or more paragraphs incorporating these facts, along with any amplifying material you make up. Make sure you pay attention to all the principles you just read about, namely:
Use orienting words and phrases Let the old amplify the new Make full use of explanatory material
Our new ZXM computer lets you put up to 10 users on your processor. It offers 50% more disk-storage space, with removable backup. You can trade in your ZXQ single-user system for what you paid for it. Secure accounting files are available. New word-processing software allows file-merging. Deliveries will begin in January.
"If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it." -Abraham Lincoln
Lesson 15
Connectives Intensives
As you build paragraphs, you'll need some "glue" to bind your sentences together. Otherwise, your readers will have trouble making the logical jumps from one sentence to the next. Even though the connections between your sentences may be clear to you, you can't count on your readers to supply those links. Remember that a paragraph should form a single logical unit. If it doesn't create a single idea in your readers' minds, it's not doing its job.
CONNECTIVES
English supplies us with useful linking words called connectives, which form the logical bridges between ideas. If you keep these verbal guideposts in mind and use them as you write, you will almost automatically provide the interrelations among ideas that every reader looks for. Here is a list of some connectives. Like the subordinating conjunctions, these are the good guys; use them liberally (but correctly and appropriately), and I guarantee that your writing will become more effective. They are hard to overuse. Connective words that describe relationships: ALSO INCIDENTALLY LIKEWISE MOREOVER NEXT HOWEVER THEREFORE THUS USUALLY WHATEVER ALTHOUGH BESIDES MEANWHILE FURTHERMORE GENERALLY
ACCORDINGLY IN CONTRAST
FINALLY ONCE ULTIMATELY LASTLY MEANWHILE THEN FORMERLY Other Connective phrases: TO BEGIN WITH IN BRIEF IN SUMMARY INSTEAD OF IN OTHER WORDS FOR THE SAME REASON SUCH A IN FACT IN THE SAME WAY CONVERSELY SUMMING UP
ON THE OTHER HAND IN GENERAL MORE SPECIFICALLY IN ADDITION TO ANOTHER WAY TO NO MATTER WHAT THAT'S WHAT (WHY) WHAT'S MORE ON THE CONTRARY AS A RESULT IF SO / NOT
All of these words and phrases link ideas and assure continuity in your writing.
Another useful principle to assure continuity in your writing and tie your sentences together is:
TRY TO HAVE A WORD OR PHRASE SOMEWHERE IN EACH SENTENCE THAT REFERS TO SOMETHING IN A PREVIOUS SENTENCE.
One easy way to follow this principle is to use pronominal adjectives like these to refer to nouns in previous sentences: THIS THESE THEIR ITS For example: THAT WHICH HIS HER
Dr. Quark testified that the only scientific value of creationism lies in its position among primitive superstitions and mythologies. His testimony helped strike down laws requiring its teachings to be included in biology textbooks.
Another way to assure continuity in your writing is simple repetition; that is, carry the same nouns from one sentence to the next. For example:
Scientists map the winds and precipitation inside hurricanes by flying specially instrumented aircraft through them. These aircraft must withstand stresses of up to six times the force of gravity.
If you try to use these connective devices in your own writing, but have difficulty, be suspicious that the ideas that you're trying to link together in a single paragraph are merely a sequence (that is, a catalog) of logically unrelated ideas. Rearrange or rewrite them until you can logically tie them together. Remember: All the sentences in a paragraph should be logically related.
INTENSIVES
Another way to tie ideas together is with intensives. Intensives help you emphasize what's important and to set the important apart from the incidental -- a major goal of all scientific and technical writing. Compare the following two sentences, the first without intensives and the second with intensives added:
The whale is the largest living mammal. The largest whales weigh over 150 tons, are 100 feet long, and consume 5 tons of food each day. The whale is by far the largest living mammal. In fact, the largest whales weigh as much as 150 tons and grow as long as 100 feet. These enormous animals consume 5 tons of food each day.
Notice how the bold words that have been added emphasize certain points the author deemed important. Here is a list of some useful intensives: ESPECIALLY INCREASINGLY AS MUCH AS BY FAR EVEN IF/THOUGH SO...THAT
CAUTION: Misusing or overusing intensives (most notoriously, the word very) can weaken your writing. Use them like garlic -- sparingly. Eliminate intensives that are thrown in gratuitously or that don't make a definite contribution by emphasizing an important fact or idea. Littering your writing with intensives where they are not needed makes your writing sound trite and strains your credibility. Here is an exercise to give you practice linking your ideas together. Add connectives, intensives (from the lists above, or make up your own) and repeated words to the following sentences to make a coherent paragraph:
Global Airlines carried three-million passengers last year. They expanded their routes into the Pacific Northwest and Canada. The new DC-12 aircraft proved more fuel-efficient than the older 737's. Older, unprofitable routes were dropped. Passengers seem to like on-time flights and automatic ticketing. Only one-million passengers flew Global two years ago. Their record has been accident-free since 1950. Global planes have averaged 80-percent full last year. Profits were up 60 percent, in spite of increased fuel costs.
YOUR PARAGRAPH:
Lesson 16
Step 3 to More Informative Paragraphs -- Take it Easy Through Technically Dense Passages
In this Lesson:
Break up and expand technical terms How to handle mathematical formulas Replace technical terms with ordinary equivalents
Most of us see an example of mind-numbing technical density every day. It's the weather part of the TV news. The format is so familiar that we accept it without challenge. Most weather shows have just two or three minutes to present an incredible amount of information tailored simultaneously to hundreds of different local regions. The best they can do under such constraints is to present charts and diagrams designed to let each viewer pick out the information that applies to his locality. Unfortunately, these maps are cluttered with numbers and weather symbols that most people don't need or even understand. Instead of extracting the desired information, what most people do is go into a trance. When they wake up, they find themselves asking "What did he say about tomorrow's weather?" Much scientific and technical writing has the same numbing effect. The more technical terms there are in a passage, the more difficult it is to hold your reader's interest and the harder it is to understand. Most scientific and technical writing packs technical detail so densely that even the most interested and informed reader finds it difficult to follow without rereading. But how can you eliminate or soften the impact of all the specialized jargon that seems so essential in technical papers, without burdening your readers with prolonged explanations and definitions?
Two relatively easy ways you will practice here are to break up and expand technical terms to decrease their density and to eliminate as many technical terms as possible by replacing them with everyday equivalents.
A complete asymptotic analysis is carried out for the flow field produced by the instantaneous release of energy, at a point on the ground, in an isothermal atmosphere. A double-integral expression for the flow is constructed from the Laplace-Hankel transforms of the linearized equations. An asymptotic approximation to the integral is obtained by two successive applications of the method of stationary phase.
What he said was that he modeled the waves from an explosion in the atmosphere using a mathematical approximation to the equations governing the air's motions. The remaining specific details would be interesting to mathematicians, but even they might have to read it twice. Even if none of the technical terms was changed, however, the passage can be made more digestible just by breaking it up into shorter, active sentences and inserting some plain-English words. For example:
Using a complete asymptotic analysis, I computed the flow field produced in an isothermal atmosphere by the instantaneous release of energy occurring at a point on the ground. Beginning with the linearized equations of motion, I first applied the Laplace-Hankel transforms to obtain a doubleintegral expressing the flow field. Then I twice used the method of stationary phase to obtain an asymptotic solution.
This may not be the exact meaning the author intended, but this reconstruction using the words he gave us certainly seems less frightening. Why? Go back over the paragraph and underline the phrases that have been added to the first version. The way the author wrote the first passage above assumed that his audience knew in advance what he was talking about. How often do you write as though you assumed your reader already understood what you have to say?
it is obvious that it can be shown that similarly thus it follows that after considerable manipulation define suppose that combining equations (3), (10) and (29), we obtain
If you write with a lot of mathematical formulas, try to put in at least an equal weight of English words to balance out the math. The best words to insert between formulas are explanations introduced by phrases like:
Often you face a decision about whether to state an idea or concept in English or in mathematical terms. If you feel more comfortable with mathematical symbols, you might be tempted to use mathematics where English would be easier to follow, and vice-versa. Many technical writers imagine that they're making a point more clearly and precisely by translating it into mathematical symbols. This seldom happens. Imagine instead that you're translating your information into a foreign language. Then ask yourself how many of your readers are actually fluent in that language.
Remember that the original reason for using mathematical formulas was to make things clearer, not more obscure. So the question to ask yourself when you're deciding whether to present an idea in English or in mathematical formulas is: which language is likely to enhance communication with your audience, and which is likely to obscure it? If you have written a paper or report with a high concentration of mathematical symbols and formulas, take a page from it and answer these questions about each formula on the page:
1. Was it really necessary to express this idea in mathematical symbols, or could you have made your point more clearly using English words? 2. Have you adequately defined all your symbols? 3. Have you clearly explained the significance of this step in the development of your paper? 4. Does this formula contribute to the mainstream logic of your paper, or is is just a detour in a mathematical derivation that could be in an appendix? 5. Try writing a sentence beginning with This means that ... following each formula. Does that help clarify things?
Here is an example of technical writing that expresses complex mathematical concepts in a nonthreatening way. It is from Wind Waves by Blair Kinsman (Prentice-Hall, 1965).
Suppose that h(t) is the surface elevation of the water measured at some fixed point x for all time (t equals minus infinity to plus infinity). It is obvious that a knowledge of h(t) is beyond human compass. Instead -- neglecting the signature of an imperfect instrument -- what we can hope to know is the truncated function h'(t) given by h'(t) = h(t) for |t| < or = T and h'(t) = 0 for |t| > T The reference time t=0 has been centered on the sample length, which is 2T. This formulation suggests that we consider that, during the period of measurement, the truncated function coincides with the water elevation and that outside the period of measurement it be defined as identically zero. Do not be alarmed. The equation above does
not say that there are no waves when you are not observing them. It is really descriptive of your state of knowledge of the waves, which is zero when you're not looking at them and h(t) when you are. The concept here is certainly much less artificial than the one that repeats the record at exactly at intervals 2T, so that a Fourier series analysis can be made. Since T is finite and the waves, h(t), never become infinite, h'(t) can be integrated.
You may not appreciate the beautiful clarity of this passage unless you have a background in Fourier analysis and have stumbled through fog that pervades almost all mathematical writing. Kinsman's book is a fine example of clear yet precise scientific writing in a personal style that informs by involving the reader.
The heat energy transferred between two bodies is proportional to the difference in temperature between the bodies and the thermal conductivity of the material interface between them.
If your background is in engineering or physics, you didn't have any trouble with the passage, because you've been trained to express technical concepts in that stilted style. You may be comfortable with it, and so may other technical people, but what about the uninitiated? We can say the same thing without so many technical terms:
More heat flows from a hot body toward a colder body if the temperature difference between the two is large and if they are joined by a good conductor of heat.
To be sure, many technical terms are the only way to make precise definitions and distinctions. But many others are just obscure ways to say ordinary things. How many you use depends on the level of technical precision you need to communicate and how familiar your readers are with technical terms. Writing the above passage for engineers, for example, you may need to mention the concept of thermal conductivity explicitly and even add a formula that quantifies the heat transferred. For a lay audience, on the other hand, both would be superfluous.
As a rule, it's a good idea to use no more technical terms than your least educated reader will understand. You can put more technical details for your sophisticated readers in an appendix or as a hypertext link. In this exercise, find simpler ways to say what these technical sentences are trying to say:
At its maximum ceiling, the aircraft may exceed its operational safety envelope.
The concentration of contaminants was such that the optical properties of the fluid prevented significant light transmission.
Changing the tuning parameters may result in transmitter emissions that exceed FCC standards for frequency stability.
The probability of detecting missiles with the new radar has been marginal because of effective enemy countermeasures.
Find an article you have written that deals with technical concepts and circle as many technical terms as you can. Then make a table that lists each technical term, followed by an ordinary, nontechnical word that means the same thing. List some of your substitutions here:
Lesson 17
A TEMPORAL SEQUENCE: for emphasizing the time relations among things or events:
Examples:
A SPATIAL SEQUENCE: when you want your reader to see the way different aspects of your subject
are spatially interrelated or lie in contrast: Examples:
STEPS OF A PROCESS: when you want to focus on a process itself, not the end result:
Examples:
INCREASING COMPLEXITY: a sequence that leads your readers gently into a complex subject:
Examples:
DECREASING ORDER OF IMPORTANCE: when you want to tell your readers that
something new has happened and why they should be interested -- then fill them in on the details: Examples: Whatever sequence you select for your purpose and audience, a good way to make sure that your sequence is, in fact, logical is to make sure the connectives are there. If they aren't, and if you can't work them in, let that be a signal that your sequence is not a logical one. Here's an exercise to make you think about the right logical sequence for presenting various kinds of information. Write in the blank following each subject the sequence you would choose from the list above. Make up a sequence of your own, if you think it is more appropriate. Some complex subjects require more than one sequence, one nested inside another. Mention such cases, where appropriate. Also be aware that you might use different logical arrangements of the same material when writing for different audiences.
A memo telling the programming staff how to submit jobs to the new computer A press release describing your new video camera A proof of a mathematical theorem A technical report documenting a computer program for controlling a milling machine A proposal to the National Science Foundation asking them to fund your genetic research A description of improvements to a steelmaking process A summary of the results of the latest census A journal paper describing your discovery of a new drug for curing acne A technical report analyzing the effects of the solar cycle on climate A trip report An instruction manual for your word-processor A report to the President on national unemployment statistics
Notice that there are no ironclad "right" answers to these questions. The way you arrange ideas for one audience may not work for another. In the end, you have to decide which arrangement best matches your readers' needs. You will be better equipped to do that if you keep all the choices in mind, rather than being locked into one. Examine each arrangement and assess how each one serves your purpose in writing.
Lesson 18
How did scientific and technical writing get so impersonal? Does impersonal mean objective? Bureaucracies stifle personal expression Why put people into your writing? Who dunnit? How to put people into your writing Some warnings about personal style Why fight it? How to convince your boss
In this lesson, you will learn that if you put people into your writing, you will not only create a closer link with your readers, but you will also make your message easier for them to understand. What is impersonal writing? It means simply that your writing has no people in it. Experiments are done. Results get interpreted. Decisions are made. No one makes them. In personal writing, people play an important role -- not just individuals, but any group, such as a company, a committee or institution.
The new administrative policy shall be to reimburse the use of private automobiles at a rate of 8 cents a mile.
I have decided that anyone who uses his private automobile on company business shall be reimbursed at a rate of 8 cents a mile.
Which one is easier to understand and remember? Of course, you may sometimes want to issue orders that you want accepted without argument. Then which form would you use?
You see, then .... that a beautiful cup is formed. As the air comes to the candle it moves upward by the force of the current which the heat of the candle produces, and it so cools all the sides of the wax, tallow, or fuel, as to keep the edge much cooler than the part within; the part within melts by the flame that runs down the wick as far as it can go before it is extinguished, but the part on the outside does not melt. If I made a current in one direction, my cup would be lop-sided, and the flud would consequently run over, -- for the same force of gravity which holds worlds together holds this fluid in a horizontal position, and if the cup be not horizontal, of course the fluid will run away in guttering .... You see now why you would have had such a bad time if you were to burn these beautiful candles that I have shown you, which are irregular, intermittent in their shape, and cannot therefore have that nicely formed edge to the cup which is the great beauty in a candle. I hope you will now see that the perfection of a process -that is its utility -- is the better point of beauty about it.
Although written over a hundred years ago, this passage remains interesting and informative today, partly because it reveals the personal involvement Faraday felt in his work. Would you say that this passage lacks objectivity?
Somehow, as science and technology became institutionalized, and as governments, large institutions and corporations took control, the roles of individuals in science and technology has faded. This diminished visibility is reflected in the disappearance of personalities from technical literature today.
is excessively formal is impersonal and convoluted avoids responsibility and accountability is anonymous overuses acronyms and jargon seems to be written from the writer's, not the readers' point of view
If your writing has these characteristics, you may be contributing to the problem rather than its solution.
WHO DUNNIT?
People who write regulations, especially those pertaining to compex technology, have to be more sensitive to the needs of those who have to comply with them. From the isolation and anonymity of
a bureaucracy, it's easy to write regulations that are filled with legal jargon and gobbledygook that only a lawyer can decode. How many of the rules, standards, and regulations that you have to write would be approved by a committee of 12-year olds? I once thought it would be a good idea for all government and corporate regulations to have their originator's name and phone number forever attached to them, so that anyone who wanted to question their wisdom could go immediately and directly to the source. How would you write rules differently, if this were so?.
The most important reason for making your writing more personal is that it makes it more understandable. Impersonal writing is simply less informative.
Here's an excerpt from an instruction manual for assembling an electronic kit. There are three versions. One is totally impersonal. The second has some personal nouns in it, but uses the third person. The third version is very personal and uses the second person, which is often useful in instruction manuals. Read all three and decide which one you would rather use to put this kit together.
IMPERSONAL: Assembly of the final amplifier stage is not difficult if all the steps are followed. After mounting the tuning coil and capacitor on the board, the assembly is secured in the fixture so the remaining parts can be soldered to the board. Then the amplifier components are removed from their plastic bag and placed with their numbered sides up on the table next to the fixture. As each numbered part is called for, its leads are trimmed to the specified length and soldered to the bottom side of the board in the location indicated in the diagram. PERSONAL (THIRD PERSON): Anyone can assemble the final amplifier stage, if he follows all the steps carefully. After mounting the tuning coil and capacitor on the board, he secures the assembly in the fixture so he can solder the remaining parts to the board. Then he removes the amplifier components from their plastic bag and places them with their numbered sides up on the table next to the fixture. As each numbered part is called for, he trims the leads to the specified length and solders them to the bottom side of the board in the location indicated in the diagram. PERSONAL (SECOND PERSON): You won't have any trouble assembling the final amplifier stage, if you follow all the steps carefully. After you mount the tuning coil and capacitor on the board, secure the assembly in the fixture so you can solder the remaining parts to the board. Remove the amplifier components from their plastic bag and place them with their numbered sides up on the table next to the fixture. As each step asks you for a numbered part, trim its leads to the specified length and solder it to the bottom side of the board where the diagram shows you.
Don't you agree that the personal versions are much easier to understand, because you identify with the people mentioned. In the third version, the link with the reader is especially strong, because the personal words are you. Which instructions would you prefer to follow?
Here are some more examples of impersonal writing and some rewrites that show how to put people into your writing. Study these examples, and mark the personal subjects in the rewritten versions with your blue highlighter pen. Notice as you read them how the personal versions are easier to understand because people get into the act.
IMPERSONAL: Several tests were conducted on the new rifle. PERSONAL: I conducted several tests on the new rifle. IMPERSONAL: The possibility of an increase in orders for the new tanks was considered likely,
according to the generals. PERSONAL: Most of the generals interviewed said there would be more orders for the new tanks. IMPERSONAL: In the research program, the effects of radiation on birth defects in mice were studied. PERSONAL: In this project, researchers wanted to find out how radiation affects birth defects in mice. IMPERSONAL: The situation in the case of the malfunctioning computer is expected to be resolved by Monday. PERSONAL: Jackie says the computer will be fixed by Monday. IMPERSONAL: If success is not achieved on the first attempt, it is recommended that similar procedures be instituted afterward. PERSONAL: If at first you don't succeed, try again. Did you mark I, generals, researchers, Jackie and you with your blue marker? Here's an interesting exercise: Go back over the five examples above and mark also all the passive verbs (pink), the abstract nouns (green) and the prepositional phrases (yellow). Do you see how the impersonal versions also contain the most of these other undesirable elements? Notice how they all tend to attract each other, so that as you change one the others begin to go away, too. Making your writing more personal makes it easier to avoid all the other pitfalls of foggy sentence construction we have covered in earlier lessons. Do this short exercise to practice expressing yourself in a more personal way. Replace each of the impersonal phrases below with a more personal version by adding some person or group of people to the action:
It is concluded that
It is believed that
Look out for sentences that begin with it or there and also the use of the word one as a substitute for some person. These are reliable flags of impersonal construction. Now -- here are some impersonal sentences for you to rewrite. They will give you practice removing the impersonal constructions and indicating clearly who is responsible for the actions. Try, at the same time, to remove as many of the passive verbs, abstract nouns and prepositional phrases as you can:
It is expected that many orders will be received for the new cubes in the course of the year.
An increase of 50 percent in range is anticipated as a result of the installation of the new transmitter.
This memo is to announce the appointment of Dr. Anthrax to the position of director of the biological hazards branch.
To determine the effects of humidity on the speed of sound, a series of measurements was undertaken.
During television antenna installation, it is recommended that the lead-in be routed away from metal objects.
Find a paragraph or so of your own scientific or technical writing and mark with your blue highlighter all the personal nouns you find. If you don't see any such references, your writing is too impersonal. Rewrite your paragraph in the space below, just as you did the 8 sentences above. Replace each impersonal subject with the doer of the action. If you have trouble putting people into your writing, ask yourself who are the people behind the subject you're writing about.
When you use them, be sure you make it clear to your reader who is making that judgment, and be clear and quantitative about the measure of value. How significant? How accurate? Compared with what? The best way to clarify these value judgments is to give clear examples.
as personal. Writing can certainly be personal without violating standards and protocols that govern any formal communications.
Lesson 19
How important are your illustrations? Why authors neglect their illustrations Use captions to inform When to use tables
In this chapter, you'll learn how important your illustrations and tables are in getting your ideas across, and how to make them clear, informative and to-the-point. However, I won't cover details of actually preparing illustrations, such as how to draw graphs and which kinds of charts are best for which
information. There are lots of books to help you do that. One is Writing and Speaking in the Technology Professions, edited by David Beer (IEEE Press, 1992). The same analytical principles we've applied to writing apply to your illustrations as well. Be sure you have a clear and practical reason for including each figure and table, and that you're not just throwing something in because you have it lying around. Ask what purpose you want it to serve, and how you want your reader to respond to it. What questions might it raise? Are you presenting information that is easier to understand pictorially than in words? Answer these questions before you begin preparing your drawings, and you will stand a better chance of tuning your illustrations to your readers' needs.
The most important thing to remember about your illustrations is: keep them simple and let each one make only a single point.
If you have more than one main point to make, use separate figures for each.
Probability distribution of energy vs. distance from the earth (see text).
or
Here are some simple guidelines for writing informative figure captions:
1. Use complete sentences. 2. Try to make your illustrations as well as their captions self-sufficient, not depending on the text to be understood. 3. Explain the significance of all the information shown in the figure. If necessary, repeat and summarize some of the information from the text in the caption.
The captions in Scientific American are beautiful examples of self-sufficiency. You can always get a good idea of what each paper is about just by looking at its illustrations and reading their captions. Scientific American's captions are much longer than those of most papers in technical journals and business reports, because they contain much more information. Here are a couple of exercises to give you practice writing informative captions. Write an informative caption for this figure using the information and guidelines above. It is from a National Science Foundation report and shows how federal research funding is divided among scientific disciplines.
Here's another figure from the same NSF report. It shows public levels of confidence in various institutions. Write an informative caption for this figure.
Does each figure appear near the One kind of information that you can present better in a table than place in the text that refers to it, so in any other form is detailed specifications that depend on two or that the reader doesn't have to flip more variables. One example is a matrix that shows the features of pages? several new models of handheld calculators. If models are listed at the beginning of each row and the features listed at the head of each column, then a check mark in each "cell" shows at a glance which calculators have a desired
feature, or which features a given calculator has. A potential buyer can compare features at a glance, instead of wasting his time flipping through separate lists of specifications. More detailed information can be put in each cell, for example, if you want to describe the specifications of a number of radar installations. You could list each installation at the beginning of each line and tabulate things like frequency, beamwidth, modulation, range, and antenna type at the head of each column. In each cell there's room to put a brief description or specification, so that the reader can easily select or compare the specifications he's interested in. Other kinds of tables tend to look like the phone book. Few readers will bother to extract the information you've buried in them unless you make it easy for them to zero in on exactly what they're looking for. Avoid tables, if you can. Look at the figures and tables that illustrate a paper or report you have written. Apply the tests from the checklist above, answer all the questions, and note any improvements you could make.
Lesson 20
Started
In this Lesson:
How to avoid habits that trigger writing blocks Your friend, the tape recorder How to get ideas down on paper A word about word processors Card tricks -- a poor man's word processor Sorting it into logical sections
This lesson is about the mechanics of getting your words down on paper and avoiding some of the sidetracks and pitfalls that can get you bogged down in the details.
The easiest way to avoid that kind of block is to change something about the environment in which the block occurs. If sitting in a particular chair does it, change chairs -- or stand up. Or go for a walk. If some kind of lighting or some sounds do it, change them. If writing with a pencil does it, type or dictate on tape. Be creative in coming up with new writing environments that don't trigger the blocking experience. Often it's just a matter of putting distractions out of reach. Another strategy for getting around blocks is to find or recreate environments where you have done your most inspired and productive work. Not just the physical environment but your whole frame of mind. How can you apply those resources to the task at hand? Form a picture of your finished product and describe to yourself in detail how it will look, what people might say as they respond to it, and how you will feel when you finish it. What do you need to do now to produce the product that will get those responses? Sometimes you might feel blocked just because you can't think of what to do next. Don't worry if you sit down to write and have no specific plan and don't know where to begin. Begin anywhere and sort it out later. The specific procedures I've covered already (such as the many checklists I've given you) will help you out there.
You can jot rough ideas down quickly, as they occur to you, and polish or amplify them later. You can transcribe your thoughts and ideas almost as quickly as you can think. You can revise easily by moving and copying sentences, paragraphs, and sections. You can easily experiment with layout and typographical options, like bold, italics, font face and size. You don't have to worry about gaps. Fill them in later. It's easy to tinker with and fine tune wording. You can worry less about spelling and punctuation and concentrate on ideas. You can easily write down all the details, then throw away the nonessential ones later. It's easy to incorporate reviewers' changes .
As you get comfortable with the mechanics of writing with a word processor, practice and cultivate these new skills as well.
Shuffling sentences, even paragraphs and sections, suddenly becomes very easy, and you will become aware that other sentence orders may make more sense than the one you started out with. You can, of course, write your sentences and sections in any order, as a thought occurs to you, and assemble them later. Some people who have tried this scheme catch on quickly and find that it greatly simplifies their writing tasks. Others hate it. They complain that they have trouble maintaining the same mental picture of continuity that they can with a page full of text. If this is a problem for you, you can lay out your written cards in a column on your desk. The visual image then differs only slightly from a handwritten page. If someone else types for you from the cards, you can make minor changes as usual on the typescript. Make major changes (rewriting a long paragraph, for example) by attaching a small card deck to the typescript at the point of change, or by making a notation such as "Insert deck A". Also, you might want to number the cards as insurance against dropping the deck. You can use standard file-card boxes to store your cards and often recall old modules into new service, as new documents require some "boilerplate" text you have written before.
"The difference between the almost-right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning." - Mark Twain
Lesson 21
Don't be afraid to cut How to design your writing so it looks easy to read Make your section titles more informative Should you worry about sexism in your writing? Should you use readability formulas? The trouble with readability formulas Getting it all together -- a final checklist Some practice passages
Editing is where you find out how good you are at putting yourself in someone else's shoes and figuring out what your reader needs. Your job as editor is to go through your paper and read it from
your reader's point of view. Cut out or change those things that don't help your reader find the information she's looking for.
Introduction Background
But why not make them more informative? How about section titles like:
Earlier studies of public responses to storm warnings Full-wave solution to the boundary-value problem Humidity profiles measured by radiometers Aluminum cable is stronger and lighter Three reasons for switching to digital thermometers How can we improve the color of our beer?
Look through this course and notice the chapter and section titles. Do you think they work well as signposts to tell you where you are and what's going to happen next? The best way to select a title for your sections is to ask yourself what each one's message is, and then think of the best way to tell your reader in a few words what she's going to find out as he reads that section.
Each department head should file his or her progress report by May 15th.
becomes simply
The chairman of the new committee will have his work cut out for him.
When the engineer reads the gauge, he must not allow his body heat to affect the measurement.
If the patient misses his insulin injection, he could easily go into shock.
The serviceman who installed this new modem didn't know what he was doing.
The foreman said that each cowboy would be given his own cow.
Another way is to continue to use him, her, etc., but alternate them randomly, where appropriate.
accept like a revelation from heaven. So about 50 years ago, writers and educators began trying to come up with a mathematical formula to compute the readability of written text. The earliest formulas were based on the intuitive notion that readability had something to to with the average length of sentences and the number of long words, and also with how many "familiar" words are used. Competing formulas were developed, some simple, others complex. Some were "tested" in reading laboratories, even though no one could say exactly how readability could be objectively measured. One of the most popular and easy-to-use readability formulas was developed by Robert Gunning. He aptly called it the Fog Index. The higher your Fog Index, the foggier your writing. To make the numbers easy to remember, Gunning designed his formula to give the grade level or number of years of education required to read a passage comfortably. It's easy to use and compute because it simply estimates the average sentence length and the average number of long words in a passage. For example, a passage with a Fog Index of 6 could be easily read by a child with a sixth-grade education, whereas one with a Fog Index of 17 is at graduate-school level. Gunning argued that most people feel comfortable reading material whose Fog Index is 10 or lower, and the lower the better. The Bible, for example, tests at 6th or 7th grade level. People magazine scores a 6, and the Reader's Digest and the front page of the Wall Street Journal get a 9.
What do you think readability formulas leave out? I suggest that you forget them and concentrate instead on the real attributes of clear, analytical writing -- the ones we've covered in the earlier lessons of this course. The following checklist will help you remember them all.
4. OVERALL ORGANIZATION CHECK ARE YOUR RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS PLAINLY STATED AND PLACED WHERE ANYONE CAN EASILY FIND THEM? ARE THE "WHAT" AND "WHY" EXPLAINED IN YOUR OPENING PARAGRAPHS? IS INTRODUCTORY AND HISTORICAL MATERIAL ARRANGED TO SUPPORT THE NEW DEVELOPMENTS? ARE DETAILS ARRANGED IN DESCENDING ORDER OF IMPORTANCE? HAVE YOU ANSWERED THE QUESTION "SO WHAT?" AT THE END? ARE YOUR ILLUSTRATIONS AND THEIR CAPTIONS SELF-CONTAINED AND INFORMATIVE? HAVE YOU MADE YOUR WRITING EASY TO READ BY BREAKING IT UP INTO SMALL UNITS, EACH WITH AN INFORMATIVE HEADING? ...AND REMEMBER... THESE CATALOG Prepositional phrases Simple sentences Abstract nouns Passive verbs Impersonal style THESE ANALYZE Dependent clauses Complex sentences Concrete nouns Active verbs Personal style
PASSAGE NO. 1 The business or technical writing teacher can mitigate against his pragmatic students' recalcitrance toward language studies by pointing out the utility of knowing how to write well. However, rather than turning to hackneyed arguments or to literary evidence, he can motivate students more effectively by turning to compelling testimonials from leaders in business and industry, to appropriate personal experiences, and to
stimulating classroom strategies that emphasize the importance of language ability in career, social, and civic aspirations. The lively use of such readily available resources can improve student attitude toward the course and should thus improve student performance. PASSAGE NO. 2 For the purpose of continually improving an English teacher training program, an attempt was made to research the expected competencies of reading instructors in relation to technical report writers. Interviews were conducted with those involved in the teaching of technical report writing. The interviews reflected very little familiarity with reading instruction at the college level. The results were coupled with current research findings on training and duties of college reading instructors. This suggested a possible strategy for improving services to technical report writing students. PASSAGE NO. 3
Here is a passage from a popular scientific journal:
A birefringent material has a "fast" axis and a "slow" one. The index of refraction depends on how the light is polarized when it passes through the material. The index is higher if the light is polarized parallel to the slow axis and lower if it is polarized parallel to the fast axis. Suppose linearly polarized light (light polarized along a single axis perpendicular to the ray) is directed through the birefringent material with its axis of polarization at an angle to both the slow and the fast axis of the material. The polarization can be separated mathematically into two components, one parallel to the slow axis and one
to the fast. These two waves are in phase when they entered the material, but because of the different indexes of refraction they probably emerge with a different phase relation. The result is that the emerging light probably has a polarization different from that of the incident light. The new polarization might still be linear but with the axis of polarization oriented differently. The emerging light could also be circularly or elliptically polarized, which means that the axis of polarization rotates about the light ray as the light passes. PASSAGE NO. 4
The following article written by Susan E. Ross (The Washington Post) provides an excellent and humorous writing sample for you to practice translating pretentious governmentese into everyday English:
A BUREAUCRAT'S GUIDE TO CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES Total Lead Time: 35 minutes. Input Modules: 1 cup packed brown sugar 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1/2 cup softened butter 1/2 cup shortening 2 eggs 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 12-oz package semi-sweet chocolate pieces 1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans Guidance: After procurement actions, decontainerize inputs. Perform measurement tasks on a case-by-case basis. In a mixing-type bowl, impact heavily on brown
sugar, granulated sugar, softened butter and shortening. Coordinate the interface of eggs and vanilla, avoiding an overrun scenario to the best of your skills and abilities. At this point in time, leverage flour, baking soda and salt into a bowl and aggregate. Equalize with prior mixture and develop intense and continuous liaison among inputs until well coordinated. Associate key chocolate and nut subsystems and execute stirring operations. Within this time frame, take action to prepare the heating environment for throughput by manually setting the oven baking unit by hand to a temperature of 375 degrees Fahrenheit (190 degrees Celsius). Drop mixture in an ongoing fashion from a teaspoon implement onto an ungreased cookie sheet at intervals sufficient enough apart to permit total and permanent separation of throughputs to the maximum extent practicable under operating conditions. Position cookie sheet in a bake situation and surveil for 8 to 10 minutes or until cooking action terminates. Initiate coordination of output within the cooking rack function. Containerize, wrap in red tape and disseminate to authorized staff personnel on a timely and expeditious basis. Output: Six dozen official government chocolate-chip cookie units. PASSAGE NO. 5
These paragraphs are from a National Bureau of Standards monograph:
The quality of time and frequency information depends ultimatey on two things: the quality of the clocks that generate the information, and the
fidelity of the information channels that disseminate the information. There is not much point in building better clocks if the face of the clock is covered by a muddy glass. In a sense, we might think of the world's standards labs as the wholesalers of time, and the world's standard time and frequency broadcast stations as the primary distribution channels to the users of time at the retail level. Let's explore the possibility of better dissemination systems for the future. At present the distribution of time and frequency information is a mixed bag. We have broadcasts such as WWV, dedicated primarily to disseminating time and frequency information; and we have navigation signals such as Loran-C, which indirectly provide time information, because the system itself cannot work without it. The advantage of a broadcast such as WWV is that the time information is in a form that is optimized for the users. The signal contains time ticks and voice announcements of time in a readily usable form of information. The formats of navigation signals, on the other hand, are optimized for the purposes of navigation, and the time information is in a somewhat buried form, not so easily used. From the point of view of efficient use of the radio spectrum, we would like to have one signal serve as many uses as possible. But such a multipurpose signal puts greater demand on the user. He must extract from the signal only that information of interest to him, and then translate it into a form that serves his purpose. In the past, the philosophy has generally been to broadcast information in a form that closely approximates the users' needs, so that processing at the users' end is minimized. This means that the receiving equipment can be relatively simple, and therefore inexpensive. But such an approach is wasteful of the radio spectrum, which is a limited resource. Today, with the development of transistors, large-scale integrated circuits, and
mini and micro computers, complicated equipment of great sophistication can be built at modest cost. This development opens the door to using radio space more efficiently, since the user can now afford the equipment required to extract and mold information to his own needs. PASSAGE NO. 6
This is actually a collection of sentences extracted from a government manual of specifications for government jobs. As you read through them, you may understand better why the Federal bureaucracy is in such a mess. Warning: Some of these passages may not be translatable into plain English with only the information supplied.
The requirements for this position reflect the fact that proficiency in application of knowledge and skills at a given level indicates probability of success in similar work at the next higher level.... Many data-processing applications are tailored to the specific requirements of one or more distinct functions at an individual facility; however, an increasing number of applications are developed as comprehensive systems which integrate many functions previously considered separate and distinct.... Judgment is required in selecting the appropriate guidelines for use in a specific situation and in recognizing the occasional situation where existing guidelines cannot be applied.... Individual jobs vary in the specificity, applicability and availability of the guidelines for performance of assignments.... Decisions regarding what needs to be done are complicated by the novel or obscure nature of the problems and/or the special requirements for organization and coordination that are characteristic of projects at this level....
Completed work is reviewed for its effectiveness in meeting user requirements, accuracy of estimated timeframes and projected problem areas, and achievement of harmonious relationships in coordinating the project with other groups.... The assignments consist of various tasks involving different methods and procedures.... The employee must analyze plans to discern deviations or other situations that have a bearing on the choice among established techniques for carrying out the asignment.... The employee plans and carries out the successive steps involved and handles problems and deviations in accordance with agency standards, previous training, established practices, or system controls, as appropriate in the application or specialty area. PASSAGE NO. 7
This is an abstract of a technical talk on "Measurement of wind and temperature with laser light":
Quasielastic scattering of light in the atmosphere is discussed. The velocity can be obtained by aerosol scattering; the temperature from molecular scattering. A diffraction-limited lidar is explained and some virtues given. Laser velocity measuring techniques are briefly reviewed. The effect of the optical wavelength is emphasized. A time-of-flight configuration is described. Examples of transverse velocity measurements with very good spatial and temporal resolutions are given. A system for measuring vertical temperature profiles in the troposphere is presently being investigated. The basic principles and comments on initial observations are given. LESSON SUMMARY AND WHERE WE GO FROM HERE
Put at least as much time and work into editing your writing as you did writing the first draft. This is where you refine your crude product and mold it to the specific purpose you want to accomplish and to the specific needs of your reader. The checklist in this lesson gives you a systematic framework for editing using the principles of analytical writing you've learned in this course. Avoid gender-linked references if you can, but don't use awkward wording that calls attention to the problem. If you find readability formulas useful, use them to flag passages that need defogging, but never use them as a writing tool. The next and last lesson shows you how to include your readers in your writing a bit earlier than you may be used to doing. Getting direct feedback from your intended audience can save you a lot of rewriting and guarantees that you won't have any trouble getting it approved. "I am sorry for the length of my letter, but I had not the time to write a short one." -Blaise Pascal
Lesson 22
Get advance approvals in report-planning conferences Take conflicting views into account Who should read your drafts? Questions that help you anticipate your readers' responses The special case of instruction manuals Reporting negative or unpopular results How to benefit from feedback between your research and your writing
In this lesson, I'll show you how you can find out more about what your readers want by a simple strategy -- ask them. If someone misinterprets your carefully thought-out scientific paper, your first reaction might be, "What's wrong with him?" But the effect you intended is irrelevant if the effect you produced was entirely different.
The most important thing about any communication is the response it gets. Not the meaning or effect you intend, but the actual response produced.
To find out what responses you're getting, you need feedback. Many writers regard no feedback as the most desirable outcome of their writing. If no one gripes about their reports and papers, they assume that their writing has been successful. No news is good news. Everyone has certain routine writing chores that they approach in this way, but if you maintain this kind of isolation in your important writing, you're sure to miss the target more often than you hit it. Getting advance feedback from your readers is, of course, much easier if your readers are accessible. If you're writing a report to the management of your own organization, you can actually talk to them and find out what they're looking for. (Yes, you really can!). This will usually save you (and them) lots of time and trouble. Try it and see! If some of your readers are not directly accessible, you can ask yourself questions that anticipate their responses.
command). If so, you can always set up a conference, offering to include anyone who might feel left out. They may decline, but at least you asked them! Then they won't feel left out. If you have a large, important document to prepare, you should definitely call report-planning conferences that get together all the people involved at the same time. Because meetings are notorious time-wasters, you have to keep it short and to-the-point. It helps to write an agenda on the board or hand one out, so everyone knows what they're there for. Begin by stating the overall purpose of the document and get agreement on that first. This is where it's easy to get off the track and into peripheral discussions, so you have to keep the proceedings on target. Point to the agenda as a reminder if the discussion wanders. Then present your outline and explain how you intend to treat each topic, then ask for feedback. You'll usually get plenty. Write down all the feedback and make sure you take it into account in your new outline and your next draft. A checklist can be useful for noting the comments you get and to make sure you cover everything. If your document is a major one, you should call several meetings as work proceeds, to make sure you're keeping on-track, that your technical conclusions are sound, and that no one's views are being disregarded. Instead of passing out large drafts of your document (which no one will read anyway), summarize the important issues and how you've handled them. If you have to hand out the whole document, do it the day before the meeting and mark the parts that you want each person's feedback on. Assume that each person will read only the parts you mark.
ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS BEFORE YOUR READERS DO One of the first questions your readers expect answered is "Why are you doing this?" Quickly establish the purpose or rationale behind the work you're reporting. When the title of your paper or a section promises certain information, your reader will be looking for it pretty soon thereafter. Whenever you raise a question in your writing, your reader will expect you to answer it soon, or at least explain how it can be answered. Whenever you pose a problem, he expects some kind of solution or at least some explanation why no solution is forthcoming.
Whenever you mention one element of a cause-effect pair, your reader will expect you to mention the other element. If you make some kind of general statement, it is reasonable to expect you to give some specific examples. When you present a lot of data, your reader will expect you to analyze and interpret it. If you take your reader through a complicated analysis, such as a mathematical development, you will be expected to provide a summary that tells what it all means. Most readers expect you to answer the question "SO WHAT?" at the end of your paper.
If you have trouble asking yourself all these questions while you're writing your first draft, you may find it easier during editing. Go through the list of expectations above and "trouble-shoot" a report or paper you have already written. Mark those places where you may have left some of your reader's questions unanswered.
Many user manuals, for all kinds of products, are actually written that way. Is there a better way? Let's see. What might happen if the user manual were written before the design team began to work on the program? Suppose our company hired a team of experienced word-processor operators. The team would sit down together and decide what's wrong with existing word-processing programs and what new features they want. Then they would proceed to specify exactly how it would function -- from the users' point of view. They would specify what every display and every message would look like on the screen, and what every command would do. Then they would write the first draft of the user manual -- in language they understand. This draft of the user manual would be the design specification the programmers would work from. Their job is to create the program that the manual was written for. Naturally, a few compromises and modifications are necessary, because of engineering limitations and new ideas that come up during the design, but the final version of the user manual will just be a cleaned-up version of that first design draft. Clear, effective user manuals require so much feedback from their intended users, that you should get them involved fully, not only in the document design, but also in the early stages of designing the product itself. Not every product can be completely designed by its users, but paying more attention to their needs will solve many of your documentation problems as well.
FIRST THE BAD NEWS: Our profits will be down in 1990 after two record-setting years. The recession is one of the reasons why. NOW THE GOOD NEWS: The other reason is we're giving up some of our earnings to invest more heavily in future growth.
We could add more than $2 a share to 1990 earnings just by holding research and development in oil and gas exploration spending to 1989 levels. But we're not going to do that. We're going to spend more on research and development than ever before. About $200 million. 32% more than last year. We're also increasing our capital spending to about $700 million. Up from about $609 million in 1989. And we've budgeted almost $3 billion for oil and gas exploration and development over then next five years. The way we figure it, the choices we're making now are going to pay off later. In the next decade, we expect our growth to be more and more profitable. Then we'll have nothing to tell you but good news. HOW TO BENEFIT FROM FEEDBACK BETWEEN YOUR RESEARCH AND YOUR WRITING
The usual approach to a research or engineering project is to first do the work and then write up the results. Do you remember that sequence when you took laboratory courses in school and then had to write the lab report for homework? But how often do you have the experience of writing up your results and, in the process of putting your thoughts down on paper, gaining new insights that you wish you had during the data-collection process? And how often, while writing up your results, do you find yourself rationalizing faulty procedures and apologizing for inadequate care during the data-collection phase? Usually such insights shed new light on what you were really trying to do. If you had them while you were working on the project, you might have significantly improved the experimental procedure. Because such insights usually come too late, they are sometimes called hindsight. But are they available only after the fact? What if you began writing your paper at the same time you began the project? Aren't the principles that should guide you in organizing and writing your paper the same principles that you should use in organizing and carrying out your scientific or engineering project? In both cases, your thoughts should run something like this:
1. How can I concisely define the problem I'm working on? 2. How will I know when I reach my objective? 3. How do I break down this problem into subproblems and questions of manageable size?
4. What specific procedures should I use to solve these subproblems? 5. What purpose will the results ultimately serve?
Many scientists and engineers wait until they've collected mountains of data, and it's time to write up the report, before asking these questions. At this stage, their minds are cluttered with facts, analyses, opinions and biases. They can't sort out the meaningful things to write because they have too much to say. Often they just write everything. The result is usually a paper that says no more than "See my wonderful data!" If, instead, you consciously and deliberately consider the questions above before the data begin to pour in, you'll not only be better equipped to perform a meaningful experiment, but you'll be half done organizing your report. These days, everyone has to submit some kind of plan or proposal before he can begin his project. Unfortunately, such plans are often so cluttered with grandiose promises, flow charts and budget requirements that the basic questions (like the ones listed above) are never addressed. If you have to write such plans and proposals, why not take the opportunity to begin the kind of thinking and organizing described above? If part of your job is reviewing and processing such proposals, you could do their proponents a favor by insisting that such information be clearly spelled out. When you begin your research prospectus, write a clear and lucid statement of the rationale, objectives and scope of your project. This statement or prospectus would be an excellent first draft of the introduction for your paper. While you're studying how far others have gotten on the problem, write your literature review. Before you actually begin your experiments, write out the detailed procedures you expect to follow. (Typically these are modified beyond recognition in the field, but comparing what you actually did with the original plan might be helpful to others who might later cover the same ground.) Once you determine how you will analyze the data, prepare the data shells and graphic presentations you expect to use. You may find it useful to imagine the most optimistic possible outcome of your project and to carry those results (in writing) through all their logical consequences and implications. What are you expecting others to do about your results? Are those expectations realistic? This sharpens your thinking about where you're going and may stimulate procedural changes. Your paper might well compare the expected outcome with the actual one. If you set up this kind of continuous feedback between your writing and your project, you'll find that your writing tasks are greatly simplified, and that your project itself flows more smoothly, too. If your project involves many people, they will appreciate being in on the rationale and plans behind it.
If your organization has a staff of editors to clean up your grammar, spelling, punctuation and rhetoric, consider yourself fortunate. Instead of regarding them as just another obstacle for your document to hurdle, use them to make your paper more presentable and free of formal errors. Many authors resent the red marks that come back on their manuscripts, and so they ignore all but obvious spelling or punctuation errors. But even though editors may not understand the technical details you're writing about, they usually are trained to recognize awkward or inappropriate wording, poor construction and convoluted or ambiguous sentences. Their red marks are signals that your writing is not as clear and readable as it could be. Take their suggestions seriously. They probably know more than you do about clear writing. Some editors, of course, are overly concerned with enforcing rigid grammatical rules. Others understand that minor rules can be broken in the interests of clarity. Sentence fragments, split infinitives and dangling participles are sometimes the best way to make a point. You, of course, must make the final decision.
LESSON SUMMARY
Because writing deprives you of direct feedback from your audience, it's a poor way to communicate. You can compensate for that missing feedback by contacting a sample of your audience in person and by learning how to ask yourself the questions they are likely to ask. Your supervisors are an important part of your audience, because they have to approve what you write. You can save everyone's time by finding out in advance what they're looking for. The quality of instruction and user manuals is particularly sensitive to feedback from their intended audiences. Such manuals can sometimes serve as design specifcations.
Afterword
We've covered a lot in a short time. Yet we've covered only a small part of what you'll need to learn to become a good writer. Learning how to write analytically is a complex job that demands clear thinking and hard work. You've not only had to learn and practice new skills, but you also had to change some deep-seated attitudes. I've been very careful to select only a few of the most powerful tools you'll need to begin making your writing clearer and more informative. That's because I think it's important for you to get started and see some of the rewards before you have time to get overwhelmed and discouraged by the size of the task. I've arranged this course to make it easy for you to take those tools with you, so you can refine your new skills on the job. To make that even easier, I've summarized the main points we've covered in the final checklist in Lesson 21. Use this checklist as you're writing, together with the checklists from Lesson 8 that appply to your particular writing tasks. After seeing so many examples of atrocious writing, you might enjoy reading some really outstanding technical writing. They're not easy to find, but here are three: Feynman, R.P., R.B. Leighton and M. Sands, "The Feynman Lectures on Physics," (3 vol.) Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., Reading, MA, 1963 (paperback). Kinsman, B., "Wind Waves -- Their Generation and Propagation on the Ocean Surface," PrenticeHall Pub. Co., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1965. Samuelson, P. A., "Economics", Mc Graw-Hill, New York, 1973 or later editions. If you're serious about learning how to write well, these books are worth buying, just for the inspiration they provide. As you notice your writing improving and getting easier, your colleagues should notice, too. Be sure to ask them what differences they see and what they like and don't like about your new writing habits. Don't take individual negative comments too seriously, unless you hear the same thing from several people. The reinforcement you get from their feedback is a vital part of your writing effort; the positive results your writing produces should encourage you to refine your skills even further.
To become a really good writer, you'll need to pay attention to the finer points of good grammar and usage. Lots of books cover that subject thoroughly. Look through the bibliography, or check your library. Remember, however, that the point of business and technical writing is to inform, not to conform to rules. Studying the examples of clear writing that you've collected (and building your collection) is probably a more efficient way to hone your writing skills than studying textbooks.
Bibliography
This is a list of books about business and/or technical writing that I have collected during my research on the subject. It doesn't include shorter articles and reports, which are far more numerous. Obviously, I haven't read them all, and many, of course, are part of the problem, rather than the solution. I have marked with an asterisk those which I have looked at carefully and which I think are particularly useful. You can also find a large list of books on technical writing at Amazon.com. I have added to this list a few books that don't deal with writing as such, but I regard them as models of clear technical writing. If you want to read articles about business and technical writing, there are several journals devoted to the subject, including the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Technical Communication, Journal of Business Communication, Industrial Communications, Journal of the American Society of Information Science, and the British Information Design Journal. Also, be sure to check out the many On-Line Resources for Writers.
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Blumenthal, L. SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS WRITING, Grosset and Dunlap, New York, 1976. Brown, H. M., BUSINESS REPORT WRITING, Van Nostrand Co., New York, 1980. *Brogan, J. A., CLEAR TECHNICAL WRITING, Mc Graw-Hill, New York, 1973. *Brusaw, C. T., G. J. Alred and W. E. Oliu, THE BUSINESS WRITER'S HANDBOOK, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1975. *Brusaw, C. T., G. J. Alred and W. E. Oliu, HANDBOOK OF TECHNICAL WRITING, St. Martin's Press, New York, l976. Charrow, V., WHAT IS "PLAIN ENGLISH," ANYWAY?, American Institutes for Research, Washington, DC, 1977. Classen, H. G., BETTER BUSINESS ENGLISH, Arco Pub. Co., New York, 1966. Colby, J. and J. A. Rice, WRITING TO EXPRESS, Burgess Pub. Co., Minneapolis, MN, 1977. Coleman, P. and K. Brambleby, THE TECHNOLOGIST AS WRITER -- AN INTRODUCTION TO TECHNICAL WRITING, Mc Graw-Hill, New York, 1969. Crouch, G. W. and R. L. Zetler, A GUIDE TO TECHNICAL WRITING, Roland Press, New York, 1964. Day, R. A., HOW TO WRITE AND PUBLISH A SCIENTIFIC PAPER, ISI Press, Philadelphia, PA, 1979. Ehrlich, E. and D. Murphy, THE ART OF TECHNICAL WRITING, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., New York, 1964. Elbow, P., WRITING WITHOUT TEACHERS, Oxford University Press, New York, 1973. Ellenbogen, A., LETTER PERFECT, Macmillan, New York, 1978. Emberger, M. R. and M. R. Hall, SCIENTIFIC WRITING, Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York, 1955. Ewing, D. W., WRITING FOR RESULTS -- IN BUSINESS, GOVERNMENT, THE SCIENCES, THE PROFESSIONS, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1979. Fear, D. E., TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION, Foresman and Co., Glenview, IL, 1977. *Feynman, R. P., R. B. Leighton and M. Sands, THE FEYNMAN LECTURES ON PHYSICS, AddisonWesley Pub. Co.,Reading, MA, 1963. Flesch, R., THE ART OF PLAIN TALK, Harper and Row, New York, 1946. Flesch, R., THE ART OF READABLE WRITING, Harper and Row, New York, 1949. Flesch, R. and A. H. Lass, A NEW GUIDE TO BETTER WRITING, Fawcett Popular Library, 1949.
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*Kinsman, B., WIND WAVES, THEIR GENERATION AND PROPAGATION ON THE OCEAN SURFACE, Prentice-Hall Pub. Co., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1965. Lannon, J.M., TECHNICAL WRITING, Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 1979. Lynch, B. and C. Chapman, WRITING FOR COMMUNICATION IN SCIENCE AND MEDICINE, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., NY, 1980. Mack, K. and E. Skjei, OVERCOMING WRITING BLOCKS, J.P.Tarcher, Inc., Los Angeles, CA, 1979. Mandel, S., WRITING FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Dell Pub. Co., New York, 1970. Mathes, J.C. and D.W. Stevenson, DESIGNING TECHNICAL REPORTS -- WRITING FOR AUDIENCES IN ORGANIZATIONS, Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis, 1976. *Menzel, D. H., H. M. Jones and L. G. Bond, WRITING A TECHNICAL PAPER, Mc Graw-Hill, New York, 1961. Mills, G. H. and J. A. Walter, TECHNICAL WRITING, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1978. Mitchell, J. H., WRITING FOR TECHNICAL AND PROFESSIONAL JOURNALS, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1968. Monroe, J., EFFECTIVE RESEARCH AND REPORT WRITING IN GOVERNMENT, Mc Graw-Hill, New York, 1980. *Monroe, J., C. Meredith and K. Fisher, THE SCIENCE OF SCIENTIFIC WRITING, Kendall/Hunt Pub. Co., Dubuque, IA, 1977. Moore, R. H., HANDBOOK OF EFFECTIVE WRITING, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1966. Morris, J. E., PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL WRITING, Mc Graw-Hill, New York, 1966. *Murray, M. W., ENGINEERED REPORT WRITING, Petroleum Pub. Co., Tulsa, OK, 1969. *Newman, E., STRICTLY SPEAKING, Warner Books, New York, 1974. Newman, E., A CIVIL TONGUE, Warner Books, New York, 1977. Norgaard, M., A TECHNICAL WRITER'S HANDBOOK, Harper and Row, New York, 1959. Pauley, S., TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING TODAY, Houghton-Mifflin Co., Boston, l973. Paxson, W. C., THE BUSINESS WRITING HANDBOOK, Bantam Books, NY, l98l. Perlmutter, J. H., A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE WRITING, Delta Books, Dell Pub. Co., New York, 1965. Provost, G., MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT, Writers' Digest Books, New York, l980.
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