A Guide to Writing as an Engineer
by David A. McMurrey, David F. Beer
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Book Summary Information
Author: David A. McMurrey, David F. BeerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-04-28
ISBN: 0471430749
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Wiley
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Book Reviews of A Guide to Writing as an Engineer
Book Review: Good for engineers, terrible for technical writing instructors
Summary: 2 Stars
This handbook provides a decent, quick-and-dirty introduction to technical communication for engineers . It does a good job of dealing with letters and oral presentations (though it does not discuss how to create a good slideshow--just the actual presenting itself). For engineers, then, I give this book three stars.
For technical writing instructors like myself, however, it is almost worthless, and deserves one star.
The main problems which I have with this book include:
* A lack of example documents;
* Some very bland, colorless formatting (though this is better, I suppose, than the unnecessary pyrothechnics to be found, for example, in the Lannon book);
* Virtually nothing is provided for technical writing students who are not themselves going into engineering;
* The advice provided by this book on most topics is extremely minimal. For example, there is a mere four pages on tables, with most formatting advice appearing as a bulleted list with no illustrative examples.
If you are an engineer who wants a cheap and simple introduction to some basic documents, this book will fill the bill--barely. If you are looking for a technical writing textbook to teach with, however, or if you will be writing a wide variety of sophisticated engineering documents and presentations for demanding audiences, then this is not the book for you. For such people, I would instead suggest the 8th edition of Mike Markel's Technical Communication. Alternately, one could buy this book ALONG WITH Alred, Brusaw, and Oliu's Handbook of Technical Writing so as to get fuller writing advice, a large number of sample documents, and so on.
Either way, this book does not impress.
Summary of A Guide to Writing as an Engineer
Improve the signal-to-noise ratio in your writing!You'll need more than just technical prowess to succeed as a professional engineer; you'll need to be an effective communicator.
Specifically written to address the needs of engineers, this brief, easy-to-use guide gives you an efficient and direct way to improve your writing and speaking skills. The authors focus on those writing activities that engineers perform on a daily basis, such as reports, business letters, office memoranda, and e-mail, as well as oral presentations.
Now updated to reflect rapid changes in how we communicate, this Second Edition covers writing as part of a project team, plagiarism and ethics, email effectiveness and privacy, presentations using PowerPoint, and applying for jobs using the internet.
With this book, you'll learn how to:
* Reduce the "noise" in your writing, by eliminating grammatical errors, typos, poor organization, and fuzzy thinking.
* Correctly document information taken from other sources.
* Increase your chances of landing the job you want.
* Construct clear and effective graphics.
* Avoid ethical pitfalls.
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