Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!uccba!uceng!dmocsny
From: dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: engineering students and verbal skills
Summary: Why Johnny can't write.
Message-ID: <614@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: 25 Jan 89 18:51:30 GMT
References: <19244@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <5618@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <19443@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Univ. of Cincinnati, College of Engg.
Lines: 82

In article <19443@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff) writes:
> In my grad course last quarter, only 1 out of 15 reports
> was written clearly.  [In fact, I heaped SO much praise on that one student 
> for writing so well, that she must have been a bit puzzled.  :-) ] 
...
> In fact, if you go back to my original postings, you'll see that I really 
> was implicitly putting the blame on the FACULTY, for not adequately warning 
> the students about the need for good verbal skills. 

I heartily agree with this. The entire technical community has developed
many bad writing habits. Since engineering schools do not teach students
to write, students learn to write by subconsciously adapting to the
style they read. That style is frequently abysmal. Pick up virtually
any technical journal, and you will often spend twice the necessary effort
trying to decipher an author's intent. A typical engineer probably
writes worse after earning a Ph.D. than (s)he did as a freshman.

For example, if a freshman wants to tell you that a thermometer
measures temperature, (s)he will probably write:

"The thermometer measures temperature."

After several years of plowing through the verbiage of the technical
literature, the budding Ph.D. learns that facts do not speak adequately
for themselves. One must also attempt to pad sentences with as many
useless words and convoluted structures as possible. Thus illumined,
our engineer writes:

"It is the thermometer which is that which serves to accomplish the
purpose of temperature measurement."

or some similar monstrosity. Things get more interesting when our
engineer masters the passive voice, multiple subordinate clauses, and
a vocabulary large enough to obscure the simplest concept. Eventually
our engineer can create such verbal puzzles that nobody can understand
them on the first reading.

I know this is true because it happened to me. Then I read John
Brogan's _Clear Technical Writing_ (McGraw-Hill, 1973) and the scales
fell from my eyes. At first I could not understand what Brogan was
talking about.  His examples of "bad" writing appeared perfectly
correct, even impressively articulate, to me. Then I began to grasp
what Brogan was saying: if you write as directly as possible, your
readers understand you more quickly. In a technical setting time is
money. Every useless word or clumsy sentence costs money. Big money,
if you have enough readers.

Now I have changed my writing style completely. I still have much to
learn, but now I critically examine my work on several levels, asking
myself the following:

- Individual words: does each contribute something? Technical writing
  has many bloated expressions. Use "to" instead of "in order to." 
  Avoid unnecessary helping verbs like "serves to." Watch out for
  words and phrases like "in the process of," "in the event of,"
  "purposes," "achieves," "accomplishes;" they usually mean a shorter
  sentence can do the same work. Stay away from pronouns that precede
  their referents: do not say "It is the X which does Y" when "The X
  does Y" is equivalent. Do not pad sentences with fluff like
  "it should be noted that..." State the facts and let the
  readers note them. 

- Sentences: do they clearly express the actor/action and object/attribute
  relationships you want to convey? Keep a subject and a corresponding verb
  close together. Separating them with subordinate clauses chokes the
  reader's short-term memory and forces re-reading. Subordinate
  clauses usually mean that several facts are trying to jam into
  a single sentence. Example: "The X, which is on the Z...(etc.),
  does Y."). Use multiple sentences instead. Do not turn action
  verbs into noun phrases: "The X generates Y" is better than
  "The X performs the generation of Y." Avoid passive voice ("Y is
  generated by X") unless you have a good reason to use it. Passive
  voice is usually more complex and less direct than active voice.

My verbal reform is still at the word and sentence level, because
I have so many bad habits from my years of reading technical literature.
Eventually I may learn to organize concepts on the document level.

Cheers,

Dan Mocsny
dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu