Clear and concise communications for scientists and engineers / James G. Speight

Includes bibliographical references and index

"Preface writing and verbally presenting data are the most important means for communicating scientific and engineering work and allow readers to appreciate and evaluate the work of other scientists and engineers. Technical writing, as practiced by scientists and engineers, must emerge from organized collection thinking processes that, when converted to writing, illustrate the thoughts of the writers. Scientific and engineering writing must be based on fact and cannot be based on emotions. In fact, scientific and engineering writing is goaldirected and is guided by the writer’s goals, which must involve a sense of purpose that has been defined by the writer. No single course of action can prepare the scientist or engineer for every communication situation that s/he will face. Nevertheless, s/he should be able to handle most situations if there is a preliminary consideration of any. One of these constraints is format, and it is necessary to understand that there is no universal format for scientific and engineering writing; the formats used in one organization are not the same formats that scientists and engineers use in a different organization. In addition, the document must appeal to the designated audience and the writer must ensure that the tone is appropriate for the readership. The writer must be respectful and polite to his/her readers, and there must be sufficient information about the problem under investigation. Indeed, there must be enough information in the document for the reader to understand the context of the problem. The way in which many scientists and engineers choose to define a research problem can vary greatly from writer to writer"--Provided by publisher