Samuel Chandler Earle
Published: 2015-08-06
Total Pages: 352
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Excerpt from The Theory and Practice of Technical Writing Every engineer who has given thought to the writing which he has to do as a part of his professional work knows that it is no easy task to get his ideas on paper in satisfactory form. If he is ambitious in this as in other parts of his work, he will succeed in expressing himself adequately just in proportion as he is a clear and well-trained thinker and a keen observer of the ways in which other minds work. If, however, he feels he ought to approach the task of writing more intelligently and to that end tries to get assistance, he discovers that the kind of help he wants is hard to find. The problems of a technical report or magazine article, or of any of the longer works which engineers write, are many of them similar to those of general composition, of literary exposition, or of argumentation; but if the engineer turns for suggestions to treatises on these more definitely literary forms, he will find much that does not apply to his case, and he will fail to get guidance where he most needs it. Yet the special forms of engineering writings have not been studied in schools or given adequate treatment in textbooks. The reason for this lack is not far to seek. Teachers of English have generally felt that the writings of engineers were not worthy of special study as forms of composition; and, without investigating the case, they have assumed that the only preparation necessary for such writing was that given in the course in general composition. Engineers who have acquired the ability to write effectively, on the other hand, have seldom had time to give their less skilled associates instruction in composition. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.