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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 18, 1982)
20 BEYOND WINTER 1982 © 4^ Cn TO 00 OO ►£. 3“ n "Write intelligible English? Of course I can! After all, I've been speaking it all my life." But can you write well? How easily do your readers follow your trains of thought? Technical people are usually highly competent in their chosen fields, but their writing is often riddled with ob fuscations, ambiguities, and omissions. The reader must either waste time trying to find sense in the confusion or, more likely, avoid the effort and read something else. I read mountains of technical writing. It's a major part of my job. Sometimes I wish it wasn't. (Wait till you see the examples I've included.) Almost any technical job requires com municating some sort of information to phasizes technical skills, while writing skills are often considered less important. The techniques involved in writing the essay on Browning's poetry, however, are precisely the same as those used in preparing a technical report or a briefing. In each case the author needs to convey an idea or series of ideas to a particular audience. He or she must write to that audience, using a style that is clear and to the point, with language which is neither overly simplified nor overly complex. Grammar, punctua tion, sentence structure and paragraph development are all useful tools for dem onstrating clear thinking and technical ex pertise. Without them, written work fre quently comes out as garbage. This grammatical gem appeared recently in my mail at work: "I am pleased to advise you that: through the individual efforts of each employee to meet their responsibilities; the care ful conscientious and regular checking by Monitors and the use of incident re duction techniques that various groups have developed, we have M(V9 IMAGINE YOURSfLf HOT TO BCWRITtK 0TH9WK THAN WHAT WOULD APPEAR TO 0TH9S. OR MIGHT NOT APPEAR TO OTHERS. TO IK CONFUSING OTHCKWISC.or Cngfch Meets fedinolosy (How Do Kw Do?) By Mary Dickey someone else. At a minimum this informa tion concerns work in progress, problems, and results. New employees have to report to their superiors. Later, with little experi ence, they'll have jobs that involve direct ing subordinates, preparing written and oral briefings and reports for customers, writing proposals to potential customers, and authoring articles for publication in professional journals. Scientists and engineer rarely receive much training in composition. What train ing they have had was probably camouf laged by an assigned topic such as "Robert Browning's Use of Imagery.” Technical training understandably em- achieved a significant im provement in safety records." Or consider the following ex ample of classic gobbledygook: "ABC Corporation, working in conjunction with the XYZ Company's Technical Director will assist in the solicitation of the required information by preparing as a part of the methodology, the form of the solicitation, and by con sultation with its own internal staff* of technology experts, the biographies of whom are listed in Chapter 10, to estab lish not only the state-of-the-art, but also identification of where the cutting edge of technology developments on a discipline-by-discipline basis, are being performed and thus whom to solicit." Do you understand that? It was written by a respected scientist. Luckily the editor caught it before it was sent to the cus tomer — but what if it had gone out? What would customers think of the wri ter's competence? Confused writing takes various forms. Even when the writer writes grammatical English, his ideas sometimes get so tang led that the result bewilders the reader: "We also recognize that organi zations develop groups whose functions is to accomplish some capability. These groups' sole abilities may well be to de velop this capability and therefore con tinue to advance the need for ever greater improvements in the state of the capabil ity." Technical people generally write to and for other educated people, but the audi ence may be less knowledgeable than the writer in the particular subject. Each scien tific and engineering discipline has a lanugage of its own, and the reader may not be familiar enough with the topic to know its particular catch words. More im portantly, he may not be willing to spend time to learn them. Since you are writing to be read, it is up to you to take the time and trouble to present your material in a form the reader is willing to read. For example, it is very easy to supply too many details: esoteric mathematical proofs are appropriate if you are addressing mathematicians, but they will be meaning less to your company's Vice President for Finance. In some situations, however, the audi ence requires very specific explanations and rationale. "The experimental data produced from the first test run showed much more posi tive results than we had anticipated. We predict an equivalent degree of positive results from this proposed second phase of testing. If it proves as successful as we expect it will, the cost of manufacturing the item will be much reduced, coupled with a much more efficient product." This paragraph is much too vague to convince anyone to spend half a million dollars to fund Phase 2; it needs detailed supporting data to defend the author's position. Science and engineering professionals do need good writing skills. Since all tech nical jobs require written reporting at some level, the engineer or scientist should be capable of producing a well- composed paper which is free from con fusion and which uses correct grammar and punctuation. These skills are essential to ensure a company's reputation with its customers — and the engineer's or scien tist's own advancement within the com pany. Mary Dickey is a professional contract ad ministrator for a company that is involved in high level studies of applied research in engineering and hard science, both for the government and private industry. Said company wants its name kept secret. Well never tell. Readers Take Note: Admirers and defenders of the English language are encouraged to send to Beyond samples of the odd doublespeak gobbledegook so often found in tech nical materials. The point of all this is to have fun, not poke fun. We'll pay a whopping $25 for each contorted, convoluted (and fully credited) ruination of English we print. Send the boners to Beyond Techspeak, 1680 N. Vine Street, Suite 900, Holly wood, CA 90028.