Technical Writing

This course is geared to two groups of writers: engineers who need to write technical reports and scientists who need to write scientific articles.

Modern engineers are required to possess excellent communication skills. Not only do they need to know their business, but they also need to know how to communicate this business to other experts, decision makers, and implementers. They need to be able to write accessible technical reports and proposals and to hit the correct tone in professional correspondence.

The goal of scientific research is publication. Scientists are rarely measured by their knowledge of science; instead, they are measured and become known (or remain unknown) by their publications. Scientific articles need to be well structured to allow for efficient reading and accessible to the scientific community. They should also be written in a professional style, convincing, effective, and without language errors.

Both groups will benefit from this course, which focuses on both the quality of the text and on the writing process itself. The following subjects will be dealt with:

• a systematic approach to writing

• requirements to technical reports and scientific papers and their components

• structuring texts on several levels

• writing convincingly

• writing "proper and appropriate" language

• referencing

Six lectures will be used for instruction, feedback, and practice. Students will be required to hand in several assignments while they are working on the technical or scientific report that needs to be written to complete the course. No more than one lecture may be missed.