This is page 41 from Client-Pleasing Reports and Communications. Enjoy! Feel free to e-mail me at christabedwin at gmail.com if you have any questions.
An editing colleague saw that I specialize in teaching engineers and scientists to write, and she asked me some provocative questions, and then asked if I would turn it into a blog post. I would be happy to answer if you have any further questions—please find me on LinkedIn. Q: Why would an editor want to teach engineers to write? Because it’s so much fun! Engineers are extremely thoughtful, always looking at a problem from a number of angles, and challenging dogmatic ideas. This matches my own approach to life and to language, so I love discussing English with engineers. Conversations with high-IQ people are great. You just won’t get the same level of analysis from a room full of literature majors, who have been trained in a completely different way of thinking. I love the engineering approach to language. Engineers are taught to invent, to innovate, to question. And isn’t that essentially exactly the same process editors go through when they edit? Ergo, if you ask me, edit...
At universities and in high school English classes, there is sometimes a perception that whoever uses the longest or most words looks smartest. However, in industry, whoever makes the client happiest by having the easiest, clearest documents, looks best! Unfortunately, technical writing is not poetry. In fact, sometimes, when I'm editing the technical writing of Spanish or French first-language speakers, I find myself revising particularly beautiful, flowery phrases to something much more boring. But technical clients just want simplicity. Let your diagrams and your data speak for themselves. Here’s a nice logical if-then statement for you: If the document is easy for your client to digest Then they will think that you are brilliant. Achieve this by: using short words using fewer words Use Fewer Words There are some words that you can search in a document to discover wordy phrases. “Of” and “for...
Certain style points for metric are different from the Imperial measurement system. Though some folks seem to intend to cling to historical styles (e.g. writing metric based on Imperial practices) for decades to come, here I would like to set the record straight and clarify the correct styles, according to international metric standards. 1. Put a space before a metric unit. This includes all metric units. Use 910 m, not 910m. (This is often done incorrectly in news media, but that does not make it acceptable in scientific papers. Use the correct international convention for formal writing.) This convention extends to degrees of temperature. Add a space before degrees Celsius (°C). For example, use 82 °C, not 82°C. Note: For Fahrenheit, most people would omit the space. That is still acceptable if you are writing degrees Fahrenheit. When you write in Celsius, use a space. If you have both Celsius and Fahrenheit in a paper, I suggest that you use the space for both for c...
Comments
Post a Comment