Iowa State University
Technical
Communications in Mechanical Engineering
John Lauer
English 250
Angie R. Mallory
April 4, 2014
As many majors in college have, writing is a
substantial part of the main focus that every college student must be
proficient in. This forces students to be active in learning to write better
and specifically better in the styles and formats that they must write in for
their specific major. Each major has a different writing style, along with
different setups of memos, reports, presentations, and drawings that must be
done in the correct format. How will other students in the mechanical
engineering field know how to produce this writing? Obviously, they will learn
over time, but what better way to prepare for the next four years of college
then to learn about these different writing styles in the beginning. This paper
encompasses four general types of communication that Mechanical Engineering
encounters, which is the following: Problem Sets, Written reports, Oral
Reports, and Lab Notebooks. To be a successful engineer, and specifically a
Mechanical Engineer, it is important to master each of these types of writing
and apply them through your entire career.
In case you were wondering, I’m John Lauer, a
student at Iowa State University, currently working on my undergraduate degree
in Mechanical Engineering. I have now been exposed to the start and basics of
the Mechanical Engineering degree. This paper is to be used to help engineering
students with all types of technical communications and how to develop each
type successfully. The information in here is universally based, so it may
differ from other university standards and situations, but my hope is that if
you need any help with communication styles in this field, that you can look to
this paper and get something out of it to improve yourself as a Mechanical
Engineer.
Problem Sets:
One of the first types of writing you will do
as an engineer is problem sets. When analyzing and completing problem sets,
there is a certain standard that all professional engineers must follow so that
their work can be documented properly and understood, while serving as an
understandable reference material for yourself in the future. When carrying out
problem sets, there are two ideals that you must consider: the form the problem
is written in, and the problem solving method. There are many guidelines for
writing the problem itself.
First, “Engineer’s Pad” paper is very strongly
recommended to be used when doing problem sets. It has been around for a long
time, and has many advantages to it. When using the paper, only use the front
side without the gridlines. The gridlines are faintly visible from the front.
This is used to draw accurate diagrams, as they are visible against a light
background and invisible against a dark background. The paper is usually a
tinted green color with gridlines on the back having five lines to the inch with
one inch major divisions. These lines work great to be slightly visible for
drawing, but not obscure other writing on the page.
Second, the paper should also be properly
labeled on the top of each page. The reader should be able to identify easily
what he is reading, who is responsible for it, and keep the pages in order. You
should also consider basic good practices that you follow with all assignments,
these include: writing legible and uncrowded, always staying out of margins,
using the same color for a whole problem, and writing with a pencil.
There are also requirements that deal with the
problem solution itself. These include starting the problem with a list of
givens and what is to be determined at the end of the problem. You should also
sketch any diagrams to help you and the reader visualize the problem better.
You should also overall explain in words what you are doing throughout the
problem. Other recommendations are to always write the symbolic form of an
equation before you plug in numbers and solve.
Finally, always be careful of units throughout
the problem, box your final answer, and explain, interpret, and discuss the
final answer to show what you have deduced. All of these steps should be used
to help write helpful problem sets that can be useful to anyone.
Written reports:
When looking at written reports, there are two
concepts that need to be applied, which are the format of the written report,
and the sentence structure of the technical writing. The sentence structure
that all engineers must follow is the same, universally between all fields. So
first I will go over how to write as an engineer, and then touch on how written
reports can be formatted.
When starting in the engineering
field, you must first consider how your writing will change when communicating
with other engineers. Out of all majors, engineering is very unique in how data
and information should be communicated. There are a lot of engineers out there
that had the same reason for going into engineering that I did. That major
reason being, “I like science and math, and I hate reading and writing.” Most
engineers do not like writing in large amounts. So the way we engineers go
about writing reflects that mindset.
To look at the style of writing in
engineering, we will first look at the sentence structure of technical writing.
Good technical writers in the engineering field practice these points:
Planning, Clarity, Brevity, Simplicity, Word Choice, Active Voice, and
Committing to Writing as a Process. Each of these concepts plays an important
part in writing as a professional engineer. The first concept is planning. When
planning your writing, you need to consider your audience, know your purpose,
understand what task you are trying to accomplish, organizing your thoughts,
and budgeting time to write and revise your writing. The next point to be
covered is clarity. This refers to using any kind of jargon or acronyms that
are unfamiliar to the reader. These should be avoided if not needed, or defined
earlier in the report. Using acronyms is not bad, but making sure the reader
understands everything on the page is.
The next point is the most important
out of list, and that is brevity. The dictionary definition of brevity is, “the
quality of expressing much in few words, briefness” (Dictionary.com). This
relates to engineering writing by the simple phrase of “less is more”. You
should never use two words when one word will do, and simplify your writing
down to get the main message out in the least amount of words. Engineering
writing is all about simplicity, by using details wisely, and efficiency, in
relation to redundancy in writing. Putting the most important information first
and removing redundancy is always integral to a well written, effective paper.
Overall, when starting to write some
kind of written report, make sure to plan your project and topic before beginning
drafting and understand basic qualities of good technical writing and used them
throughout the writing. Just remember that good writing is a habit that takes
time to develop, so keep practicing the technique and fully develop your
writing.
The other idea is the format of
writing a written report. This can vary greatly between the purpose of the
report and what a professor or boss wants for a report. So it’s hard to cover a
topic like this specifically. The main idea that should always be followed is
to organize all information and data, plan your report with all the information
and order of it, and make sure to proofread and edit your writing multiple
times before submitting the finished report. These principles will help you
write a successful report every time.
Oral Reports:
Many of the writing aspects of
written reports, also applies to oral reports. So for using writing in your
presentations, refer to the previous topic. The subject I want to focus on in
this section is the development of an oral presentation, and how to strengthen
them.
One of the first things that you
should focus on when preparing a presentation is analyzing the audience, time
limit, and organization of the topic. The presentation must work for the
audience and make sense so that it will be successfully presented. Another
thing you must consider is what your audience will be able to understand out of
what you’re presenting. This will help the audience stay engaged and not fall
asleep during your talking. Overall, be direct with your information when
showing graphs or diagrams. Explaining the graphs and the main points that the
audience should take from them, helps them to stay with you through the report
and stay interested. Making a fancy and colorful presentation is also not a
good idea. These things will only distract people from the important things you
are trying to present. In the end, making an effective presentation is easy as
long as you follow these professional standards and the ones you have already
been taught. If you need a refresher, you can visit the link below.
Lab Notebooks:
When using lab notebooks, there are many
standards to keep up if you want to keep a successful notebook. First off, keeping
a complete and accurate record of your experiments is a very important part of
engineering, especially when keeping your research and findings accredited to
you. Your laboratory notebook is a permanent record of what you did and observed
in the laboratory. Learning to keep a good notebook now will establish good
habits and help you become a successful engineer.
Every lab, you should write everything you do,
including what you did and why you did it. You should also record your mistakes
and difficulties performing the experiment. This is sometimes more useful than
reading all the perfect things that went with the lab. It is extremely
important that you keep an accurate and correct notebook. A good test is to ask
yourself if someone else were to read you’re your notebook, could they follow
it and go through the same experiment and carry out what you did. This also
means that you could come back to your own work and still be able to interpret
it.
Some key points that you always want to follow
when carrying out a lab and completing it are: always write neat and legibly, the
experiment title and purpose are clearly stated, the procedure explained
clearly and thoroughly, include errors and the steps taken to correct them, computations
performed neatly showing all steps, and date all pages at the top and signed by
lab professor and yourself on the same date. If you follow these tips and carry
out labs with a purpose, then you won’t have a problem with you lab book and
the recording of it.
Conclusion
In conclusion, each writing and
presentation style will be useful in some way to every engineer. Some jobs may
focus on certain ones, but having a library of knowledge that covers the ins
and outs of technical writing in your field, will truly be of use to you for
the rest of your life. I hope this paper was informational and helpful to the
readers. Please email me with any questions you may have about any items
covered in this paper. Thank you.
Works Cited
Banuazizi, Atissa. Creating Your BE.109 Presentation.
Cambridge: MIT Mechanical Engineering Office, 15 Mar. 2006. PDF.
Cheng, Wai K. A Guide to Writing 2.672 Analytical
Reports. Cambridge: MIT Mechanical Engineering Office, Fall 2007. PDF.
Hunter, Ian W., and Barbara Hughey. Instructions for
Using Your Laboratory Notebook. Cambridge: MIT Mechanical Engineering Office, 5 June 2007. PDF.
Kelley, Nicole. Sentence Structure of Technical
Writing. Cambridge: MIT Mechanical Engineering Office, Fall 2006. PDF.
Lauer, James. "Communication in an Engineering
Career." Telephone interview. Mar. 2014.
Perelman, Leslie C. Effective Oral Presentations.
Cambridge: MIT Mechanical Engineering Office, n.d. PDF.
Poe, Mya. Effective Written Communication:
Storyboarding a Technical Report. Cambridge: MIT Mechanical Engineering Office, Sept. 2005. PDF.
Sample Problem and General Advice for Homework. Cambridge: MIT Mechanical Engineering Office, 24 Oct. 2001. PDF.
"Technical
Communications in Mechanical Engineering." Technical Communications in
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