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This tutorial explores the unique characteristics of writing in the engineering profession. It discusses the information density, abstraction, technicality, and authoritativeness found in engineers' writing. The tutorial also compares engineering writing to that of other academic disciplines.
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Tutorial on Writing 3 for ME4001, Introduction to Engineering Lawrence Cleary Shannon Consortium Regional Writing Centre, UL
Coursework 3 • The student shall prepare a report on an aspect of the engineering profession that intrigues / impresses / worries them. They will locate a problem that is specific to that aspect of the profession and prepare a report on how the profession has sought to resolve the issue. The student shall pick the subject area, perform research on the subject and present the work in a report.
Last Time: Information Organization • Cohesion largely depends on repetition and logical order. • What is the sentence about? • How does the theme of the sentence contribute to the paragraph, and does it have a logical relationship to the sentences preceding and following? • How is the information organized? Can you chart it?
Features of Engineers’ Writing • What typifies academic writing? • If you were to characterise the academic writing done by engineers, by comparison to that done by students in the Humanities, what characteristics most distinguish the two types for you?
4 Features of Engineers’ Writing • Informational density—more content words are packed into the clause • Abstraction—turning processes into participants in the process • Technicality—the use of technical vocabulary and using verbs of relational process • Authoritativeness—refraining from the use of first person references or references to his or her mental processes
Information Density • The writing of engineers is lexically dense • “...the world is a world of things, rather than of happenings; of product, rather than process; of being rather than becoming” (Halliday1987, pp. 146-47). • The style is “associated with carefully planned, formal writing” (Kopple 2003, p.1).
Do you write like an engineer? • We have asked: “How is the writing of engineering students similar or different from other kinds of academic writing, for instance, papers written by students in Humanities?” • We have compared models of writing from professionals in Engineering to those from professionals in the Humanities and noticed differences • We have compared our own writing to the model Engineering texts.
