A Scientific Approach To Writing For Engineers And Scientists

"This book is a guide to technical writing, presented in a systematic framework that mirrors the logic associated with the scientific process itself. Other English books merely define concepts and provide rules; this one explains the reasoning behind the rules. Other writing books for scientists and engineers focus primarily on how to gather and organize materials; this one focuses primarily on how to compose a readable sentence. The approach should be satisfying not only to scientists and engineers, but also to anyone who once took a grammar course but can't remember the rules--because there was no exposure to underlying principles"--

A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO WRITING Technical ideas may be solid or even groundbreaking, but if these ideas cannot be clearly communicated, reviewers of technical documents—e.g., proposals for research funding, articles submitted to scientific journals, and business plans to commercialize technology—are likely to reject the argument for advancing these ideas. The problem is that many engineers and scientists, entirely comfortable with the logic and principles of mathematics and science, treat writing as if it possesses none of these attributes. The absence of a systematic framework for writing often results in sentences that are difficult to follow or arguments that leave reviewers scratching their heads. This book fixes that problem by presenting a “scientific” approach to writing that mirrors the sensibilities of scientists and engineers, an approach based on an easily-discernable set of principles. Rather than merely stating rules for English grammar and composition, this book explains the reasons behind these rules and shows that good reasons can guide every writing decision. This resource is also well suited for the growing number of scientists and engineers in the U.S. and elsewhere who speak English as a second language, as well as for anyone else who just wants to be understood.

This book, by a scientist, is not a textbook on English grammar: nor is it just one more book on how to write a technical report, or a thesis, or a paper for publication. It is about all the ways in which writing is important to scientists and engineers in helping them to remember to observe, to think, to plan, to organize and to communicate.

The focus of this text is to teach engineering students the skill of technical writing. It takes a project oriented approach and covers writing functions that are of particular use to the engineering student. This book is part of the B.E.S.T. Series.

The Craft of Scientific Presentations, 2nd edition aims to strengthen you as a presenter of science and engineering. The book does so by identifying what makes excellent presenters such as Brian Cox, Jane Goodall, Richard Feynman, and Jill Bolte Taylor so strong. In addition, the book explains what causes so many scientific presentations to flounder. One of the most valuable contributions of this text is that it teaches the assertion-evidence approach to scientific presentations. Instead of building presentations, as most engineers and scientists do, on the weak foundation of topic phrases and bulleted lists, this assertion-evidence approach calls for building presentations on succinct message assertions supported by visual evidence. Unlike the commonly followed topic-subtopic approach that PowerPoint leads presenters to use, the assertion-evidence approach is solidly grounded in research. By showing the differences between strong and weak presentations, by identifying the errors that scientific presenters typically make, and by teaching a much more powerful approach for scientific presentations than what is commonly practiced, this book places you in a position to elevate your presentations to a high level. In essence, this book aims to have you not just succeed in your scientific presentations, but excel. About the Author Michael Alley has taught workshops on presentations to engineers and scientists on five continents, and has recently been invited to speak at the European Space Organization, Harvard Medical School, MIT, Sandia National Labs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Simula Research Laboratory, and United Technologies. An Associate Professor of engineering communication at Pennsylvania State University, Alley is a leading researcher on the effectiveness of different designs for presentation slides.

Case studies and pedagogical strategies to help science and engineering students improve their writing and speaking skills while developing professional identities. To many science and engineering students, the task of writing may seem irrelevant to their future professional careers. At MIT, however, students discover that writing about their technical work is important not only in solving real-world problems but also in developing their professional identities. MIT puts into practice the belief that “engineers who don't write well end up working for engineers who do write well,” requiring all students to take “communications-intensive” classes in which they learn from MIT faculty and writing instructors how to express their ideas in writing and in presentations. Students are challenged not only to think like professional scientists and engineers but also to communicate like them.This book offers in-depth case studies and pedagogical strategies from a range of science and engineering communication-intensive classes at MIT. It traces the progress of seventeen students from diverse backgrounds in seven classes that span five departments. Undergraduates in biology attempt to turn scientific findings into a research article; graduate students learn to define their research for scientific grant writing; undergraduates in biomedical engineering learn to use data as evidence; and students in aeronautic and astronautic engineering learn to communicate collaboratively. Each case study is introduced by a description of its theoretical and curricular context and an outline of the objectives for the students' activities. The studies describe the on-the-ground realities of working with faculty, staff, and students to achieve communication and course goals, offering lessons that can be easily applied to a wide variety of settings and institutions.

Scientific Writing in Engineering helps scientists, engineers, and students of all academic levels efficiently write scientific texts, such as scientific articles, conference papers, theses, reports, and research proposals. Drawing from long-time experience in academic teaching, the authors walk the readers through scientific writing step by step all the way from a blank first page to complete manuscripts. A comprehensive list of concise recommendations and more than one hundred examples, taken from real-life scientific texts, offer readers the chance to draw easy analogies between own scientific texts and the examples provided in this book. The elaborate recommendations, with emphasis on specific characteristics of writing in engineering sciences, serve as complete self-study material that renders the book a practical guide to effective scientific writing. Readers will enhance their knowledge on scientific text structuring and will learn to avoid pitfalls in use of English, including grammatical and syntactical phenomena. Readers are given the opportunity to handle non-textual elements in scientific writing, such as figures and mathematical equations and formulas. Finally, the book provides detailed discussions on citing and referencing along with recommendations on formal electronic correspondence.

This guide provides a framework, starting from simple statements, for writing papers for submission to peer-reviewed journals. It also describes how to address referees’ comments, approaches for composing other types of scientific communications, and key linguistic aspects of scientific writing.

This easy-to-read, concise book is filled with examples, hints, reminders and reviews designed to help engineers and scientists develop effective writing skills. Use the book to learn to write better reports, memos, and journal articles and keep it close at hand when you have questions about organization, clarity and style, writing and revising rough drafts, graphics, workplace writing, computers in writing, and legal issues in writing. The book also contains four helpful appendices on common errors, equations and abbreviations, preparing manuscripts for publication, and documenting information sources. Effective Writing Strategies for Engineers and Scientists provides easy training for the type of writing required of engineers and scientists, gives specific advise for conveying complicated information, and describes how to synthesize information according to specific writing strategies. It is a "must" for every scientist's and engineer's bookshelf.

Who done it?: an introduction; Getting started; Two dozen ways to begin: their advantages and disadvantages; Effective organizing; Easy outlining; Fallacies to forget: misconceptions and misinterpretations; Brevity: the soul of it; The standard of grammar for the professions; The standard of diction for the professions; Style: the personality and character of writing; Style and diction; Style and sentences; Style and paragraphs; Writing memorandums, letters, instructions, and other short forms; The editor and supervisor and the future editor and supervisor.