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Slide 2 Thinking Like an Engineer Stephan, Bowman, Park, Sill, Ohland Copyright 2013 Pearson Prentice-Hall, Inc. Basic Technical Writing Engineering Communication 1Thinking Like an Engineer 2e Slide 3 Writing Hints Never start a sentence with a number 23 points were outliers. Twenty-three points were outliers. Keep the leading zero with a decimal. The bridge cost.23 dollars per gram. The bridge cost 0.23 dollars per gram. For long numbers, do not spell out. The mean was one thousand, fifty-five grams. The mean was 1,055 grams. Engineering Communication Thinking Like an Engineer 2e2 Slide 4 Writing Hints, continued Use the dollar symbol The bridge was four thousand dollars. The bridge was $4,000. Use a consistent format in all parts of the paper Same type of title, header, spacing Put header information on all pages Label all figures and tables. Tables are captioned at the top. Figures are captioned at the bottom. Refer to them in the text. Engineering Communication Thinking Like an Engineer 2e3 Slide 5 Writing Hints, continued Watch significant figures Keep within orders of magnitude Reasonable, and consistent Consider using a table Forces you to summarize Good for repetition or comparison Engineering Communication Thinking Like an Engineer 2e4 Slide 6 When editing Read it out loud! Read what it ACTUALLY says, not what you think it should say Use commas as short breaths Use periods and semicolons as longer pauses Have someone read it out loud to you Read it twice! Once for flow Once for technical stuff Engineering Communication Thinking Like an Engineer 2e5 Slide 7 When printing Be sure to complete soon enough to do it AGAIN! Watch for: Single lines on a page Graphics that are cut off due to printer Fuzzy or hard to read tables or figures Engineering Communication Thinking Like an Engineer 2e6