The Engineering Communication Manual

Contexts 1 Planning your communication Assessing the rhetorical situation Displaying evidence and reasoning (logos) Conveying credibility (ethos) Accommodating audience needs, values, and priorities (pathos) Writing within genres 2 Understanding your audience Analyzing stakeholder audiences Listening to stakeholders Techniques for listening 3 Meeting your ethical obligations Ethics in engineering The engineer's rights and duties Analyzing consequences of action and ethical principles Types of unethical communication 4 Accommodating global and cultural differences Recognizing cultural values and assumptions Emphasis on the individual or the group Preference for equality or hierarchy Experiences of time Role of the writer or the reader in conveying meaning Considerations for face-to-face communication 5 Designing documents for users Professional audiences as users Chunking: dividing content into manageable units Relationships among content: proximity, alignment, repetition, contrast Setting type for ease of reading Using color Audiences 6 Engineers Who they are and how they think: credible arguments required Why you communicate with your engineering peers How to communicate with your engineering peers 7 Technicians and technical staff Who they are and how they think: implementers Why you communicate with technicians How you communicate with technicians 8 Executives Who they are and how they think: authorizers Why you communicate with executives How you communicate with executives 9 Clients Who they are and how they think: it's in the contract Why you communicate with clients How you communicate with clients 10 The public and the public sector Who they are and how they think: health and safety are first priority Why you communicate with the public How you communicate with the public Genres 11 Reporting in a research community Writing for a technical audience Elements of the IMRaD format Experimental reports Reports that advance theory Literature reviews 12 Reporting in an industrial organization Writing for decision-making audiences in industry Elements of the "answers-first" format Progress and status reports Design reports Feasibility studies 13 Corresponding Maintaining a professional tone in correspondence Letters Memos Email Phone calls Social media 14 Proposing Common elements of proposing External proposals and responding to requests for proposals Internal proposals 15 Instructing Principles of writing instructions Usability testing 16 Applying for a job Targeting the audience Resumes Application letters Academia: the curriculum vitae and statement of purpose Processes 17 Researching Consulting with experts Finding scholarly sources Using patents to review prior art Integrating sources: paraphrase and direct quotation Citing sources 18 Drafting Planning the argument The sequence of drafts 19 Revising From revising to editing to proofreading Revising content and argument based on feedback from experts and peers Revising structure and organization Revising and editing for clarity 20 Collaborating Avoiding the common pitfall of collaboration Planning a document as a team Drafting a document as a team Integrating and unifying a document 21 Meeting The first team meeting: roles, responsibilities, charters Why meet? (agendas) What happened? (minutes) Optimizing virtual meetings Components 22 Headings Communicating the argument to the hurried reader Unifying style and voice 23 Paragraphs Focusing paragraphs on a single idea Moving coherently from one sentence to the next 24 Sentences Solidifying the sentence core Coordinating and subordinating ideas Avoiding sentence fragments, fused sentences, and comma splices Increasing conciseness while maintaining clarity 25 Words Achieving precision without needless jargon Selecting precise verbs Using pronouns precisely Managing emotive language 26 Summaries Executive summaries Abstracts Submitting an abstract as a proposal 27 Front and back matter Front matter: title pages, tables of contents, and lists of figures Back matter: notes, appendices, and bibliography Visuals 28 Graphs Choosing the best graph for the task Shared conventions of graphs Pie charts, bar graphs, and dot plots Scatterplots and line graphs Box-and-whisker plots and histograms Fine-tuning your graphs: Enhancing visual clarity with text 29 Illustrations Choosing the best illustration for the task The range of illustrations, from pictorial to schematic Commonly encountered types of illustrations Fine-tuning your illustration 30 Tables, equations, and code Designing tables Writing mathematics Writing chemistry Writing computer code Media 31 Print pages Creating a page layout Managing the appearance of paragraphs Selecting typefaces 32 Talks Overcoming stage fright and connecting with listeners Analyzing audience & setting Identifying the genre, purpose, and desired outcome Rehearsing and preparing the talk 33 Presentation slides Recognizing the limitations of slideware Designing slides using assertion-evidence style Using Prezi to illustrate spatial relationships Adapting slide designs for other purposes 34 Posters Understanding the audience for a poster presentation Delivering the poster talk Placing major elements of the poster Applying design principles to the poster