technical essay

How to Write a Technical Essay

How to Write a Dissertation Summary

Unlike a personal or an expository essay, technical essays are intended to educate and inform about a technical topic. They tend to have a more regimented format than other types of essays. They naturally include an introduction, a body and a conclusion, but they also include elements that make them more like research documentation, including references and an abstract. Thus, writing one requires a sense of organization and credibility.

Essay Purpose

The technical essay is intended to explore a technical or scientific subject, to explain how to carry out a particular technical task, or to argue for a particular method of doing something. Essays could involve subjects in mathematics, computer science, physics or any other topic that could benefit from a written explanation of the processes required to complete a task or the reasons a researcher chose a particular method.

Essay Format

In general, these types of essays follow a similar format as research or other academic papers. If you're writing the technical essay for a specific journal or a college course, check whether there are any specific requirements for formatting your essay. You may be required to use a specific font in a specific size, for example, or justify the paragraphs to the left-hand side of the page without paragraph indentations. In addition, you may have specific requirements for how to format the section titles and reference materials or works cited. Research papers often employ the American Psychological Association, or APA, citation style. In an academic setting, not getting these elements perfect could cause you to lose points; in a business setting, poor formatting could make you look like an amateur.

Essay Structure

A technical essay typically presents a question, details the methods explored to answer the question, and then presents a conclusion. Like with academic research papers, start off with a compelling title that describes the question you seek to answer or the methods you're going to describe, then begin with a section titled "Abstract" that details your question or method, your process of inquiry and your conclusion, all in a brief paragraph of a few sentences. Following that, create headings such as "Introduction" -- sometimes also called a "Thesis" -- and then "Methodology" and "Conclusion." Create this structure first, and then make a few notes about what you plan to include in each section. Creating this structure first can help you start to organize your thoughts and make the task of filling in the details less overwhelming.

Filling in the Sections

In the "Introduction" section, describe why you decided to explore this particular topic and why it might matter to the readers; the Writing Center at Harvard University also suggests to provide the background historical context that precipitated your inquiry. Follow this up with a description of what you're going to explore in the subsequent paragraphs, then dive into the details of your exploration in the "Methodology" section. If you carried out several experiments or explored several questions in your research, you might need to break this section down further and create subheads that describe your practices. Throughout the section, stick to tight, declarative sentences that describe the methodology as clearly and simply as possible. If you're explaining a complicated process, use bullet points to visually break up each step and make it easier for the reader to digest. In the "Conclusion" section, briefly review your question and methodology again, and describe what result you've come to through this process. At the very end, include your references.

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• Carleton University: Academic Essay Writing: Some Guidelines
• Cornell University Library: APA Citation Style
• Harvard College Writing Center: Essay Structure

Nicole Vulcan has been a journalist since 1997, covering parenting and fitness for The Oregonian, careers for CareerAddict, and travel, gardening and fitness for Black Hills Woman and other publications. Vulcan holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and journalism from the University of Minnesota. She's also a lifelong athlete and is pursuing certification as a personal trainer.

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Guidelines for Writing a Technical Essay

Most students write technical essays as part of academic activity. Today we are going to tell you about the process of writing this type of essay. We offer you a step-by-step guide to working on a technical text, where we will discuss style, content, writing, and collecting material. If you follow the guidelines given in the article, you will get a solid foundation for creating an excellent technical essay and not buy college essays online.

How a Technical Essay Differs from Others

Just like any other academic paper, a technical essay consists of the same elements – an introduction, the main body, and a conclusion. The main difference is in the content. A technical essay is devoted to explaining a particular scientific or technical phenomenon, displays how to perform a precise technical task, or discusses a particular method or ways of doing something.

As a rule, these are essays on such subjects as physics, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, biology, and other related disciplines. The topic of an essay is often in the form of a question that you must answer or a statement that you have to discuss. In both cases, the process of writing an essay is the same.

Choose the Subject

Before you start writing your technical essay, read the requirements and the assignment for the essay carefully. This will give you a better understanding of what you should write about, identify the key ideas you need to reveal, and it will help you structure your thesis statement in the essay. Choosing a good research topic will give you more flexibility when writing your essay.

When selecting a topic, make sure that you can produce an in-depth, detailed essay. Before approving it with your instructor, do research and make sure that you have enough material available for high-quality work. Remember that a technical essay should have a minimum of 15-20 references. If you can’t decide, you can always ask your teacher for a piece of advice.

Your technical essay may have a perfect structure and meet all the standards of style and layout, but the paper’s content is still of the most significant importance. That’s why it is essential to carry out a high-quality collection of material in order to show the reader your understanding of the topic. You should not just list the information found but also give your assessment and analysis to form your opinion and conclusions.

When collecting the material, you should focus on the most crucial, in your opinion, points and discuss and analyze them in the most detail. All other more obvious items should be mentioned briefly. When consulting the reference literature, make sure that you use references that you can reasonably trust. In other words, you should rely mainly on conference papers, scholarly journal articles, and peer-reviewed books.

Try to avoid articles from Wikipedia, as they can be written by almost anyone and may simply reflect the authors’ opinions (and biases).

Making a plan and structure is an important element while working on a technical essay. Planning can actually help you get homework done faster . When writing a technical essay, you should start with an eye-catching title describing the issue you are looking at or the method.

You should follow with an abstract section in which you describe in detail the topic of study, the research process, and your conclusion. All paragraphs should be brief, consisting of just a few sentences. Divide your entire paper into components and briefly describe what you will write in each of them. Once you have a clear plan, you can begin to fill it with information, your thoughts, and conclusions.

All good essays should cite existing literature relevant to the topic of the essay. The formatting of the citation depends on the style used at your institution. Therefore, it is crucial to clarify this aspect before you take up your work.

Conclusions

A technical essay is a mini version of an academic paper. Working on such an essay takes students more time – about one day for each section. Moreover, you will need time to collect and study the materials; then, you will need to organize them and start writing the paper. Moreover, after writing, you need to review and proofread it and make sure it corresponds to the required format.

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A Guide to Technical Writing (With Examples)

4-minute read

• 5th May 2023

You can find technical writing in lots of places, including in your home, at your job, in many industries, and in businesses of all sizes. If you need help with business writing specifically, check out how we can assist you .

In today’s post, we’ll break down what technical writing is and how to do it effectively. We’ll also provide some handy examples.

What Is Technical Writing?

Technical writing doesn’t always look very technical! It can be anything that describes how to do a task or how to operate a machine or system. Or it can cover a specialized topic. Technical writing includes recipes in your favorite cookbook, board game instructions, operator manuals, health and safety regulations, legal documents, and financial reports.

Instructions for Carrying Out a Task

This type of technical writing can be a recipe for a cake, the instructions for a board game, tips on how to walk your dog to heel, or the script for a social media video on how to cut your own hair.

Operating Manuals for Machinery, Appliances, or Systems

Technical writing can also be the user guide for a dishwasher, for a factory machine that makes cardboard boxes, a “how to” guide for spreadsheets, or instructions for changing the oil in your motorcycle.

Specialized Topics

The list here could be very, very long! Technical writing on specialized topics includes a company’s business reports, a medical consultant’s letter to a patient, health and safety regulations, employment policies, and legal documents.

So How Do I Produce a Great Piece of Technical Writing?

Let’s take it in three stages: Who? What? How?

Who Is It For?

In any type of writing, knowing your audience is important. This is particularly true of technical writing. Here are some examples of who might read technical writing:

·  A renter of an apartment that needs details on their lease

·  An electrical engineer who needs to know how the wiring is laid out in the apartment block

·  The janitor of that same building who needs to know the location of the emergency lights

·  The occupant of apartment 61, who needs to know how to use the oven in their kitchen

They all need information presented to them, but what information do they need?

What Do They Need?

The renter needs a legal document that leaves no room for doubt about their legal rights and obligations and those of their landlord. The document will be very detailed, containing terms that need careful explanation.

The electrical engineer needs accurate, clear information about the wiring, as they could get hurt or cause harm to someone else if the diagram is inaccurate.

The janitor needs clear directions and a map of where the emergency lights are.

The occupant of apartment 61 needs instructions that are written in plain English so they can use their oven safely.

How Should Technical Writing Be Composed?

Follow these steps when writing a technical document:

·  Research and know your subject thoroughly.

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·  Decide on the appropriate writing style. Just because it’s technical, doesn’t mean it has to contain lots of jargon . Be concise, be direct, and be straightforward.

·  Consider whether you need to include diagrams, maps, images, charts, and/or tables.

·  If writing instructions, take it one step at a time, write objectively , and make sure the instructions work!

Examples of Technical Writing

Let’s look at some examples:

The first version contains unnecessary words, but the warnings are not specific enough. The instructions should be concise and clear. In the second version, the danger is stated right away, and the critical warnings are concise and specific.

In these examples, the first version is unnecessarily wordy. It provides a lot of detail for minor tasks but gives vague instructions for bigger tasks. The second version is much clearer. The instructions are easier to follow, and they include each necessary step.

Good technical writing needs the following attributes:

1. Relevance

2. Accuracy

4. Accessibility

5. Simplicity

Really good technical writing will include these attributes every time.

Is technical writing difficult?

Technical writing does not have to be difficult if you follow our guide and do your research beforehand.

Are there professional bodies for technical writers?

There are several professional organizations for technical writing. This list from UTA Libraries is very useful.

What can I do if I’m not sure that my technical writing style is appropriate to my subject?

We have experts in many fields who can check your writing and advise on style .

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Technical essay style guide

This class will provide you with many opportunities to practice the art of technical essay writing. Here are some simple guidelines you can use to avoid common problems.

1. Name the essay file according to its subject (not its date).

The techfolio template essay files are named with the date they were created (i.e 2015-08-26.md). Don’t do this: name each essay file to reflect its subject matter. For example, you might base the file name on the title of your essay. If your essay title is “Igniting the fire”, then your file name might be “igniting-the-fire.md”.

Do not include spaces in the file name: use “igniting-the-fire.md”, not “igniting the fire.md”.

If the browser is downloading the file instead of displaying it, that’s probably because the file name does not end with “.md”.

Correct naming is important so that the URL associated with your essay is easy to read and provides an indication of its subject matter.

Don’t ever use “reflect” or “reflections” as part of your file name.

2. Create an interesting title that draws in the reader.

Do not name your essay with the module name (i.e. “Configuration Management”) or the experience name (i.e. “Reflections on Javascript”). Search engines often emphasize the title of pages. Would you want to read an essay based on a title like that? I sure wouldn’t. With a little bit of thought, you can come up with something personal (i.e. “The configuration management catastrophe that almost cost me my job”) or clever (“You can’t always git what you want”).

Don’t ever use “reflect” or “reflections” as part of your title.

3. Use appropriate spelling and grammar

Don’t misspell words. Use appropriate grammar. If you are not confident, avail yourself of online tools to check spelling and grammar prior to publication.

4. Write for the world, not the professor

Although many of your essays will be based upon your experiences doing home assignments (i.e. experiences), do not write your essay as it if were a private email to the professor explaining the assignment. Don’t create sections to answer each of the “questions” from the prompt. If you do that, you’ll almost certainly create a boring essay that is not interesting to read.

Instead, write it “for the world”. Assume some random technical professional has been googling and your essay came up. Make the essay self-contained, self-explanatory, and useful to that random professional. Minimize the assumptions you make about that person’s software engineering background (much less their background in this class!) Provide links to background material if useful.

Not only should you write it for a variety of people, you should write it for a variety of times. In other words, try to write your essay such that if someone reads it in a year, it will still provide information of value. If you’re a newbie to the subject, then write it to provide insight and understanding to other newbies.

To make an essay compelling, it is usually helpful to “tell a story”. Create a narrative, don’t just answer questions.

5. Format code appropriately

Make sure that code displays properly in your posting. You accomplish this by using fenced code blocks and syntax highlighting . Here’s an example of javascript code highlighting :

Think carefully before including large code snippets (beyond, say 50 lines). As a rule of thumb, keep code snippets to a reasonable length and make sure all of the code is directly related to the subject of your essay.

6. Use internal headings to structure your essay

Good essays have some sort of internal structure. Help the reader understand this structure by providing internal headings. Don’t start with H1 (i.e. # in Markdown), as that’s reserved for the title of your post. Instead, start with H2 ( ## in markdown), then create subsections within that section with H3 ( ### in markdown), etc.

Similarly, use itemized or enumerated lists, tables, etc as appropriate.

7. Format and attribute quotations

You will occasionally want to quote another writer in your technical essays. This is fine as long as you do not present those words as your own.

If you are just quoting a single sentence or two, you can simply use italics, quotation marks, and provide the author’s name. For example:

As noted by Steve Jobs, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

For longer quotes, use the <blockquote> environment along with <footer>. For example:

A cynical young person is almost the saddest sight to see, because it means that he or she has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing. Maya Angelou

8. Include pictures or other media

As they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” It is very easy to include pictures and videos in your essays. If the meaning of your essay will be communicated more clearly with images, take the time to find and include them. See the Formatting section of the TechFolio User Guide for instructions on how to include images and video.

9. Don’t be boring, don’t be inappropriate

Just because the essay is technical in nature, it doesn’t have to be boring. Try to inject your personality into your writing. You can have “clever” titles, pop culture references, and so forth.

On the other hand, don’t go overboard on the cleverness. Ask yourself: would I be embarrassed if my mother read this essay? (Because she might.) Would I be embarrassed if a potential employer read this essay? (Because she might.)

The goal is to be creative, to show some personality, and to make the essay fun to read as well as informative.

10. Don’t write it at the last minute

The quality of your essays will rise substantially if you develop them as follows:

• Write the first draft.
• Do something else for 4 hours.
• Come back and do an editing pass over the first draft.

The editing pass will normally catch a lot of problems and allow you to refine your thoughts significantly, as long as you’ve stepped away from the essay for a sufficient amount of time to allow yourself to see it with “fresh eyes”. The best way to do that is to sleep on it overnight, but if you don’t have that much time, then at least do something different for a few hours. This lets your subconscious go to work on the material.

11. Review your post’s content and appearance

Once you’ve written and published it, retrieve it in a browser and see how it looks.

12. One paragraph is not enough

Writing a two or three sentence essay in hopes of getting some partial credit is not a good strategy. For one thing, such an essay reflects more poorly on your professional persona than no essay at all. For another thing, we tend to award zero points for essays that reflect very little effort.

13. Make use of the UH Manoa Writing Center

The UHM Writing Center provides consultants who are trained to help at all stages of the writing process; whether you are just getting started, revising a draft, or at some point in between.

You can schedule up to two appointments per week as well as three walk-in appointments per week.

How to Write A Technical Essay

Thornie longmuir.

• April 5, 2022

Unlike personal or explanatory essays, technical essays are designed to inform about a technical topic. Such papers tend to have a more regulated format than other papers. Thus, writing requires a sense of organization.

• Purpose of the essay

You need to study a technical subject and explain how to accomplish a specific technical assignment or to argue for a specific method of doing something. Essays are written for such disciplines as computer science, math, physics, and other technical subjects.

As you can see, writing a technical essay may not be easy, especially if you have this task for the first time. If you face some problems, you can get help from services like getcodinghelp.com . There, you can find an expert who understands your topic. Such help is also suitable for those who cannot complete the task on time. 

• Essay format

Technical essays have the same format as a research or other scientific paper. However, you need to find out if there are any special formatting requirements for your paper. You may need, for example, to use a specific font or align paragraphs to the left of the page without indents. You need to check whether your essay should be written in MLA , APA , or Chicago format style. In the academic sphere, not following the required style can lead to a low grade; in the business sphere, poor formatting can make you an amateur.

• Structure of a technical essay

Start with a heading that describes the question you want to answer or the methods you are about to describe. Then write an abstract section detailing your question or method, your research process, and your conclusion, all in a short paragraph of several sentences. After that, create headings for the introduction, main body, and conclusion.

• Writing essay sections

In the introduction of your technical essay, describe why you chose to explore this topic and why it is of value to your readers. Then provide a description of what you intend to research in the following paragraphs, and then dive into the details of your research in the main body. If you have conducted multiple experiments or explored multiple questions in your research, use this section and write subheadings describing what you are going to talk about in this particular subsection. In the conclusion, describe how you have achieved the result of the research process. At the very end, include the section with used sources.

• Recommendations for writing an IT essay

By creating this essay, students demonstrate the skills of independent search and analytical work, immerse themselves in the topic, and try to find a solution to a specific problem that is embedded in the topic of the paper. But not all students know how to write an essay in IT. There are certain recommendations following which you can write a high-quality, informative, meaningful paper.

6. Stages of writing an essay on IT

An essay on IT is a scientific work; therefore, it should be approached responsibly and with complete seriousness. When writing it, the student reviews existing sources of literature and supplements the material with his or her own conclusions.

Let’s consider in stages how writing an essay looks and what needs to be taken into account.

• Choosing a topic for the technical essay

As a rule, university teachers offer students a list of topics to choose from. When the topic is chosen, it is approved by the teacher. Alternatively, you can offer your ideas, but it should be borne in mind that the topic should be relevant and correspond to the content of the IT discipline.

• Collect and analyze the material for the technical essay

This stage allows you to find information on the selected topic presented in different sources. Libraries, textbooks, the Internet – there is a lot of material here. If you have difficulties with the search, it is recommended to contact the teacher who will tell you where and in what sources you can find relevant information.

• Think over the structure of the essay

There is no need to come up with something new since there are certain rules for the format and content of scientific works, and an essay on IT is no exception. It consists of:

• Introduction
• The main body – sections, subsections, paragraphs
• List of used literature

Difficulties can arise when writing the main part of the text. Here, it is necessary to reveal the topic as much as possible, study the problem, and find a solution independently or based on information from other sources. If the student performs any calculations or creates tables or graphs, then they should be attached at the end of the essay. It is also important to adhere to the length recommended by the teacher.

7. Common mistakes

• The text compiled purely on the basis of the author’s own thoughts, without using sources on the topic of the paper. The author is recommended to competently alternate personal thoughts with the studied information – this is how the objectivity of the presented data is achieved.
• A bias towards presenting your own thoughts with a focus on the points of interest to you. This approach reduces the quality of the essay.
• Lack of understanding of the essence of the problem posed with a lack of coherent text. A good technical essay is a detailed, comprehensive study of a topic. Such a paper is interesting to readers and valuable as scientific material.
• Enumeration of outside thoughts, and the lack of the author’s position. Such an essay is not suitable, because without the author’s opinions it is not unique, but looks like a collection of other people’s ideas, developments, etc.

When it comes to writing technical essays, some students don’t know how to adjust. For this reason, we have presented this guide. You will succeed in writing if you follow our recommendations. Good luck!

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How to write a technical paper or a research paper

By michael ernst, april, 2005 last updated: august 18, 2023, which details to include, make the organization and results clear, getting started: overcoming writer's block and procrastination, writing style, computer program source code, numbers and measurements, processing data, related work, when to submit your paper for publication, responding to conference reviews, norman ramsey's advice, other resources, introduction.

This document describes several simple, concrete ways to improve your writing, by avoiding some common mistakes. The end of this document contains more resources for improving your writing.

Some people believe that writing papers, giving talks , and similar “marketing” activities are not part of research, but an adjunct to it or even an undesirable distraction. This view is inaccurate. The purpose of research is to increase the store of human knowledge, and so even the very best work is useless if you cannot effectively communicate it to the rest of the world. If a paper is poorly written, then readers might conclude you spent as little effort on the research that it describes.

Equally importantly, writing papers and giving talks will clarify your thinking and thereby improve your research. You may be surprised how difficult it is to clearly communicate your ideas and contributions; doing so will force you to understand them more deeply and enable you to improve them.

Know your message, and stay on message

The goal of writing a paper is to change people's behavior: for instance, to change the way they think about a research problem or to convince them to use a new approach. Determine your goal (also known as your thesis), and focus the paper around that goal.

As a general rule, your paper needs to convince the audience of three key points. If any of these is missing or unclear, the paper will not be compelling.

• The problem is important . The problem has a significant impact and consequences. You can buttress your argument by showing that others consider the problem important.
• The problem is hard . Explain that obvious techniques and existing approaches do not suffice. Showing what others have tried can be effective here.
• You have solved the problem. This is often demonstrated via experiments. Keep in mind how you expect the behavior of readers to change once they appreciate your contributions. You'll also need to convince readers that your contributions are novel. When expressing this, it is helpful to explain why no one else thought of your approach before (or why, if they thought of it, they would have rejected the approach) , and whether similar insights apply to other problems.

Before you write your paper, you need to understand your audience. Who will read your paper? What are their backgrounds, motivations, interests, and beliefs? What are the key points you want a reader person to take away from your paper? Once you know the thesis and audience, you can determine what points your document should make to achieve its purpose.

For each point in your paper, you need to explain both what and why . Start with what, but don't omit why. For example, it is not enough to state how an algorithm works; you should explain why it works in that way, or why another way of solving the problem would be different. Similarly, it is not sufficient to present a figure or facts. You must also ensure that reader understands the significance or implications of the figure and what parts of it are most important.

Your purpose is to communicate specific ideas, and everything about your paper should contribute to this goal. If any part of the paper does not support your main point, then delete or change that part. You must be ruthless in cutting every irrelevant detail, however true it may be. Everything in your paper that does not support your main point distracts from it.

Write for the readers, rather than writing for yourself. In particular, think about what matters to the intended audience, and focus on that. It is not necessarily what you personally find most intriguing.

A common mistake is to focus on what you spent the most time on. Do not write your paper as a chronological narrative of all the things that you tried, and do not devote space in the paper proportionately to the amount of time you spent on each task. Most work that you do will never show up in any paper; the purpose of infrastructure-building and exploration of blind alleys is to enable you to do the small amount of work that is worth writing about. Another way of stating this is that the purpose of the paper is not to describe what you have done, but to inform readers of the successful outcome or significant results, and to convince readers of the validity of those conclusions.

Likewise, do not dwell on details of the implementation or the experiments except insofar as they contribute to your main point. This is a particularly important piece of advice for software documentation, where you need to focus on the software's benefits to the user, and how to use it, rather than how you implemented it. However, it holds for technical papers as well — and remember that readers expect different things from the two types of writing!

The audience is interested in what worked, and why, so start with that. If you discuss approaches that were not successful, do so briefly, and typically only after you have discussed the successful approach. Furthermore, the discussion should focus on differences from the successful technique, and if at all possible should provide general rules or lessons learned that will yield insight and help others to avoid such blind alleys in the future.

Whenever you introduce a strawman or an inferior approach, say so upfront. A reader will (and should) assume that whatever you write in a paper is something you believe or advocate, unless very clearly marked otherwise. A paper should never first detail a technique, then (without forewarning) indicate that the technique is flawed and proceed to discuss another technique. Such surprises confuse and irritate readers. This mistake is often called “leading the reader down the garden path”.

When there are multiple possible approaches to a problem, it is preferable to give the best or successful one first. Oftentimes it is not even necessary to discuss the alternatives. If you do, they should generally come after, not before, the successful one. Your paper should give the most important details first, and the less important ones afterward. Its main line of argument should flow coherently rather than being interrupted. It can be acceptable to state an imperfect solution first (with a clear indication that it is imperfect) if it is a simpler version of the full solution, and the full solution is a direct modification of the simpler one. Less commonly, it can be acceptable to state an imperfect solution first if it is an obvious solution that every reader will assume is adequate; but use care with this rationalization, since you are usually wrong that every reader will jump to the given conclusion.

A paper should communicate the main ideas of your research (such as the techniques and results) early and clearly. Then, the body of the paper can expand on these points; a reader who understands the structure and big ideas can better appreciate the details. Another way of saying this is that you should give away the punchline. A technical paper is not a joke or a mystery novel. The reader should not encounter any surprises, only deeper explanations of ideas that have already been introduced. It's particularly irritating when an abstract or introduction states, “We evaluated the relationship between baldness and beekeeping”, with the key results buried pages later. A better abstract would say, “Male beekeepers are 25% more likely to be bald (p=.04), but there is no statistically significant correlation for female beekeepers.”

The same advice applies at the level of sections and paragraphs. It is a bad approach to start with a mass of details and only at the end tell the reader what the main point was or how the details related to one another. Instead, state the point first and then support it. The reader is more likely to appreciate which evidence is important and why, and is less likely to become confused or frustrated.

For each section of the paper, consider writing a mini-introduction that says what its organization is, what is in each subpart, and how the parts relate to one another. For the whole paper, this is probably a paragraph. For a section or sub-section, it can be as short as a sentence. This may feel redundant to you (the author), but readers haven't spent as much time with the paper's structure as you have, so they will truly appreciate these signposts that orient them within your text.

Some people like to write the abstract, and often also the introduction, last. Doing so makes them easier to write, because the rest of the paper is already complete and can just be described. However, I prefer to write these sections early in the process (and then revise them as needed), because they frame the paper. If you know the paper's organization and outlook, then writing the front matter will take little effort. If you don't, then it is an excellent use of your time to determine that information by writing the front matter. To write the body of the paper without knowing its broad outlines will take more time in the long run. Another way of putting this is that writing the paper first will make writing the abstract faster, and writing the abstract first will make writing the paper faster. There is a lot more paper than abstract, so it makes sense to start with that and to clarify the point of the paper early on.

It is a very common error to dive into the technical approach or the implementation details without first appropriately framing the problem and providing motivation and background. Readers need to understand what the task is before they are convinced that they should pay attention to what you are saying about it. You should first say what the problem or goal is, and — even when presenting an algorithm — first state what the output is and probably the key idea, before discussing steps. Avoid providing information that isn't useful to readers/users. It just distracts from the important content.

Some writers are overwhelmed by the emptiness of a blank page or editor buffer, and they have trouble getting started with their writing. Don't worry! Here are some tricks to help you get started. Once you have begun, you will find it relatively easier to revise your notes or first draft. The key idea is to write something , and you can improve it later.

Start verbally . Explain what the paper needs to say to another person. After the conversation is over, write down what you just said, focusing on the main points rather than every word you spoke. Many people find it easier to speak than to write. Furthermore, getting feedback and giving clarifications will help you discover problems with your argument, explanation, or word choice.

Outline . You may not be ready to write full English paragraphs, but you can decide which sections your paper will have and give them descriptive titles. Once you have decided on the section structure, you can write a little outline of each section, which indicates the subsection titles. Now, expand that into a topic sentence for each paragraph. At this point, since you know the exact topic of each paragraph, you will find the paragraph easy to write.

Stream-of-consciousness notes . Write down everything that you know, in no particular order and with no particular formatting. Afterward, organize what you wrote thematically, bringing related points together. Eventually, convert it into an outline and proceed as above. While writing notes, use phrases/keywords, not complete sentences. The phrases are quicker to write and less likely to derail your brainstorming; they are easier to organize; and you will feel less attached to them and more willing to delete them.

Divide and conquer . Rather than trying to write your entire document, choose some specific part, and write just that part. Then, move on to another part.

Re-use . Find other text that you have written on the topic and start from that. An excellent source is your progress reports — you are writing them, aren't you? This can remind you what was hard or interesting, or of points that you might otherwise forget to make. You will rarely want to re-use text verbatim, both because you can probably convey the point better now, and also because writing for different audiences or in different contexts requires a different argument or phrasing. For example, a technical paper and a technical talk have similar aims but rather different forms.

You must be willing to delete and/or rewrite your notes and early drafts. If you wrote something once, you can write it again (probably better!). Early on, the point is to organize your ideas, not to create finished sentences.

Be brief. Make every word count. If a word does not support your point, cut it out, because excess verbiage and fluff only make it harder for the reader to appreciate your message. Use shorter and more direct phrases wherever possible.

Make your writing crisp and to the point. Eliminate any text that does not support your point. Here is one way you might go about this; it is time-consuming but extremely effective. First, examine each section of the paper in turn and ask what role it serves and whether it contributes to the paper's main point. If not, delete it. Next, within each section, examine each paragraph. Ask whether that paragraph has a single point. If not, rewrite the paragraph. Also ask whether that point contributes to the goals of the section. If not, then delete the paragraph. Next, within each paragraph, examine each sentence. If it does not make a single, clear point that strengthens the paragraph, delete or rewrite it. Finally, within each sentence, examine each word, and delete or replace those that do not strengthen their point. You will need to repeat this entire process multiple times, keeping a fresh perspective on the paper.

Some people find it easier to follow this approach bottom-up, first cutting/rewriting words, then sentences, etc.

Passive voice has no place in technical writing. It obscures who the actor was, what caused it, and when it happened. Use active voice and simple, clear, direct phrasing.

First person is rarely appropriate in technical writing.

• First person is appropriate when describing something that the author of the paper did manually. Recall that your paper should not be couched as a narrative.
• Do not use “we” to mean “the author and the reader” or “the paper”. For example, do not write “In this section, we ...”.
• Do not use “we” to describe the operation of a program or system. “We compute a graph” makes it sound like the authors did it by hand. As a related point, do not anthropomorphize computers: they hate it. Anthropomorphism, such as “the program thinks that ...”, is unclear and vague.

Avoid puffery, self-congratulation, superlatives, and subjective or value judgments: give the objective facts and let the reader judge. Avoid vague terms like “sizable” and “significant” (which are also subjective). Don't overuse the word “novel”.

Do not use words like “clearly”, “easily”, “obviously”, and “trivially”, as in “Obviously, this Taylor series sums to π.” If the point is really obvious, then you are just wasting words by pointing it out. And if the point is not obvious to readers who are not intimately familiar with the subject matter the way you are, then you are offending readers by insulting their intelligence, and you are demonstrating your own inability to communicate the intuition.

Prefer singular to plural number. In “sequences induce graphs”, it is not clear whether the two collections are in one-to-one correspondence, or the set of sequences collectively induces a set of graphs; “each sequence induces a graph” avoids this confusion. Likewise, in “graphs might contain paths”, it is unclear whether a given graph might contain multiple paths, or might contain at most one path.

When describing an experiment or some other event or action that occurred in the past, use past tense . For example, the methodology section might say “We ran the program”. It would be ungrammatical and confusing to use present tense, as in “We run the program”. Present tense is for ongoing events (“I write this letter to inform you...”) or regular events (“I brush my teeth each day”), but not past events (“Yesterday, I eat dinner with my family”). It is also correct to say “Our methodology was to run the program”, where you use past tense “was” and the infinitive “to run”.

When describing the paper itself, use present tense . “This paper shows that ...”. The reason for this is that the reader is experiencing the paper in real time.

Avoid gratuitous use of the future tense “will ...”, as in, “switching the red and green wires will cause the bomb to explode”. It is unclear when the action will occur. If it is an immediate effect, use the shorter and more direct “switching the red and green wires causes the bomb to explode”.

Use “previous work” instead of “existing work”. Your work exists, so “existing work” would refer to it as well.

In a list with 3 or more elements list, put a serial comma between each of the items (including the last two). As a simple example of why, consider this 3-element grocery list written without the clarifying last comma: “milk, macaroni and cheese and crackers”. It's not clear whether that means { milk, macaroni and cheese, crackers } or { milk, macaroni, cheese and crackers }. As another example, “I would like to thank my parents, Rene Descartes and Ayn Rand,” suggests rather unusual parentage, whereas “I would like to thank my parents, Rene Descartes, and Ayn Rand,” shows a debt to four people. I've seen real examples that were even more confusing than these.

In English, compound adjectives are hyphenated but compound nouns are not. Consider “the semantics provide name protection” versus “the name-protection semantics”.

Prefer unambiguous words to ambiguous ones. Do not use “as” or “since” to mean “because”. Do not use “if” to mean “whether”.

Use quotations sparingly. A clear paraphrase of the points that are relevant to your own work (along with a proper citation) is usually better than a long quotation from a previous publication.

Avoid third-person pronouns when you can. The old standard was “he”, which is masculine chauvinist. The new standard is “he or she”, which can be viewed as heteronormative and which some people find clumsy. An emerging standard is “they” as a first-person singular pronoun, which is inclusive but grammatically incorrect and confusing (see comments above about singular vs. plural number).

Some of the suggestions in this document are about good writing, and that might seem secondary to the research. But writing more clearly will help you think more clearly and often reveals flaws (or ideas!) that had previously been invisible even to you. Furthermore, if your writing is not good, then either readers will not be able to comprehend your good ideas, or readers will be (rightly) suspicious of your technical work. If you do not (or cannot) write well, why should readers believe you were any more careful in the research itself? The writing reflects on you, so make it reflect well.

Use figures! Different people learn in different ways, so you should complement a textual or mathematical presentation with a graphical one. Even for people whose primary learning modality is textual, another presentation of the ideas can clarify, fill gaps, or enable the reader to verify his or her understanding. Figures can also help to illustrate concepts, draw a skimming reader into the text (or at least communicate a key idea to that reader). Figures make the paper more visually appealing.

It is extremely helpful to give an example to clarify your ideas: this can make concrete in the reader's mind what your technique does (and why it is hard or interesting). A running example used throughout the paper is also helpful in illustrating how your algorithm works, and a single example permits you to amortize the time and space spent explaining the example (and the reader's time in appreciating it). It's harder to find or create a single example that you re-use throughout the paper, but it is worth it.

A figure should stand on its own, containing all the information that is necessary to understand it. Good captions contain multiple sentences; the caption provides context and explanation. For examples of good, informative captions, see the print editions of magazines such as Scientific American and American Scientist . The caption should state what the figure illustrates or what conclusion a reader should draw from it. Don't write an obvious description of what the figure is, such as "Code example". Never write a caption like “The Foobar technique”; the caption should also say what the Foobar technique is, what it is good for, or how it works. The caption may also need to explain the meaning of columns in a table or of symbols in a figure. However, it's even better to put that information in the figure proper; for example, use labels or a legend. When the body of your paper contains information that belongs in a caption, there are several negative effects. The reader is forced to hunt all over the paper in order to understand the figure. The flow of the writing is interrupted with details that are relevant only when one is looking at the figure. The figures become ineffective at drawing in a reader who is scanning the paper — an important constituency that you should cater to!

As with naming , use pictorial elements consistently. Only use two different types of arrows (or boxes, shading, etc.) when they denote distinct concepts; do not introduce inconsistency just because it pleases your personal aesthetic sense. Almost any diagram with multiple types of elements requires a legend (either explicitly in the diagram, or in the caption) to explain what each one means; and so do many diagrams with just one type of element, to explain what it means.

Some writers label all the types of figures differently — some as “figure”, others as “table” or “graph” or “picture”. This differentiation has no benefits, but it does have a drawback: it is very hard for a reader to find “table 3”, which might appear after “figure 7” but before “freehand drawing 1”. You should simply call them all figures and number them sequentially. The body of each figure might be a table, a graph, a diagram, a screenshot, or any other content.

Put figures at the top of the page, not in the middle or bottom. If a numbered, captioned figure appears in the middle or at the bottom of a page, it is harder for readers to find the next paragraph of text while reading, and harder to find the figure from a reference to it.

Avoid bitmaps, which are hard to read. Export figures from your drawing program in a vector graphics format. If you must use a bitmap (which is only appropriate for screenshots of a tool), then produce them at very high resolution. Use the biggest-resolution screen you can, and magnify the portion you will capture.

Don't waste text in the paper (and tax the reader's patience) regurgitating information that is expressed more precisely and concisely in a figure. For example, the text should not repeat the numbers from a table or graph. Text in the paper should add insight or explanations, or summarize the conclusions to be drawn from the data in the figure.

Your code examples should either be real code, or should be close to real code. Never use synthetic examples such as procedures or variables named foo or bar . Made-up examples are much harder for readers to understand and to build intuition regarding. Furthermore, they give the reader the impression that your technique is not applicable in practice — you couldn't find any real examples to illustrate it, so you had to make something up.

Any boldface or other highlighting should be used to indicate the most important parts of a text. In code snippets, it should never be used to highlight syntactic elements such as “public” or “int”, because that is not the part to which you want to draw the reader's eye. (Even if your IDE happens to do that, it isn't appropriate for a paper.) For example, it would be acceptable to use boldface to indicate the names of procedures (helping the reader find them), but not their return types.

Give each concept in your paper a descriptive name to make it more memorable to readers. Never use terms like “approach 1”, “approach 2”, or “our approach”, and avoid acronyms when possible. If you can't think of a good name, then quite likely you don't really understand the concept. Think harder about it to determine its most important or salient features.

It is better to name a technique (or a paper section, etc.) based on what it does rather than how it does it.

Use terms consistently and precisely. Avoid “elegant variation”, which uses different terms for the same concept to avoid boredom on the part of the reader or to emphasize different aspects of the concept. While elegant variation may be appropriate in poems, novels, and some essays, it is not acceptable in technical writing, where you should clearly define terms when they are first introduced, then use them consistently. If you switch wording gratuitously, you will confuse the reader and muddle your point. A reader of a technical paper expects that use of a different term flags a different meaning, and will wonder what subtle difference you are trying to highlight. Thus, don't confuse the reader by substituting “program”, “library”, “component”, “system”, and “artifact”, nor by conflating “technique”, “idea”, “method” and “approach”, nor by switching among “program”, “code”, and “source”. Choose the best word for the concept, and stick with it.

Do not use a single term to refer to multiple concepts. If you use the term “technique” for every last idea that you introduce in your paper, then readers will become confused. This is a place that use of synonyms to distinguish concepts that are unrelated (from the point of view of your paper) is acceptable. For instance, you might always use “phase” when describing an algorithm but “step” when describing how a user uses a tool.

When you present a list, be consistent in how you introduce each element, and either use special formatting to make them stand out or else state the size of the list. Don't use, “There are several reasons I am smart. I am intelligent. Second, I am bright. Also, I am clever. Finally, I am brilliant.” Instead, use “There are four reasons I am smart. First, I am intelligent. Second, I am bright. Third, I am clever. Fourth, I am brilliant.” Especially when the points are longer, this makes the argument much easier to follow. Some people worry that such consistency and repetition is pedantic or stilted, or it makes the writing hard to follow. There is no need for such concerns: none of these is the case. It's more important to make your argument clear than to achieve “elegant variation” at the expense of clarity.

Choose good names not only for the concepts that you present in your paper, but for the document source file. Don't name the file after the conference to which you are submitting (the paper might be rejected) or the year. Even if the paper is accepted, such a name won't tell you what the paper is about when you look over your files in later years. Instead, give the paper or its folder/directory a name that reflects its content. Another benefit is that this will also lead you to think about the paper in terms of its content and contributions.

Here is a piece of advice that is specific to computing: do not use the vague, nontechnical term “bug”. Instead, use one of the standard terms fault, error, or failure. A fault is an underlying defect in a system, introduced by a human. A failure is a user-visible manifestation of the fault or defect. In other circumstances, “bug report” may be more appropriate than “bug”.

Digits of precision:

• Don't report more digits of precision than the measurement process reliably and reproducibly produces. The 3rd or 4th digit of precision is rarely accurate and generalizable; if you don't have confidence that it is both repeatable and generalizable to new experiments, omit it. Another way to say this is that if you are not confident that a different set of experiments would produce all the same digits, then don't report so much precision.
• Don't report more digits of precision than needed to convey your message. If the difference between 4.13 and 4 will not make a difference in convincing readers, then don't report the extra digits. Reporting extra digits can distract readers from the larger trends and the big picture. Including an inappropriate number of digits of precision can cast suspicion on all of your results, by giving readers the impression that you are statistically naive.
• Use a consistent number of digits of precision. If the measured data are 1.23, 45.67, and 891.23, for example, you might report them as 1.23, 45.7, and 891, or as 1.2, 46, and 890, or as 1, 50, and 900. (An exception is when data are known to sum to a particular value; I would report 93% and 7% rather than either 93% and 7.4% or 90% and 7%. Often it's appropriate to report percentages as whole numbers rather than using the same precision.)
• If you do any computations such as ratios, your computations should internally use the full precision of your actual measurements, even though your paper reports only a limited number of digits of precision.
• If a measurement is exact, such as a count of items, then it can be acceptable to give the entire number even if it has many digits; by contrast, timings and other inexact measurements should always be reported with a limited number of digits of precision.

Do not confuse relative and absolute measurements. For instance, suppose your medicine cures 30% of patients, and the placebo cures 25% of patients. You could report that your medicine's cure rate is .3, the placebo's cure rate is .25, and your medicine's cure rate is either .05 greater or 20% greater. (Other correct, but less good, ways to say the same thing are that it cures 20% more, 120% as many, or 1.2 times as many patients.) It would be inaccurate to state that your medicine cures 5% more patients or your medicine cures 120% more patients. Just as you need to correctly use “120% more” versus “120% as many”, you need to correctly use “3 times faster than” versus “3 times as fast as”. A related, also common, confusion is between “3 times faster than and 3 times as fast as”. And, “2 times fewer” makes absolutely no sense. I would avoid these terms entirely. “Half as many” is a much better substitute for “2 times fewer”.

Given the great ease of misunderstanding what a percentage means or what its denominator is, I try to avoid percentages and focus on fractions whenever possible, especially for base measurements. For comparisons between techniques, percentages can be acceptable. Avoid presenting two different measurements that are both percentages but have different denominators.

Your paper probably includes tables, bibliographies, or other content that is generated from external data. Your paper may also be written in a text formatting language such as LaTeX. In each of these cases, it is necessary to run some external command to create some of the content or to create the final PDF.

All of the steps to create your final paper should be clearly documented — say, in comments or in a notes file that you maintain with the paper. Preferably, they should be automated so that you only have to run one command that collects all the data, creates the tables, and generates the final PDF.

If you document and automate these steps, then you can easily regenerate the paper when needed. This is useful if you re-run experiments or analysis, or if you need to defend your results against a criticism by other researchers. If you leave some steps manual, then you or your colleagues are highly likely to make a mistake (leading to a scientific error) or to be unable to reproduce your results later.

One good way to automate these tasks is by writing a program or creating a script for a build system such as Ant, Gradle, Make, Maven, etc.

A related work section should not only explain what research others have done, but in each case should compare and contrast that to your work and also to other related work. After reading your related work section, a reader should understand the key idea and contribution of each significant piece of related work, how they fit together (what are the common themes or approaches in the research community?), and how your work differs. Don't write a related work section that is just a list of other papers, with a sentence about each one that was lifted from its abstract, and without any critical analysis nor deep comparison to other work.

Unless your approach is a small variation on another technique, it is usually best to defer the related work to the end of the paper. When it comes first, it gives readers the impression that your work is rather derivative. (If this is true, it is your responsibility to convey that clearly; if it is not true, then it's misleading to intimate it.) You need to ensure that readers understand your technique in its entirety, and also understand its relationship to other work; different orders can work in different circumstances.

Just as you should generally explain your technique first, and later show relationships with other work, it is also usually more effective to defer a detailed discussion of limitations to a later section rather than the main description of your technique. You should be straightforward and honest about the limitations, of course (do mention them early on, even if you don't detail them then), but don't destroy the coherence of your narrative or sour the reader on your technique.

Get feedback ! Finish your paper well in advance, so that you can improve the writing. Even re-reading your own text after being away from it can show you things that you didn't notice. An outside reader can tell you even more.

When readers misunderstand the paper, that is always at least partly the author's fault! Even if you think the readers have missed the point, you will learn how your work can be misinterpreted, and eliminating those ambiguities will improve the paper.

Be considerate to your reviewers, who are spending their time to help you. Here are several ways to do that.

As with submission to conferences, don't waste anyone's time if there are major flaws. Only ask someone to read (a part of) your paper when you think you will learn something new, because you are not aware of serious problems. If only parts are ready, it is best to indicate this in the paper itself (e.g., a TODO comment that the reader will see or a hand-written annotation on a hardcopy) rather than verbally or in email that can get forgotten or separated from the paper.

Sometimes you want to tell a colleague who is giving you feedback that some sections of your draft are not ready to be read, or to focus on particular aspects of the document. You should write such directions in the paper, not just in email or verbally. You will then update them as you update the paper, and all relevant information is collected together. By contrast, it's asking for trouble to make your colleague keep track of information that is in multiple places.

It is most effective to get feedback sequentially rather than in parallel. Rather than asking 3 people to read the same version of your paper, ask one person to read the paper, then make corrections before asking the next person to read it, and so on. This prevents you from getting the same comments repeatedly — subsequent readers can give you new feedback rather than repeating what you already knew, and you'll get feedback on something that is closer to the final version. If you ask multiple reviewers at once, you are de-valuing their time — you are indicating that you don't mind if they waste their time saying something you already know. You might ask multiple reviewers if you are not confident of their judgment or if you are very confident the paper already is in good shape, in which case there are unlikely to be major issues that every reviewer stumbles over.

It usually best not to email the document, but to provide a location from which reviewers can obtain the latest version of the paper, such as a version control repository or a URL you will update. That way, you won't clutter inboxes with many revisions, and readers can always get the most recent copy.

Be generous with your time when colleagues need comments on their papers: you will help them, you will learn what to emulate or avoid, and they will be more willing to review your writing.

Some of your best feedback will be from yourself, especially as you get more thoughtful and introspective about your writing. To take advantage of this, start writing early. One good way to do this is to write a periodic progress report that describes your successes and failures. The progress report will give you practice writing about your work, oftentimes trying out new explanations.

Whereas you should start writing as early as possible, you don't need to put that writing in the form of a technical paper right away. In fact, it's usually best to outline the technical paper, and get feedback on that, before you start to fill in the sections with text. (You might think that you can copy existing text into the paper, but it usually works out better to write the information anew. With your knowledge of the overall structure, goals, and audience, you will be able to do a much better job that fits with the paper's narrative.) When outlining, I like to start with one sentence about the paper; then write one sentence for each section of the paper; then write one sentence for each subsection; then write one sentence for each paragraph (think of this as the topic sentence); and at that point, it's remarkably easy just to flesh out the paragraphs.

You should not submit your paper too early, when it does not reflect well on you and a submission would waste the community's reviewing resources. You should not submit your paper too late, because then the community is deprived of your scientific insights. In general, you should err on the side of submitting too late rather than too early.

A rule of thumb is to submit only if you are proud for the world to associate your name with the work, in its current form . If you know of significant criticisms that reviewers might raise, then don't submit the paper.

Submitting your paper prematurely has many negative consequences.

• You will waste the time of hard-working reviewers, who will give you feedback that you could have obtained in other ways.
• You will get a reputation for shoddy work.
• You will make the paper less likely to be accepted in the future. Oftentimes the same reviewers may serve two different venues. Reviewing a paper again puts a reviewer in a negative state of mind. I have frequently heard reviewers say, “I read an earlier version of this paper, it was a bad paper, and this version is similar.” (This is unethical because reviewers are not supposed to talk about papers they have reviewed, but nonetheless it is very common.) Now the paper will likely be rejected again, and the whole committee gets a bad impression of you. A reviewer who has read a previous version of the paper may read the resubmission less carefully or make assumptions based on a previous version. To sum up: it's harder to get a given paper accepted on its second submission, than it would have been to get the identical paper accepted on its first submission.

Here are some bad reasons to submit a paper.

It's true that the feedback from reviewers is extraordinarily valuable to you and will help you improve the paper. However, you should get feedback from other scientists (your friends and colleagues) before submitting for publication.

Those are true facts, and some people do “salami-slice” their research into as many papers as possible — such papers are called a “least publishable unit”. However, doing so leads to less impact than publishing fewer papers, each one with more content. If a paper contains few contributions, it is less likely to make a big impression, because it is less exciting. In addition, readers won't enjoy reading many pages to learn just a few facts.

Note: This point refers to taking a single research idea or theme and splitting it into multiple publications. When there are multiple distinct research contributions, it can be appropriate to describe them in different papers.

The reviewing process can be frustrating, because it contains a great deal of randomness: the same paper would be rejected by some reviewers and accepted by others. However, all great papers are accepted and all bad papers are rejected. For mediocre papers, luck plays a role. Your goal should not be to write great papers, not mediocre ones. Find a way to improve your paper. Recognize the great value of reviews: they provide a valuable perspective on your work and how to improve it, even if you feel that the reviewer should have done a better job.

If you aren't excited about the paper, it is unlikely that other people will be. Furthermore, the period after submitting the paper is not a time to take a break, but an opportunity to further improve it.

After you submit a paper, don't stop working on it! You can always improve the research. For instance, you might expand the experiments, improve the implementation, or make other changes. Even if your paper is accepted, you want the accepted version to be as impressive as possible. And if the paper is rejected, you need to have a better paper to submit to the next venue.

(This section is most relevant to fields like computer science where conferences are the premier publication venue. Responding to journal reviews is different.)

Many conferences provide an author response period: the authors are shown the reviews and are given limited space (say, 500 words) to respond to the reviews, such as by clarifying misunderstandings or answering questions. The author response is sometimes called a “rebuttal”, but I don't like that term because it sets an adversarial tone.

Your paper will only be accepted if there is a champion for the paper: someone who is excited about it and will try to convince the rest of the committee to accept the paper. Your response needs to give information to your champion to overcome objections. If there isn't a champion, then the main goal of your response is to create that champion. Your response should also give information to detractors to soften their opposition.

After reading the reviews, you may be disappointed or angry. Take a break to overcome this, so that you can think clearly.

For every point in the reviews, write a brief response. Do this in email-response style, to ensure that you did not miss any points. You will want to save this for later, so it can be better to do this in the paper's version control repository, rather than in a WYSIWYG editor such as Google Docs. (This assumes you have a version control repository for the paper, which you should!) Much of this text won't go in your response, but it is essential for formulating the response.

Summarize (in 5 or so bullet points, however many make sense) the key concerns of the reviewers. Your review needs to focus on the most important and substantive critiques. The authors of the paper should agree on this structure before you start to write the actual response.

Your response to each point will be one paragraph in your response. Start the paragraph with a brief heading or title about the point. Do not assume that the reviewers remember everything that was written by every reviewer, nor that they will re-read their reviews before reading your response. A little context will help them determine what you are talking about and will make the review stand on its own. This also lets you frame the issues in your own words, which may be clearer or address a more relevant point than the reviews did.

Organize your responses thematically. Group the paragraphs into sections, and have a small heading/title for each section. If a given section has just one paragraph, then you can use the paragraph heading as the section heading. Order the sections from most to least important.

This is better than organizing your response by reviewer, first addressing the comments of reviewer 1, then reviewer 2, and so forth. Downsides of by-reviewer organization include:

• It can encourage you not to give sufficient context.
• It does not encourage putting related information together nor important information first.
• You want to encourage all reviewers to read the entire response, rather than encouraging them to just look at one part.
• When multiple reviewers raised the same issue, then no matter where you address it, it's possible for a reviewer to overlook it and think you failed to address it.
• You don't want to make glaringly obvious which issues in a review you had to ignore (for reasons of space or other reasons).
• You don't want to make glaringly obvious that you spent much more time and space on one reviewer than another.

In general, it's best not to mention reviewer names/numbers in your response at all. Make the response be about the science, not about the people.

In your responses, admit your errors forthrightly. Don't ignore or avoid key issues, especially ones that multiple reviewers brought up.

Finally, be civil and thankful the reviewers. They have spent considerable time and energy to give you feedback (even if it doesn't seem to you that they have!), and you should be grateful and courteous in return.

If you submit technical papers, you will experience rejection. In some cases, rejection indicates that you should move on and begin a different line of research. In most cases, the reviews offer an opportunity to improve the work, and so you should be very grateful for a rejection! It is much better for your career if a good paper appears at a later date, rather than a poor paper earlier or a sequence of weak papers.

Even small flaws or omissions in an otherwise good paper may lead to rejection. This is particularly at the elite venues with small acceptance rates, where you should aim your work. Referees are generally people of good will, but different referees at a conference may have different standards, so the luck of the draw in referees is a factor in acceptance.

The wrong lesson to learn from rejection is discouragement or a sense of personal failure. Many papers — even papers that later win awards — are rejected at least once. The feedback you receive, and the opportunity to return to your work, will invariably improve your results.

Don't be put off by a negative tone in the reviews. The referees are trying to help you, and the bast way to do that is to point out how your work can be improved. I often write a much longer review, with more suggestions for improvement, for papers that I like; if the paper is terrible, I may not be able to make as many concrete suggestions, or my high-level comments may make detailed comments moot.

If a reviewer didn't understand something, then the main fault almost always lies with your writing. If you blame a lazy or dumb reviewer, you are missing the opportunity to improve. Reviewers are not perfect, but they work hard to give you helpful suggestions, so you should give them the benefit of the doubt. Remember that just as it is hard to convey technical ideas in your paper (and if you are getting a rejection, that is evidence that you did not succeed!), it is hard to convey them in a review, and the review is written in a few hours rather than the weeks you spent on the paper (not to mention months or years of understanding the concepts). You should closely attend to both the explicit comments, and to underlying issues that may have led to those comments — it isn't always easy to capture every possible comment in a coherent manner. Think about how to improve your research and your writing, even beyond the explicit suggestions in the review — the prime responsibility for your research and writing belongs with you.

Norman Ramsey's nice Teach Technical Writing in Two Hours per Week espouses a similar approach to mine: by focusing on clarity in your writing, you will inevitably gain clarity in your thinking.

Don't bother to read both the student and instructor manuals — the student one is a subset of the instructor one. You can get much of the benefit from just one part, his excellent “principles and practices of successful writers”:

• Correctness. Write correct English, but know that you have more latitude than your high-school English teachers may have given you.
• Consistent names. Refer to each significant character (algorithm, concept, language) using the same word everywhere. Give a significant new character a proper name.
• Singular. To distinguish one-to-one relationships from n-to-m relationships, refer to each item in the singular, not the plural.
• Subjects and verbs. Put your important characters in subjects, and join each subject to a verb that expresses a significant action.
• Information flow. In each sentence, move your reader from familiar information to new information.
• Emphasis. For material you want to carry weight or be remembered, use the end of a sentence.
• Coherence. In a coherent passage, choose subjects that refer to a consistent set of related concepts.
• Parallel structure. Order your text so your reader can easily see how related concepts are different and how they are similar.
• Abstract. In an abstract, don't enumerate a list of topics covered; instead, convey the essential information found in your paper.
• Write in brief daily sessions. Ignore the common myth that successful writing requires large, uninterrupted blocks of time — instead, practice writing in brief, daily sessions.
• Focus on the process, not the product. Don't worry about the size or quality of your output; instead, reward yourself for the consistency and regularity of your input.
• Prewrite. Don't be afraid to think before you write, or even jot down notes, diagrams, and so on.
• Use index cards. Use them to plan a draft or to organize or reorganize a large unit like a section or chapter.
• Write a Shitty First Draft™. Value a first draft not because it's great but because it's there.
• Don't worry about page limits. Write the paper you want, then cut it down to size.
• Cut. Plan a revision session in which your only goal is to cut.
• Norman Ramsey's advice , excerpted immediately above .
• “Hints on writing an M.Eng. thesis” , by Jeremy Nimmer
• my notes on reviewing a technical paper , which indicate how to recognize — and thus produce — quality work
• my notes on choosing a venue for publication
• my notes on giving a technical talk : a talk has the same goal as a paper, namely to convey technical ideas
• my notes on making a technical poster
• Ronald B. Standler's advice on technical writing
• Dave Patterson's Writing Advice
• Advice on SIGPLAN conference submissions (at bottom of page)
• The Elements of Style , William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, is classic book on improving your writing. It focuses at a low level, on English usage.
• Style: Toward Clarity and Grace , by Joseph M. Williams, is another general-purpose writing guide, with a somewhat higher-level focus than that of Strunk & White.
• The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century , by Steven Pinker, is an excellent guide to writing. It gives reasons (from psychology and other scientific fields) for its advice, making it more authoritative than someone's opinion.

Back to Advice compiled by Michael Ernst .

Tips for Writing Technical Papers

Jennifer widom , january 2006, running example, paper title, the abstract, the introduction, related work, performance experiments, the conclusions, future work, the acknowledgements, grammar and small-scale presentation issues, versions and distribution.

How to Write a Technical Essay

Students are required to write different essays during their time at school, ranging from argumentative to descriptive and narrative. Even if you’re accustomed to writing these types of essays, the technical ones differ. These types of essays are intended to educate readers about a topic which is scientific.

What is a technical essay?

Technical essays are an attempt to combine hard facts and an argument. Most essays are short academic pieces that allow students to share their opinions on a specific issue. However, technical writing is a formal form of writing which is easy to write.

How is technical writing different from writing an essay

Technical writing is distinct from writing an essay due to its purpose, audience, structure, and style. Technical writing focuses on conveying specific information, instructions, or explanations related to a technical subject. It is clear, concise, and task-oriented, aimed at helping readers understand and perform tasks effectively. Essays, on the other hand, are more expressive and exploratory, often presenting arguments, analysis, and personal viewpoints. While essays may be creative and flexible in structure, technical writing follows a structured format with headings, bullet points, and diagrams. In essence, technical writing prioritizes clarity and usability, while essays emphasize exploration and persuasion.

Be aware of the reasons for the essay you wrote.

The essays on technical subjects tend to be better than all other forms of writing to be written in the standard format. The goal is to explore the technical or scientific aspects of a subject or describe the steps needed to finish the job using a technical approach or analyze a particular method to accomplish something. Tech essays are composed of the subjects of astronomy, engineering, and biology, geology or any other subject that could require written explanations of steps needed to complete a task or explain the reasons for why the researcher has chosen the method they prefer.

Find out more about formatting styles.

Technical essays tend to be written in a similar style to research papers and other academic writings, with respect to the formatting. In the event that you’re writing an article for a specific journal or degree programme, it is important to be aware of the formatting guidelines. You may also be asked to use a specific font size or to align your paragraphs on the different edges of the pages.

It is probable that sections’ headings as well as references to books or citations should be written in a specific style. When writing academically, it is suggested that you use the Big Three citation formats utilized: APA, MLA, and CMS. If formatting isn’t your thing or you’ve not attempted it before, you could consult an expert in essay-writing to get assistance. The student can assign some of the tasks to companies that write and prioritize the most important tasks. Through a similar program, you can buy an essay and get full assistance in writing, as well as supportive customer support. They employ a team composed of experienced writers that understand the basic concepts of technical writing and are capable of writing an essay on behalf of you.

When you write for academic purposes Failure to include the necessary elements mentioned above could result in a low grade. When you write for professional purposes, documents that are not properly formatted may appear sloppy and make you appear an amateur. Know the format style required to allow others to be impressed by your work.

Don’t forget about the structure

If you’re writing an essay that deals with technical issues, the majority of students believe that an essay should begin with a question, then elaborates about the methods employed to address the issue, then ends with a conclusion. Like that way you start your essay with a captivating title that clearly defines the problem you want to address or the concept you’re trying to communicate. After that, write an “Abstract” section that summarizes the subject, your method as well as the steps you’ve taken and your conclusion in a couple of short paragraphs. Also you need to come up with headings such as “Introduction,” “Methodology,” and “Conclusion.” Draw out the outline first before creating a brief draft to help you with organizing your thoughts and making your job easier to comprehend.

Join the two sections.

Write down the reasons why you chose to study this particular topic and also explain why this subject is important to your reader In the “Introduction” section. Also, Harvard University Writing Center Harvard University Writing Center suggests adding some historical context that will help your research.

If your research involves many questions or tests it is advised to split this section into sections and include subheadings to explain your approach. In each section, you should give your readers an analysis report that clearly and concisely defines the procedure and the process. If your subject requires the examination of a complex procedure, you can utilize the bullet point format to clearly separate every part to help readers understand the concept.

In the “Conclusion” section, you’ll record what you think about in a succinct, but clear manner, and remove all details that are not in your essay. In the final section you must present your results in the course of your essay. Include your citations in an orderly manner at the end of your essay.

Be sure to label the document in the correct way.

If you are writing technical essays it is recommended to name the document in order that it is able to be displayed along with the content. Include the entire essay’s title. Also, ensure that the name of the file doesn’t contain spaces. Make more use of dashes. In addition, not only is the right name essential for the overall layout however, it must be easy and clear to comprehend. 

Many people think they are similar to persuasive essays due to their structure. However, there are a lot of distinctions to consider. For example, technical essays can be utilized to accomplish specific research goals which require a deeper dive into specific scientific methods and related topics, and other topics. In case some help is needed, feel free to share your tasks with the best academic writing assistant – studycrumb . 

Additionally, technical essays must be written in compliance to specific guidelines. The most important thing to remember is to use appropriate headings and subheadings. In addition, you need to identify the document in a manner that demonstrates that the document is geared towards technical. When you’re done you’ll have a clear concept of how to write an outstanding technical essay, if you stick to the rules above.

Example of Technical Essay: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Healthcare

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the healthcare sector. AI-driven diagnostic tools analyze medical images with remarkable accuracy, aiding early disease detection. Natural language processing enables efficient patient data analysis for personalized treatment plans. Additionally, AI-powered chatbots offer immediate medical advice, enhancing patient engagement. As AI continues to advance, its integration in healthcare promises improved diagnostics, treatment, and patient outcomes.

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7 best technical writing examples to improve your skills

Afoma Umesi

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It’s no wonder that technical writing is a fast-growing field.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the employment of technical writers will grow up to 12% from 2020 to 2030–a pace that’s faster than the average for all occupations.

If you’re looking to improve your technical writing skills and break into the field but are unsure how to do it, this article will help.

We’ll show you what technical writing is, how to write a technical piece (step by step), and then share some of the best technical writing examples you’ll ever find.

What is technical writing?

Technical writing is any writing designed to explain complex, technical, and specialized information to audiences who may or may not be familiar with them . It is typically used in technical and occupational fields like engineering, robotics, computer hardware and software, medicine, finance, and consumer electronics.

Usually, technical writing falls into one of three categories depending on whom it’s written for:

• Consumer-directed technical writing refers to technical content written for end-users or consumers. Good examples include user manuals, employee handbooks, standard operating procedures (SOP), software user documentation (help files), troubleshooting guides, and legal disclaimers .
• Expert-to-expert technical writing is written chiefly for a knowledgeable audience. It includes scientific papers, medical case studies, annual business reports, and legal case reviews .
• Technical marketing content is technical information presented in a digestible format to promote a product or service. Think marketing case studies, white papers, product brochures, press releases, and business plans and proposals .

Like most types of content , technical writing is complex and nuanced in its own way. Let’s break down the steps to writing technical content that appeals to your audience.

6 Steps to Writing a Technical Piece That People Actually Want to Read

Instruction manuals, assembly guides, and research papers, oh my . Technical writing can quickly turn into a snooze fest if not done correctly.

How do you create a technical piece that people want to read?

1. Identify Your Audience

Knowing your audience is super important, especially when writing technical content.

For example, the new dad learning to build his first crib may have a different level of medical knowledge (and sheer focus) than the experienced doctor reading a medical research paper.

When you have a clear idea of who you expect to read your piece, you can adjust your vocabulary, tone, and framing accordingly.

This allows you to meet your reader at their point of knowledge .

2. Dig Deep in Your Research

As a technical writer, you’ll be guiding your reader through entirely unfamiliar territory.

You might be explaining how a new electronic tool works, what to expect from their new workplace, or what happened before their firm took on a new legal case. It is essential that you fully understand your subject matter .

You can only teach what you know, and knowledge gaps show when you aren’t thorough in your research.

Place yourself in your readers’ shoes. Imagine you had zero knowledge of the topic at hand and ensure your research covers all potential questions that come to mind. ‍

💡 Tip : If you need help understanding your topic, work with subject matter experts. Here are three helpful resources for collaborating with SMEs:

• How to create great content with busy Subject Matter Experts
• How to collaborate with a Subject Matter Expert
• How to get the content you need from subject matter experts

3. Create an Outline

We recommend creating an outline to give you a sense of what you need to cover in your piece. This can also help identify knowledge gaps as you conduct your research.

When you’re writing longer-form content like white papers or case studies, an outline can serve as a marker to remind you of what you need to include .

In lieu of an outline, you can use a template . Some technical writing, such as business plans, have industry-accepted formats, including sections like an executive summary and competitor analysis.

4. Focus on Readability

Technical writing is not creative writing—you're writing to teach, not inspire or entertain. When tackling complicated topics, using readable sentences can make your work more enjoyable to read .

On the other hand, if you’re verbose or use words that are hard to understand, you’ll only frustrate your reader. If you want to improve readability in technical content, try these tips:

• Use simple language: Strive for shorter, direct sentences that are easy to follow, and avoid passive voice wherever possible.
• Use subheadings: For longer-form content like user documentation, white papers, and research papers , adding subheadings can break up long text walls.
• Add bolded sections and callouts: Bolding text and highlighting paragraphs or callouts for emphasis will make reading easier.
• Hyperlinks and jump links: If you’re writing technical content for webpages, add hyperlinks to any material you reference and jump links to other sections of your piece for easier navigation.

5. Add Visuals

We’re all about the words and the writing, but visuals can make your technical writing easier to understand! In technical writing, adding visuals is less of a luxury and more of a necessity . Visuals such as flowcharts, screenshots, and illustrations can add a much-needed dose of cheer to text-heavy documents.

Whether you’re creating a user manual or annual report for stakeholders, everyone will be happier with product drawings showing the directions or a pie chart displaying the numbers.

6. Cut the Fluff

When you’ve got all the words on paper, it’s time to double-check the facts with collaborators . Don’t be afraid to cut unnecessary information during this writing phase.

How do you identify the fluff? Removing fluff doesn’t impact the readers’ understanding of your text. It could be a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or a step in the directions. Every word in your technical document should count.

7 of the Best Technical Writing Examples from Technical SMEs

With some help from a few technical content experts, we’ve chosen different forms of technical writing across various industries so you can see the skill in action.

Pipedrive’s Developer Documentation

Developer documentation is essential for technical communication, and Pipedrive does it well. This technical document is geared toward layman product users and must be easy to understand, even while providing complex information. Notice the use of jump links and the callout box on the page.

Outfunnel’s Head of Marketing, Katheriin Liibert says about Pipedrive’s technical writing,

Digimind Consumer Brand Footprint Ranking 2021 Report

Digimind goes the extra mile with their visuals in this white paper/industry report . It’s eye-catching and information–all the while remaining thoroughly professional and readable. Being a B2B brand does not mean boring text-only marketing copy.

University of Wisconsin Onboarding Tool Kit

This onboarding/employee handbook wins for being easy to read with short sentences and bullet points that improve readability. The human resources department also adds quick links to any relevant documents new employees need to download or fill out.

Cell Reports Medical Study

Yes, a medical research paper with pictures!

Dr. Sophia Milbourne , a stem cell biologist and freelance science communicator, appreciates that this paper is a “great summary of the subject matter.” More importantly, Milbourne mentions that

LG Refrigerator Manual

This basic user manual from LG gives users an overview of their new product and helps them make the best use of it. (The diagram will come in handy when an online article tells you to adjust the control panel and you’re not sure which knob it is.)

Mashable India’s User Agreement

This is an excellent example of a consumer-directed technical document. Mashable India’s user agreement is a technical legal document including their disclaimer, use license, and usage conditions.

Lawyer and content writer Ejike Umesi acknowledges that the company follows the numbered styling typical of these documents. He says,

Slack Help Center

The Slack Help Center is an excellent example of technical writing that speaks to the layman. Slack is known for its brilliant UX copywriting . Amruta Ranade, Staff Technical Writer for Airbyte, admires the company’s documentation writing style.

“Slack’s Help Center shows incredible user-awareness. The information displayed is contextual, concise, and complete–it helps the user accomplish their task without distracting them or sidetracking them with extraneous information.”

Ramp Up Your Technical Writing

Whether you’re looking to set up a personalized template or collaborate with multiple editors in real-time , GatherContent helps you elevate your technical writing workflow.

With GatherContent, you can build templates for any content you create, including case studies! GatherContent also has helpful resources for helping you and your team prioritize user-led content .

If you publish your content online , you can connect GatherContent to your CMS of choice for seamless exporting. Planning, creating, and sharing great technical content doesn’t have to be so… technical.

Start your GatherContent free trial today.

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What is a Technical Essay

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How to Write a Great Technical Essay

Students are required to write various essays throughout their school experience, ranging from argumentative to descriptive and narrative. Even if you are familiar with writing these types of essays, technical essays differ. Technical essays aim to educate and inform readers about a scientific topic. 

We’ve compiled a list of the most helpful tips for writing a fantastic technical essay to ensure that you write a flawless essay.

Understand why you are writing your essay.

Technical essays are more likely than other forms of essays to follow a specific style. Its goal is to explore a technical or scientific topic, explain how to do a complex technical assignment, or explore a specific approach to certain methodologies of doing something. Tech essays are written on topics in astronomy, engineering, biology, geology, or any other subject that could benefit from a written explanation of the techniques required to complete a task or why a researcher chose a certain approach.

Learn the formatting style.

A technical essay is likely to follow the same format as research or other formal academic writings when it comes to formatting. If you’re writing a technical essay for a particular publication or a degree program, pay attention to any formatting guidelines. Furthermore, you may be asked to use a specific font in a specific size or even align paragraphs to different page borders. 

It’s also possible that section headings and citations or books referenced will need to be formatted a certain way. When it comes to studying academic writings, the Big Three citation formats are used: APA, MLA, and CMS. And if formatting isn’t your best skill, or you’ve never done this before, you can always ask an essay writing service for help. This way, the student can entrust some secondary tasks to writing services, prioritizing the most significant ones. At a service like this, you can buy an essay and get full writing assistance as well as friendly customer service. They have a team of competent professionals who know everything about technical essays and can write an essay for you.

In academic writing, failing to include the features described above could result in a low grade. Furthermore, in a professional setting, a document with inappropriate formatting will appear weak and make you appear to be a complete amateur. Learn the required formatting style if you want others to take your work seriously.

Learn the essay’s structure.

When talking about a technical essay, most people agree that it starts with a question, then goes into detail about the methods used to address the topic, and then offers a conclusion. Similarly, you begin your written argument with a compelling title that describes the problem you want to solve or the principles you want to explain. After that, compose an “Abstract” section that summarizes your topic, method, steps, and conclusion in a few clear sentences. That is, you should make headings like “Introduction,” “Methodology,” and “Conclusion.” Outline the structure first, and write some quick short drafts to help you organize your ideas and make the project less confusing.

Bring the sections together. 

Explain why you chose to research this specific issue and why it would be important to the reader in the “Introduction” section. Furthermore, the Harvard University Writing Center recommends providing some historical background that assists your research. 

However, if your study included a range of experiments or questions, you should subdivide this part and create subheadings to show your methods. Throughout the section, offer your readers the analytical data that clearly and precisely explains the process and methodology. If your topic involves the examination of a complex mechanism, use bullet points to graphically split each aspect and make it easier for the reader to comprehend. 

In the “Conclusion” section, you’ll summarize everything in a short yet clear manner, eliminating any extra details that were not included in the essay, which is you must show what result you achieved at the end of the essay. Include your properly organized citations at the end of the work, as well.

Name the document properly.

When it comes to technical writings, give your file a name to display its subject content. Include the full essay title. In addition, make sure the file name doesn’t have any spaces in it; use dashes instead. Not only is the proper name important for the general structure, but it should also be readable and have a clear indicator of the research topic

Final Words

Some people think technical essays are similar to persuasive essays at first glance, owing to their structure. However, there are several distinctions to be aware of. For example, technical essay must serve some study objectives, diving into specific scientific methods and subjects, and so on. 

Furthermore, technical essays must follow particular guidelines. Another important element to remember is to use headings and subheadings. Also, you should name your file properly to make it clear that the document is a technical essay. Overall, you will have a clear image of how to compose a great technical essay if you follow the above recommendations.

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Home › Writing › What is Technical Writing? › 8 Technical Writing Examples to Inspire You 

8 Technical Writing Examples to Inspire You 

Become a Certified Technical Writer

TABLE OF CONTENTS

As a technical writer, you may end up being confused about your job description because each industry and organization can have varying duties for you. At times, they may ask for something you’ve never written before. In that case, you can consider checking out some technical writing examples to get you started. 

If you’re beginning your technical writing career, it’s advisable to go over several technical writing examples to make sure you get the hang of it. You don’t necessarily have to take a gander over at industry-specific examples; you can get the general idea in any case. 

This article will go over what technical writing is and some of the common technical writing examples to get you started. If you’re looking to see some examples via video, watch below. Otherwise, skip ahead.

If you’re looking to learn via video, watch below. Otherwise, skip ahead.

Let’s start by covering what technical writing is .

What Exactly is Technical Writing?

Technical writing is all about easily digestible content regarding a specialized product or service for the public. Technical writers have to translate complex technical information into useful and easy-to-understand language. 

There are many examples of technical writing, such as preparing instruction manuals and writing complete guides. In some cases, technical writing includes preparing research journals, writing support documents, and other technical documentation. 

The idea is to help the final user understand any technical aspects of the product or service. 

In other cases, technical writing means that the writer needs to know something. For example, pharmaceutical companies may hire medical writers to write their content since they have the required knowledge. 

If you’re interested in learning more about these technical writing skills, then check out our Technical Writing Certification Course.

8 Technical Writing Examples to Get You Started 

As a technical writer, you may have to learn new things continually, increase your knowledge, and work with new forms of content. While you may not have experience with all forms of technical writing, it’s crucial to understand how to do it. 

If you learn all the intricacies of technical writing and technical documents, you can practically work with any form of content, given that you know the format. 

Therefore, the following examples of technical writing should be sufficient for you to get an idea. The different types of technical writing have unique characteristics that you can easily learn and master effectively. 

1. User Manuals 

User manuals or instruction manuals come with various products, such as consumer electronics like televisions, consoles, cellphones, kitchen appliances, and more. The user manual serves as a complete guide on how to use the product, maintain it, clean it, and more.  All technical manuals, including user manuals, have to be highly user-friendly. The technical writer has to write a manual to even someone with zero experience can use the product. Therefore, the target audience of user manuals is complete novices, amateurs, and people using the product/s for the first time. 

Traditionally, user manuals have had text and diagrams to help users understand. However, user manuals have photographs, numbered diagrams, disclaimers, flow charts, sequenced instructions, warranty information, troubleshooting guides, and contact information in recent times. 

Technical writers have to work with engineers, programmers, and product designers to ensure they don’t miss anything. The writer also anticipates potential issues ordinary users may have by first using the product. That helps them develop a first-hand experience and, ultimately, develop better user manuals. 

The point of the user manual isn’t to predict every possible issue or problem. Most issues are unpredictable and are better handled by the customer support or help desk. User manuals are there to address direct and common issues at most. 

You can check out some user manual examples and templates here . You can download them in PDF and edit them to develop an idea about how you can write a custom user manual for your product. 

2. Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) 

Standard operating procedures are complete processes for each organization’s various tasks to ensure smoother operations. SOPs help make each process more efficient, time-saving, and less costly. 

An SOP document can include:

• Everything from the method of processing payroll.
• Hiring employees.
• Calculating vacation time to manufacturing guidelines.

In any case, SOPs ensure that each person in an organization works in unison and uniformly to maintain quality. 

SOPs help eliminate irregularities, favoritism, and other human errors if used correctly. Lastly, SOPs make sure employees can take the responsibilities of an absent employee, so there’s no lag in work. 

Therefore, developing SOPs requires a complete study of how an organization works and its processes. 

Here are some examples of standard operating procedures you can study. You can edit the samples directly or develop your own while taking inspiration from them. 

3. Case Studies & White Papers 

Case studies and white papers are a way of demonstrating one’s expertise in an area. Case studies delve into a specific instance or project and have takeaways proving or disproving something. White papers delve into addressing any industry-specific challenge, issue, or problem. 

Both case studies and white papers are used to get more business and leads by organizations. 

Technical writers who write white papers and case studies need to be experts in the industry and the project itself. It’s best if the technical writer has prior experience in writing such white papers. 

The writing style of white papers and case studies is unique, along with the formatting. Both documents are written for a specific target audience and require technical writing skills. Case studies are written in a passive voice, while white papers are written in an active voice. In any case, it’s crucial to maintain a certain level of knowledge to be able to pull it off. 

You can check out multiple white paper examples here , along with various templates and guides. You can check out some examples here for case studies, along with complete templates. 

4. API Documentation 

API documentation includes instructions on effectively using and integrating with any API, such as web-API, software API, and SCPIs. API documentation contains details about classes, functions, arguments, and other information required to work with the API. It also includes examples and tutorials to help make integration easier. 

In any case, API documentation helps clients understand how it works and how they can effectively implement API. In short, it helps businesses and people interact with the code more easily. 

You can find a great example of proper API documentation in how Dropbox’s API documentation works. You can learn more about it here . 

5. Press Releases 

Press releases are formal documents issued by an organization or agency to share news or to make an announcement. The idea is to set a precedent for releasing any key piece of information in a follow-up press conference, news release, or on a social media channel. 

The press release emphasizes why the information is important to the general public and customers. It’s a fact-based document and includes multiple direct quotes from major company stakeholders, such as the CEO. 

Usually, press releases have a very specific writing process. Depending on the feasibility, they may have an executive summary or follow the universal press release format. 

You can find several examples of press releases from major companies like Microsoft and Nestle here , along with some writing tips. 

6. Company Documents 

Company documents can include various internal documents and orientation manuals for new employees. These documents can contain different information depending on their use. 

For example, orientation manuals include:

• The company’s history.
• Organizational chart.
• List of services and products.
• Map of the facility.
• Dress codes.

It may also include employee rights, responsibilities, operation hours, rules, regulations, disciplinary processes, job descriptions, internal policies, safety procedures, educational opportunities, common forms, and more. 

Writing company documents requires good technical writing skills and organizational knowledge. Such help files assist new employees in settling into the company and integrating more efficiently. 

Here are some great examples of orientation manuals you can check out. 

7. Annual Reports 

Annual reports are yearly updates on a company’s performance and other financial information. Annual reports directly correspond with company stakeholders and serve as a transparency tool. 

The annual reports can also be technical reports in some cases. However, mostly they include stock performance, financial information, new product information, and key developments. 

Technical writers who develop annual reports must compile all the necessary information and present it in an attractive form. It’s crucial to use creative writing and excellent communication skills to ensure that the maximum amount of information appears clearly and completely. 

If the company is technical, such as a robotics company, the technical writer needs to develop a technical communication method that’s easy to digest. 

You can check out some annual report examples and templates here . 

8. Business Plans 

Every company starts with a complete business plan to develop a vision and secure funding. If a company is launching a new branch, it still needs to start with a business plan. 

In any case, the business plan has a few predetermined sections. To develop the ideal business plan, include the following sections in it. 

• Executive Summary – includes the business concept, product, or service, along with the target market. It may also include information on key personnel, legal entity, founding date, location, and brief financial information. 
• Product or Service Description – includes what the offering is, what value it provides, and what stage of development it is in currently. 
• Team Members – includes all the information on the management team. 
• Competitor and Market Analysis – includes a detailed analysis of the target market and potential competitors. 
• Organizational System – includes information on how the organizational structure would work. 
• Schedules – include start dates, hiring dates, planning dates, and milestones. 
• Risks and Opportunities – include profit and loss predictions and projections. 
• Financial Planning – includes planned income statements, liquidity measures, projected balance sheet, and more. 
• Appendix – includes the organizational chart, resumes, patents, and more. 

The technical writer needs to work closely with the company stakeholders to develop a complete business plan. 

According to your industry, you can check out hundreds of business plan samples and examples here . 

Becoming an Expert Technical Writer 

Becoming an expert technical writer is all about focusing on your strengths. For example, you should try to focus on one to two industries or a specific form of technical writing. You can do various writing assignments and check out technical writing samples to understand what you’re good with. 

You can also check out user guides and get online help in determining your industry. Once you’ve nailed down an industry and technical writing type, you can start to focus on becoming an expert in it. 

In any case, it always helps to check out technical writing examples before starting any project. Try to check out examples of the same industry and from a similar company. Start your writing process once you have a complete idea of what you need to do. 

Since technical writing involves dealing with complex information, the writer needs to have a solid base on the topic. That may require past experience, direct technical knowledge, or an ability to understand multiple pieces of information quickly and effectively. 

In becoming a technical writer, you may have to work with various other people, such as software developers, software engineers, human resources professionals, product designers, and other subject matter experts. 

While most organizations tend to hire writers with a history in their fields, others opt for individuals with great writing skills and team them up with their employees. 

Technical writers may also work with customer service experts, product liability specialists, and user experience professionals to improve the end-user experience. In any case, they work closely with people to develop digestible content for the end customers. 

Today, you can also find several technical writers online. There is an increasing demand for technical writing because of the insurgence of SaaS companies, e-commerce stores, and more. 

In the end, technical writers need to have a strong grasp of proper grammar, terminology, the product, and images, graphics, sounds, or videos to explain documentation.

If you are new to technical writing and are looking to break-in, we recommend taking our Technical Writing Certification Course , where you will learn the fundamentals of being a technical writer, how to dominate technical writer interviews, and how to stand out as a technical writing candidate.

We offer a wide variety of programs and courses built on adaptive curriculum and led by leading industry experts.

• Work on projects in a collaborative setting
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Become a Certified Technical Writer. Professionals finish the training with a full understanding of how to guide technical writer projects using documentation foundations, how to lead writing teams, and more.

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Technical Writing

(28 reviews)

Annemarie Hamlin, Central Oregon Community College

Chris Rubio, Central Oregon Community College

Copyright Year: 2016

ISBN 13: 9781636350653

Publisher: Open Oregon Educational Resources

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of use.

Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Amine Oudghiri-Otmani, Instructor, Marshall University on 10/15/22

This text offers a good amount of instruction (though at times limited) underlying effective workplace and technical writing/communication. Having personally examined a number of technical writing materials, this is by far one of the very few... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

This text offers a good amount of instruction (though at times limited) underlying effective workplace and technical writing/communication. Having personally examined a number of technical writing materials, this is by far one of the very few texts that incorporate a section about texting. Freshman students will benefit from this introductory-level text and will appreciate the authors' emphasis on conventional technical documents including emails, letters, memos, reports, and proposals. The textbook, however, may not satisfy the needs of students in advanced technical writing courses looking for guidance on complex documents beyond the conventional ones identified here. Visual representation of information could be improved, and the organization of chapters could be more strategic. A separate section about reports with important introductory information, for instance, could precede the progress reports and technical reports sections.

Content Accuracy rating: 2

A full citation guide is not provided, which may not reflect well on the credibility of the authors and/or the accuracy of the information provided. The attribution information at the end of each chapter is the only reference provided, contradicting the authors' recommendation to support one's writing with material from outside research.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

Although the materials are relevant to orthodox technical writing contexts, the text could benefit from a separate section that introduces writing in the digital world to reflect the evolving nature and changing landscape of technical communication. As part of the additional section, for instance, the authors could discuss potential similarities/differences between documents produced traditionally (e.g., pencil and paper, in addition to those developed by means of regular Word processor) and those produced digitally using various contemporary media. Similarities and/or differences could be discussed in light of prose and rhetorical strategies, among others.

Clarity rating: 5

The authors use simple, clear, and easy-to-understand prose. After all, sentence structure in technical writing is expected to be short, concise, and to the point. This text fits under this category of direct and unambiguous language. In addition to the authors identifying and covering essential technical terminology, the reader will appreciate the combination of descriptive (i.e., regular declarative) and direct (i.e., imperative, instructional) language. The memo, for instance, "has a header that clearly indicates who sent it and who the intended recipients are," and the reader is asked to "always consider the audience and their needs when preparing a memo."

Consistency rating: 4

Consistency is off a few times throughout the text. At the beginning of the first chapter, "Professional Communications," for instance, the authors write, "From text messages to reports, how you represent yourself with the written word counts." In this first chapter, however, only texting, emails, memos, and letters are discussed. Reports are mentioned only briefly under the cover letter to a technical report section, but no prior background about reports is provided.

Modularity rating: 5

Consistent use of headers and special highlights (e.g., boldface, etc.) helps chapter sub-sections and other important information stand out. The headings and sub-headings minimize potential distractions or other inconsistencies in modular presentation of chapter content.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 3

Chapter organization throughout the text consists of introduction and discussion. A conclusion in which a general, targeted final reflection is provided, however, is missing. Although the same chapter structure is used throughout the text, which will help keep the reader focused as they navigate subsequent chapter content, the authors could discuss chapter presentation, structure, and framework prior to the first chapter. The introduction section could benefit from a few sentences previewing this across-the-board structure.

Chapter lineup could also be more strategic. The chapter "Ethics in Technical Writing," for instance, could go first before "Information Literacy" and "Citations and Plagiarism."

Interface rating: 4

Readers may be distracted by the number of blank pages at the end of chapters. Readers looking to print individual chapters with ample text on each page (or those simply interested in saving trees by minimizing the number of pages printed in multiple jobs) may be disappointed. Text navigation and individual chapter selection, however, are made easy thanks to the hyperlink attached to each line/item under "Contents." Readers looking to go to a specific chapter do not need to engage in much scrolling and are given the opportunity to jump straight to the specific chapter or chapter sub-section by clicking the link.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

No grammar errors have been detected. The authors' occasional use of the "conversational" tone may not be an issue, especially in terms of deciding whether the language matches the universal, agreed-upon conventions of technical writing. The textbook being an introduction to technical writing is meant to provide a general overview of the field, and technicality at the clause level is not required. The latter is expected to be a feature of advanced-level texts. The authors, however, could consider adding a separate section that discusses style and tone (in addition to orthodox grammar/sentence structure error patterns like splices, fragments, etc.). That the language used in the text may not match the conventions of technical writing - in terms of style and tone - could also be emphasized.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

Chapter 13, "Communicating Across Cultures," introduces the reader to the importance of considering the variety of cultures and culture uniqueness (and peculiarity) in technical communication, which I believe does the job. Advanced-level texts may delve deeper into the requisite component of culture and culture sensitivity in both drafting certain technical documents and deciding on the style/tone to be used, context dependent. This textbook subscribes to the general/introductory category in this (i.e., discussion of culture) respect.

Reviewed by Sylvia Hayes, English Instructor, Midlands Technical College on 7/26/21

This book is concise and covers an array of Technical Communication topics and genres. This text provides flexibility in the fact that it focuses on Technical Communication for a more generalized audience and therefore this would work well as a... read more

This book is concise and covers an array of Technical Communication topics and genres. This text provides flexibility in the fact that it focuses on Technical Communication for a more generalized audience and therefore this would work well as a Technical Communications text for a First-Year Writing course at a 2 or 4-year college. The organization of the section is not very logical, luckily most instructors do not use textbook chapters in order. The text could use more examples for students in the medical and legal fields. It could use more visual support within the chapters.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

The information presented in this text is accurate, error-free, and unbiased; however, there are no references to original sources for most of the content.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The content of this text is written so students can use the information in many different technical communication settings.

Clarity rating: 4

The text is clear, the prose is accessible and it defines and provides adequate context for concepts college-level students may find unfamiliar. There are multiple instances of the text directing you to a hyperlink to another resource that explains the concept in more depth. However, the text does not model the level of clarity necessary for technical communication. There are various sections that are underdeveloped and need more graphics and examples.

Consistency rating: 3

Due to the sheer number of contributing authors, it is hard to create a consistent framework for the chapters. They each seem to be designed by the separate contributors in ways that make sense to them and are not uniform to the book. In terms of terminology, the text is consistent.

Modularity rating: 3

This text is broken up into sections and subsections, that can be assigned at different points within a course. As the organization of the chapters is chaotic, I believe most instructors would have to move sections around as assign them individually instead of starting at chapter 1 and working through the textbook.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 1

The organization of chapters is confusing. Why are citations in between Proposals and Progress Reports? Chapters refer to students learning of concepts found later in the textbook.

Interface rating: 2

Not all sections are set up the same, which makes it harder to navigate and find information. In some versions of the text, you can't see the graphics. You cannot search the text using normal search indicators "AND," "NOT," etc. this makes searching this text much more difficult than some others. Why are there so many blank pages in the PDF, if someone was to print the text they would waste about 1/4 of the pages.

Grammatical Errors rating: 3

There weren't any noticeable grammatical errors. The sentence structure is varied, however, there were some long, wordy, confusing sentences. The tone is very casual and not professional.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

There is no culturally insensitive or offensive language in the text, however, the text is not inclusive of a variety of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds in its examples or images.

Reviewed by Mary Larsen, Instructor, Pittsburg State University on 5/14/21

This textbook highlights important components of technical writing, including various forms of technical writing in the workplace and also approaches to audience analysis, graphics, and ethics within the writing of these documents. This text also... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

This textbook highlights important components of technical writing, including various forms of technical writing in the workplace and also approaches to audience analysis, graphics, and ethics within the writing of these documents. This text also includes information about resumes and employment, which is very applicable to technical writing and provides readers with a dual layer of content.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

Content within this text is accurate and mostly error-free. The content is based off of multiple authors rather than one single-viewpoint, which provides additional insights into topics versus only one limited view. Content is cited and derived from David McMurrey, who has experience and a plethora of knowledge in all aspects of technical writing.

The text is relevant to writing in the workplace as it covers aspects of "netiquette," which is something technical writers will encounter more and more as workplace functions are moved more to online formats. The formats covered are also frequently used forms of communication in the workplace, such as email, letters, memos, proposals etc. This provides a large scope of relevant documents that readers could encounter when writing in the workplace.

This text is written in plain language and easy to read. Content is sectioned off pretty well for easier readability and there were few, if any, areas of jargon or overly technical language. Tips are provided in various sections that assist readers in actually applying the content.

Consistency rating: 5

How text and visuals are presented and the sense of organization of various chapters and sections are all consistently presented within.

Modularity rating: 4

Subheadings are used within for easier readability; however, content is text-heavy at times. Content jumps around some, but is otherwise organized into a logical progression of points (such as discussing audience and types of documents in the beginning and saving design and employment content for later in the text).

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The organization follows a logical progression of ideas and concepts that would be presented within a technical writing course. The Table of Contents includes easily recognized sections and page numbers and each new section is noted at the top of the page. At times the images presented conflict with the text and spacing on pages, but is otherwise easy to attribute to the content pertaining to the image.

Interface rating: 5

Some of the images / videos are pixelated. The textbook includes links to videos and images that further touch upon the concepts of a chapter, which is very helpful and engaging. Images link to direct PDF files for easier access of a document. Seems to be some unnecessary space left on pages or between section changes.

Text is mostly free of grammatical errors, although a few minor grammar mistakes were present. For example, "insure" is used instead of "ensure" in Section 3.7.

Chapter 13 of the text is "Communication Across Cultures," which lends to its response to cultural sensitivity. The text seems to keep in mind readers of various races and backgrounds and uses relevant pop culture references that are inclusive. If anything, the textbook could incorporate aspects of gender in relation to technical writing in the workplace.

This textbook covers most all of the content I currently use in my own technical / professional writing courses and I am considering adopting this textbook in future courses that I teach.

Reviewed by Bjorn Smars, Career Instructor, University of Oregon on 7/2/20

As far as I can tell, this textbook does not include an index or glossary. However, each chapter is broken into separate sections with descriptive titles and headings, so navigating to specific concepts and ideas is not difficult without the use... read more

As far as I can tell, this textbook does not include an index or glossary. However, each chapter is broken into separate sections with descriptive titles and headings, so navigating to specific concepts and ideas is not difficult without the use of an index. My only complaint about this text, at least in regards to its comprehensiveness, is that many of the sections or pages are underdeveloped or do not contain sufficient explanation and/or examples to illustrate important concepts. For example, the chapter on communicating across cultures provides useful tips that students can use to think critically about cross-cultural communication, but these suggestions are limited in that they are designed to apply broadly to most situations in which cross-cultural communication occurs and therefore do not offer clear guidelines or practical strategies for students to learn about and identify a particular culture's communication norms.

As far as I can tell, the information presented in this text is accurate, error-free, and unbiased. The purpose of this textbook is to serve as an introduction to technical writing, and as such is designed to provide students with practical strategies for engaging in effective technical communication.

As I mentioned in an earlier comment, most of the content in this textbook is written in such a way that it can be applied practically and broadly to a variety of situations in which students may find the need to engage in technical writing and/or communication. The focus is more on providing practical strategies and helping students develop critical thinking skills than it is about using a particular software.

The prose is clear and accessible to college-level readers, and unfamiliar concepts are either defined in-text by the textbook's authors or via hyperlink to another source. For example, in chapter "13.2 Understanding Cultural Context," the authors provide a link to a YouTube video that explains the differences between high-context and low-context cultures in more depth.

The textbook uses consistent terminology and frameworks throughout.

As I mentioned in an earlier comment, the organization of the textbook is easy to navigate and understand. Each chapter is broken into separate sections with descriptive titles and headings. My only complaint is that there is some inconsistency between the lengths of each chapter's subsections. Some sections are very short (150-300 words max) while others are much longer, ranging in the 2,000-3,000 word range. That said, each section is clearly labeled, and the headings are highly descriptive.

See previous comment.

Each chapter's subsection has navigational arrows that allow the reader to move on to the next section easily, and the table of contents is easily accessible on every page. However, locating the table of contents may not be intuitive for some students, and some students may not know how to navigate through each chapter's subsections.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

I did not notice any grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

As I mentioned in an earlier comment, this text could provide more examples to help students better understand cultural differences in terms of communication. More examples that are relevant to students attending one of Oregon's many colleges or universities would help to illustrate these cultural differences and provide students with a practical, real-world strategies for engaging with their peers, professors, and other folks from other cultures and/or regions.

Overall, I found this textbook very useful, though I had to supplement much of the information either with links to other sources or with material I developed personally. It's a useful and accessible introduction to technical writing for most undergraduate students, but it is not a comprehensive document and therefore may require the instructor to provide additional information or resources.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Aydelott, Part-Time Instructor, Lane Community College on 6/26/20

This text covers almost every topic that I would cover in a Technical Writing Class for generalized studies. A class geared toward a specific aspect of the field - engineering or a medical field, for example - would need to add material. This text... read more

This text covers almost every topic that I would cover in a Technical Writing Class for generalized studies. A class geared toward a specific aspect of the field - engineering or a medical field, for example - would need to add material. This text provides a solid basis for any course in technical writing, though.

The information is accurate, the citation guide up-to-date, and most material is relevant to any aspect of the field.

The content is almost all up-to-date. I would suggest adding a section on conference calls in the chapter on Professional Communications. That format has its own specific netiquette rules, ethics, and audience considerations. And conference calls, in a variety of formats, are increasingly essential to the working life.

Clear, common sense prose. The beginning of each chapter should probably be titled "Overview" or something similar, perhaps with a brief outline, for more clarity.

The book's structure changes with each format. I suggest that the instructor designate a preferred version for the class. Within the text, however, it becomes fairly easy to navigate through the material.

This text would be easy to assign in appropriate chunks for the students.

The text has a logical order, but I would assign the last chapters first since I usually begin with employment application materials and then cultural awareness almost immediately afterwards.

Interface is fairly straightforward and clear. Some of the videos, particularly in the beginning, are a bit referential to a specific course rather than to the topic in general.

Grammar has no problem. I wish, though, that a general chapter on grammar was included for the students.

I really appreciated the chapter on Communicating Across Cultures, but I wish it had been included earlier in the book. Perhaps a reference to Cultural Literacy within the chapter on Audience.

I'm confused about why the Open Textbook Library lists the book with only one author instead of the seven listed in the book itself.

Reviewed by Christopher Schott, Assistant Teaching Professor, University of Missouri - St. Louis on 4/23/20

This book really does cover a great deal of ground. However, I found the pacing and the organization of the section to be a little sporadic, especially if the book were to be read linearly by students. This may not be a serious concern as,... read more

This book really does cover a great deal of ground. However, I found the pacing and the organization of the section to be a little sporadic, especially if the book were to be read linearly by students. This may not be a serious concern as, especially in a digital format, the book can be navigated easily from topic to topic. Many chapters are short (some are quite detailed, though), which can be a real asset, but the lack of technical writing theory might be a concern for instructors looking to balance practice with understanding approach. While the book does cover a great of texts that are useful for students studying engineering and computer science, it may provide fewer examples and cover less in terms of students looking for technical communication instruction in medical fields, journals, legal fields. Another issue, when it comes to comprehensiveness, is the lacking of exercises and assignments. For my own teaching, this is not an issue (I try to craft assignments that fit the culture of my students' academic programs), but I could see it limiting the use of this book for other professors who would like corresponding assignments and readings.

As a reader, this book seems unbiased to me. That said, there are some prescriptive outlooks on crafting documents that may lead a reader to believe there is a one-size-fits-all way to compose a text. For example, there is a recommendation that emails are limited to three paragraphs, which is a very narrow view of that genre (shouldn't it depend on the rhetorical context, audience, etc.?). Overall, the content in the book appears accurate, even if a little prescriptive at times. However, this can be remedied through instruction from the professor.

The information that is presented in this book is very similar (and in some cases, exactly the same) as the information I've been teaching for the ten years I've been teaching technical communication. Some concepts in this course, such as audience, purpose, tone, precision--these will forever be touchstones of any professional writing course, technical writing is no exception. I very much am happy to see a chapter on information literacy, which is honestly and unfortunately absent from a surprising amount of existing (and expensive) technical writing textbooks. Some of the information does seem to not work (some links, for example), which may hurt longevity, but the authors do note this might be a possibility when using the book.

This book is clear. As a technical communication text, I would hope it would be and I was happy to see the authors not utilize jargon, instead stick to very explicitly presented ideas, sentence structure, and offering simple language that will appeal to readers, make them feel smart, all while retaining the level of academic rigor a text like this needs.

The chapters in this book are all formatted relatively the same. This offers readers a consistent and predictive reading experience (which, in itself, is a valuable technical communication skill). Each chapter starts with a very useful introduction, leading nicely into the rest of the chapter. There are, at times, inconsistencies in how thoroughly topics are treated and covered, but that is to be expected with many textbooks.

This text seems to be designed for purposeful fragmentation in a course. By this, I mean that the text does not have to be read linearly to be useful for students. In fact, and this is something the authors may have had in mind when writing, but most textbooks are not read and interacted with linearly anyway. Chapters are skipped, brought back, and revisited. I think this is just fine and, in many ways, provides a more fruitful reading experience.

Along with the previous idea of Modularity, I do not think the text is perfectly organized. One could argue that a textbook should move from more simple to more complex concepts. However, I disagree and do not think this needs to be the case. Instead, while the chapters here might seem a bit out of order in terms of their "difficulty," to do seem to be ordered nicely in terms of some theoretical understanding (though, very little) into more genre-based writing. Because the text can function in ways that benefit the class, this is not an issue.

The book is incredibly easy to navigate and use. Some links are broken, which can be frustrating, but it doesn't distract from the usefulness of the book overall.

I did not notice any grammar and mechanical errors in the text.

Despite an opening comment in the Introduction that claims students will learn to write "in such a way that even Grandad can understand," a which is a bit insulting to grandpas everywhere (it's ageist), the book seems to be culturally respectful and appropriate. I am a big fan of the cultural sensitivity section in the book, which I think is very carefully and thoughtfully presented to readers. There are topics that can be included that were not. In technical communication, it's important to remember that standards are always changing in business and this will undoubtedly shift the way professionals communicate, interact, and write. For example, a section on language inclusivity would be useful.

I'm grateful for this book. The authors have really put together a text that is useful in terms of what it can do in different kinds of technical communication classroom. I've seen many different kinds of technical writing courses and they are all taught differently. It seems this book has the unique ability to fit many different kinds of teaching styles, learning environments, and student abilities--and the book's design and functionality allows for professors to be very malleable in their pedagogy.

Reviewed by Brian Ballentine, Professor, West Virginia University on 4/20/20

The book is being reviewed the book in the web PDF format. At least one other reviewer has noted that there are inconsistency issues across various formats in which the book is offered. The web PDF format functions as expected in Acrobat reader... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 2 see less

The book is being reviewed the book in the web PDF format. At least one other reviewer has noted that there are inconsistency issues across various formats in which the book is offered. The web PDF format functions as expected in Acrobat reader with the sidebar thumbnails and toc providing hyperlinks to specific pages and sections. This format does not have a much-needed index or glossary. The book does not have the same comprehensive content that a student would find in one of the large, mainstream, and admittedly costly technical communication texts by authors like Markel and Selber, Lannon and Gurak, or Anderson. There isn't enough or any coverage on important topics like instruction sets, technical procedures or definitions, user experience testing (including testing instruction sets and other technical documentation), and oral presentations. Documents like instruction sets are mentioned but only in passing. E.g., "Examples are one of the most powerful ways to connect with audiences, particularly in instructions" (2.3). There is content on preparing PPT slides but no content on giving a presentation.

The content does not cite original sources. Each chapter and even sub-section has author attributions for the book itself but rarely does it reference external sources. This becomes particularly obvious for writing instructors in parts of the book like chapter 14 that contend with genre, genre analysis, and genre systems but with no references to the writing scholars we attribute to genre studies (Miller, Bawarshi, Russell). This is not to say that the content is automatically inaccurate but one of the points the authors themselves make about the need to cite sources is the importance of using those sources to build confidence in the audience.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 1

The book opens with content on texting and email but then largely abandons digital communication platforms. Again, in larger technical communication textbooks instructors would expect to find chapters dedicated to "blogs, wikis, and web pages" and "social media" platforms as in offerings by Lannon and Gurak. A more contemporary text would no doubt include online collaborative tools and meeting platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams. The recommendation here would be to create a separate chapter or chapters dedicated to technology platforms with the idea that it would be easier to update in the future.

Clarity rating: 2

The writing is more conversational than professional. The book does not model the level of clarity needed for technical writers. E.g., section 9.2 on "Presentation of Information" begins with a longer paragraph that attempts to summarize the space shuttle Challenger disaster as an example of why clear communication is important. The textbook authors write: "Possibly the engineers were just poor writers; possibly they did not consider their audience; or possibly they did not want to look bad and therefore emphasized all the things that were right with the Challenger. (Incidentally, the O rings had worked fine for several launches.)" Edward Tufte's now famous case study of the Challenger contradicts this summary. The rocket company and its engineers did indeed make a no launch recommendation (their first in 12 years) precisely because they had data showing the O-rings failed in cold temperatures. It is moments like these in the textbook that give me pause.

Consistency rating: 2

The multiple authors on this textbook likely pose challenges for creating consistency across the project. For example, in the chapter dedicated to Proposals, the first section is titled "Some preliminaries" and it offers a narrative overview of proposals and the roles they may play. In the chapter dedicated to "Progress Reports," the first section offers "functions and contents of progress reports" that has just two bullet lists. Students like to become acquainted with a consistent format across a book's chapters so they know where to find answers/resources that they need, regardless of the topic.

The textbook does contain self-referential content but overall the chapters could be used in a modular fashion to supplement other learning materials/readings in a technical writing course.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 2

Even if the textbook was designed to be modular, it is still prepared and presented in a specific order (with linked toc in the PDF version). Concepts of genre and genre analysis are presented as fundamental to understanding the writing process yet they come at the end of the text. Audience analysis comes much earlier (chapter 2) but not before texts, emails, and netiquette. Proposals are in chapter 3 but information literacy, including instruction on how to begin research for a proposal isn't until chapter 4. Organizing a textbook toc must be incredibly challenging but there are many models out there that overcome some of these organizational challenges.

Interface rating: 3

The PDF version of the textbook works as expected in terms of the links in the toc and the thumbnails visible in Acrobat. It can be challenging to orient yourself in the text especially because there are many pages with minimal content. The PDF version has 242 pages but I would recommend to students that they only print selectively as many pages are blank.

Despite having many authors (and some open source content), the book does not have an abundance of grammatical errors. As mentioned before, the more casual tone of the textbook does not help with modeling technical and professional communication. There are grammatical issues (or perhaps more stylistic issues) that could be edited. E.g., the book uses the opening phrase, "In other words..." ten times throughout the book. Overall, though, the book scores high in the grammatical category.

Chapter 13 is dedicated to "Communicating Across Cultures" and offers students an overview of "culture" as a term as well as some important guidance on global communication. The book does break some of its own advice in these sections with references to authors with no attribution. E.g., "Geert Hofstede views culture as consisting of mental programs, calling it softwares of the mind, meaning each person 'carries within him or herself patterns of thinking, feeling, and potential acting which were learned throughout their lifetime.'” This chapter could make more specific references to technical communication and globalization. A longer paragraph in 13.4 on intercultural communication uses sheep as an example when there are so many ways to talk about the importance of good technical writing in support of technical products and services when they go global.

I would like to thank all of the authors as well as David McMurrey for their efforts in writing and editing this open source textbook. I will likely use chapters or sections to supplement other course materials in an effort to save students money on textbook costs. It may be possible to pair chapters from this textbook with one of the smaller "handbooks" on technical communication out there. While the ratings here aren't overly high, the standard of comparison was challenging. I am looking for options to supplant one of the large, mainstream technical communication textbooks and that is a high bar.

Reviewed by Lars Soderlund, Associate Professor of English, Western Oregon University on 3/7/19

The book has a strong balance of topics. In addition to the mix of genres that it discusses, the book is also effective in its coverage of different aspects of writing such as audience, context, ethics, etc. read more

The book has a strong balance of topics. In addition to the mix of genres that it discusses, the book is also effective in its coverage of different aspects of writing such as audience, context, ethics, etc.

The book contains no inaccuracies as far as I could tell, nor any political or social bias.

The book is relevant in a way that seems sustainable. It is not at the cutting edge of technical writing technologies or software, but it is the sort of book that would have (and probably has) helped students a decade ago and will still be useful in another decade owing to its coverage of general topics and its emphasis on writing fundamentals.

The book is extremely easy to read, and should not hold any students back.

The book's format changes occasionally, probably owing to the various authors involved, but it is not especially noticable and does not affect the book in a negative way.

The book seems to have been designed for modular use, and indeed that is how I plan to use it in my future classes. The way that the book starts with a quick reference guide to genres and then moves into the big-picture writing theory is evidence that the writers want the book to be immediately useful.

The book's organization seems maximally effective for teachers and students. As I mentioned above, the book starts by covering genres with relative swiftness, then it digs into essential writing topics, and then it covers larger genres in more detail. It ends with a section on "Thinking About Writing" that is pretty clearly designed for more advanced readers, and I think that's an effective choice.

The book was extremely easy to navigate and to use.

The book is very well-written and contains no grammatical errors.

The book is fairly dry, and so I did not notice cultural issues that might be of note.

The book is very good, and I look forward to using it.

But I do want to say that although above the book got 5-stars across the board, I'm not sure if I would give it a perfect review if I were to rate it. Basically, I find that students seem to flourish when a class (and a textbook) regularly comes back to explicitly stated themes, and the book didn't necessarily have those. They were there (audience, genre, etc.), but they weren't really up-played in a way that students will definitely get.

Still, again, this is a very strong book and I plan to redesign my future Technical Writing class with it.

Reviewed by Kathryn Northcut, Professor, Missouri University of Science and Technology on 1/13/19

The book is offered in various formats, and they aren't parallel. The organization of chapters in the web-native version defies logic. The expandable table is tricky to get used to because the hyperlink from the Chapter title goes to the chapter... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 1 see less

The book is offered in various formats, and they aren't parallel. The organization of chapters in the web-native version defies logic. The expandable table is tricky to get used to because the hyperlink from the Chapter title goes to the chapter but the arrow on the right shows the subsections. It's hard to remember where you are as you navigate. I did not locate a glossary or index, and the book is not fully searchable in the web-native version because all sections can't be expanded onto one screen.

Content Accuracy rating: 1

Almost none of the content has references to original sources, and far too little theory is made explicit. Too much of the writing is chatty and conversational to provide a model of technical writing for university students.

The first section includes both platforms and genres. However, currently relevant platforms like Twitter are excluded from this section. Mixing platforms and genres seems odd logically. Later chapters jump between concepts and genres with no obvious logic to the order.

The style is accessible but not professional. The writing attempts to be engaging but is not rich enough in evidence, references, or good, contemporary examples for university students.

Consistency rating: 1

Unfortunately, the book consistently raises questions about whether these authors/editors have worked in technical contexts recently. Their advice seems to be off-base, including comparing omitting a conclusion to slamming down a phone on a caller. In fact, much professional writing starts with an abstract, executive summary, or cover sheet that obviates the need for a conclusion. The worst thing we can do in much scientific and technical discourse is build suspense and save the point, answer, or recommendations to the end. The way this book is designed and written does not seem to engage the exigencies of technical writing as I'm familiar with them. Other textbooks, whether consistent or not, provide better examples of practices from many industries to help prepare students from writing after college. This textbook focuses not just on the college experience, but on the Central Oregon Community College experience to the exclusion of other contexts.

Modularity rating: 2

The text does not contain modules that stand independently, despite appearing at the outset to be designed that way. Many phrases such as "as seen in the last section," make it difficult for students to follow what's happening. The videos address students in a single section writing a specific assignment and the content of the videos is not transferable to other contexts. The videos I viewed would not work in my courses, ever. Further, the textbook refers constantly to watered-down assignments that I would not assign. In my courses, students DO write a full proposal, not just an academic topic proposal. No one in industry writes topic proposals, so I would not teach that genre in my technical writing course. In fact, this textbook constantly focuses on the specific introductory assignments and methods at Central Oregon Community College, so a more ambitious, advanced curriculum would directly contradict the information in the textbook. If you wanted to teach your students to write proposals, you would be better off with online examples of successful proposals and top-of-the-head commentary than this textbook.

The organization of the textbook appears to be clear and clean, but gets difficult to manage once specific questions are asked, such as, "how should I assign readings to prepare my students for specific assignments?" One of my specializations is teaching proposals. This book doesn't handle proposal writing in a way that fits what I know of proposal writing outside of essay topic proposals used in composition courses. Why is information on Citations and Plagiarism after the chapter on proposals? Professional and academic proposals are robust documents which cite sources, so that background information would be useful earlier. Despite the textbook attempting to be modular, numbering chapters does suggest that there is a logic to the order. Non-numbered TOC might be a solution to this problem. In this book, short chapters are split up into tiny subparts, and navigation between them is tricky in the web-native version. Other Technical Writing/Communication textbooks, from Burnett's 2005 Technical Communication 5th Ed., to the current editions of Markel (and Selber) and Lannon (and Gurak) are superior in terms of internal logic, as is the Engineering Communication Manual (House et al) if the authors/editors need better examples of structure.

Interface rating: 1

I found the design appealing initially. Using it was confusing and there are many incompatibilities between the various versions available. The students would have difficulty locating the correct version of the textbook unless a PDF were provided to them by the instructor, and the PDF is problematic in terms of design and omission of content. In the web-native version, the sections are all very short and navigating to the next section requires clicking back and re-finding your place every time. Not having a "next section" button or arrow almost ensures that students will not complete the readings because they will think, incorrectly, that they are done with the (very short) chapter. The PDF version has many blank pages, making navigation cumbersome. The PDF document is much thinner than the large number of pages suggests. If a student were to print the PDF, much paper would be completely wasted and blank.

The conversational tone isn't ideal for educating students who will need to do technical writing in industry, but there are few overt typographic and spelling errors. The ones that exist are obvious and instructors can correct them if they use those chapters. Sometimes the authors refer to specific genres (like reports, in section 5.1) in a way that would confuse students (because writers cite sources in proposals, memos, and presentations, not just reports), and those errors should be addressed lest the students be misled about the conventions of the genres. Further, references to "your paper" and "paper" demonstrate lack of focus on rhetorical concepts of audience and purpose that should drive every technical communicator in every task. Most of our work is electronic/digital/online, so references to paper may not be incorrect, but they are largely archaic. When the authors refer to student assignments, they might call them "assignments," not "papers." The writing in section 5.2 needs editing. Overuse of "it" and "there" and back-referencing through pronouns ensures that students will have difficulty parsing the information. Further, students are seeing a poor example of a strong technical writing style because the sentences are written in a vague style that would lead to comprehension and translation errors. Further, the authors state that plagiarism is institution-specific, but that's only true in our academic bubble. In fact, plagiarism is an important IP (intellectual property) concern globally, so reference to international publication and copyright standards would be far more useful to students, who are students for 4 years or so, but professionals for up to 40 years.

Cultural Relevance rating: 2

Ideally, the authors would employ a plain style to avoid usability problems for non-American-dialect users. In the section (2.1 types of audiences) about audience, an opportunity is missed by not getting into user profiles and usability theory. Contrary to what is stated, technicians do not always lack sophisticated theoretical knowledge. It is not true that executives are always the audience for whom our students will or should write. The lack of robust user-based terminology is a problem with this book. I wonder if any of the authors are currently active in the technical communication community or have worked in nonacademic technical environments on communication design tasks. If they have, I would implore them to use better industry examples and the jargon of writers in technical professions. The authors should also focus on plain language in this book, and exemplify it in their prose. Karen Schriver's work is a good starting point.

I recommend this book (only) to instructors at Central Oregon Community College, where it perhaps serves a useful, important purpose. Its structure and content is unsuitable for majors in professional fields including engineering and science, and therefore is not a good choice for instructors teaching at most institutions where the course is offered. The emphasis on MLA style demonstrates the limited appeal of the textbook (to English majors). To be clear, MLA is not used in a single industrial or professional context I am aware of, outside English departments and literature-oriented professions. No mention is made of IEEE, which is the largest professional society in the world and which publishes professional ethics and authorial style guides that many professionals will encounter. It's great to include APA, but that social-science emphasis should be balanced with another professional style such as ASME or IEEE. The authors may have heard this, because they mention ASME in section 5.1, but they give no examples of what ASME looks like in practice. I worry that this textbook potentially does a disservice to the technical communication field as well as to open-access materials, which should be of high quality and represent best practices based on an awareness of the range of communication tasks working professional undertake. David McMurrey's work was far more technical and usable in its time; I'm sad to conclude that this textbook does not build productively on his legacy.

Reviewed by Jennifer Wilde, Adjunct instructor, Columbia Gorge Community College on 12/18/18

The text does many things very well, but it is too uneven to be truly comprehensive. It will work best as an introduction to technical communication and business writing. It is less helpful, I think, to students going into health care fields and... read more

The text does many things very well, but it is too uneven to be truly comprehensive. It will work best as an introduction to technical communication and business writing. It is less helpful, I think, to students going into health care fields and the social sciences. Chapters are brief and pragmatic, with no discussion of theory, no instruction on clarity or sentence structure, and little discussion of diction and style. The index is helpful; there is no glossary, but this does not seem to be an omission as there is little jargon used throughout the book. Some of the chapters are extremely brief and rudimentary, while others are detailed and nuanced. An example of the former is the section headed "Types of audiences", and an example of the latter is the section on ethics of technical writing. One of the earliest chapters is about texting. There are useful chapters dedicated to resumes, incident reports, proposals, and several other genres - and there is an interesting, though perhaps not as practical, discussion of genres in writing. Like most other technical writing resources, this book has nothing to say about case reports, medical or nursing notes, letters to the editor or position papers for professional and trade journals, all of which are pertinent to the daily work of many professionals in human services or advocacy. Another issue with the book is the lack of writing exercises and assignments. There are some areas with a "Try This" section, but not very many of them, and the assignments lack an assessment component.

The book seems unbiased, although some advice feels a little arbitrary, such as the recommendation to limit emails to three paragraphs. I do not find any errors of content. There is a technical error in the middle of the book, where the author refers to a graph about voting in Australia; that graph does not exist on the page but there is this editorial comment that was no doubt not intended for publication: [“How to vote…” – this image is on a blog that is CC-licensed but I don’t think the author used the image with permission. Is it possible to find a sub?] Who is who? Which Australian are we voting for?

Much of the advice will be appropriate forever: know your audience, know your purpose in writing, be respectful, be specific and clear rather than general and vague. The sections about how to present information visually are helpful: contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity are given the unfortunate acronym CRAP (so no doubt the reader will never forget it!) I also appreciate the chapter on information literacy, which includes information on scholarly, professional and general publications. This includes trade journals, something that WR 121 classes tend not to mention but are important for technical writing students. Of course, there is some information about PowerPoint that is likely already past its best-buy date, but the authors discuss that and point the reader towards existing and upcoming technologies other than PowerPoint. I was able to see the video on the writing situation but not all of the other links worked. The authors include a caveat that not all links will work, so that seems fair, but a comprehensive resource would not rely on links to external sources with all their potential foibles.

The authors resist the temptation to use jargon, and they stick to simple sentence structures for the most part. In that sense, they exemplify the sort of simple, crisp (if unexciting) prose that technical communication strives for. There is abundant use of the colon to introduce lists, and the authors use bullet points frequently.

The book is highly consistent. Each chapter starts with a brief introduction to what comes in the sections included in the chapter. That means that the first segment of each chapter is extremely short, followed by more detailed segments. What is not consistent is the amount of time spent on various elements of technical writing, which, as mentioned in the section on comprehensiveness, varies quite a bit.

Chapters could be read out of order, and instructors can certain assign some sections and not others. I would be most inclined to use the chapters on ethical issues, research, and proposals. I think that's OK, but the book is almost too modular. Chapters do not relate to one another and the order in which they appear feels arbitrary. There is some redundancy - for example, the issue of audience is addressed repeatedly without adding anything new on the subject. I generally prefer a text in which each chapter leads logically to the material in the next chapter and adds to the student's understanding of technical writing, but there are advantages to a source like this, too.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The book is highly modular and the chapters do not flow into one another. I'm not sure why the chapters are ordered this way. I would tend to put some basic information about what constitutes technical writing at the beginning, followed by some guidance around doing research and writing ethically, followed by chapters on different types of technical writing: texts, emails, case reports, letters, resumes, proposals, recipes, instruction manuals, position papers, abstracts, encounter notes from a visit or interview, letters to the editor, mini-biographies and autobiographies ("about the author"), annotations. I would include an appendix about conventions: when to use a colon, how to convey numbers, the rules of capitalization, and the like.

The navigation was extremely simple and easy to use. The charts and images that are used are minimal but every one is highly useful and easy to see. Some links are broken.

I am prone to noticing grammatical and punctuation errors, but nothing jumped out at me in this textbook.

There is an ageist comment about "so easy that Grandpa could understand it" in the early pages defining technical vs academic writing. There is a very thoughtful section on cultural sensitivity. The authors use an interesting example of cultural differences, using a world map to illustrate the different meanings of the color red in different countries. However, it seems like a serious omission to leave out a discussion of inclusive language. Things in that field are always changing, but the authors could provide information about where to find the most up-to-date recommendations on inclusive language, such as the acceptability of "they" as a singular personal pronoun for gender nonbinary people, and what language is appropriate to describe ethnic groups etc.

The book is quite well written and useful, but not comprehensive. I would love to see this text updated with more sections. Chapters on lab/case reports, medical/interview notes, abstracts, introductions, mini-biographies, position papers and letters to the editor would enhance this text and broaden its appeal to new audiences, especially social science/health care students. I would love to see sections on effective sentences, collaborative writing, inclusive language, and grammatical conventions. Finally, an effective text on this topic should include assignments along with discussion of how to assess the assignments.

Reviewed by Cynthia Kimball Davis, Chair of the Integrative & Interdisciplinary Studies (IES) Department, Southern Utah University on 8/2/18

Comprehensiveness - Appears to offer all of the standard technical writing topics with an excellent easy bulleted table of contents. It also contains an excellent index and glossary. read more

Comprehensiveness - Appears to offer all of the standard technical writing topics with an excellent easy bulleted table of contents. It also contains an excellent index and glossary.

Content Accuracy - Appears to provide accurate content.

Relevance Longevity - Information appears to fit the relevant longevity category with the exception of the Professional Communication chapter; however, that would be an easy update.

Clarity - Information is presented in a simple and clear format.

Consistency - Information was not found to be incongruent in any way.

Modularity - The text is laid out in chapters with clear and simple sub-headings underneath each one.

Organization Structure Flow - The flow of the text is easy to follow.

Interface - The images could be more ascetically pleasing to the eye. In come cases, it appears that a high school student made them. Investing in a graphic designer might make the graphics more ascetically appealing. Furthermore, breaking the text apart with colorful questions and answers, activities, quotes, etc., is suggested.

Grammatical Errors - There were no grammatical errors found.

Cultural Relevance - The text appears to be culturally sensitive of all races, nationalities and ethnicities.

A text I definitely want to consider for my Technical Writing course. :)

Reviewed by Adam Karnes, Adjunct Instructor, Linn-Benton Community College on 6/19/18

The book covers the typical range of topics for a technical writing guide. At times, the balance feels off. A significant amount of the length is dedicated to topics usually covered in other classes (including research, citations, outlining). I... read more

The book covers the typical range of topics for a technical writing guide. At times, the balance feels off. A significant amount of the length is dedicated to topics usually covered in other classes (including research, citations, outlining). I would have preferred to have more info about the modes typical to technical writing, but what the book has is useful. Also, while the book has examples, I would appreciate even more examples. The book has a dropdown menu with a table of contents and a search feature in the reader.

The book is accurate. I did not observe inaccuracies.

On the whole, the book is relevant and should remain so for several years without the need for updates.

One important consideration regarding relevancy is the thematic dominance of references to Oregon. While the frequent mention of things related to the Pacific Northwest does not limit the readability of the text, this reoccurring theme makes the book more relevant for readers from this area than from others.

The book is clear and written with appropriate vocabulary for the typical student of technical writing. The body of the text goes into an adequate depth in the explanation of key concepts. Crucial terms are adequately explained. Examples are frequently included, although even more examples would be a welcome addition. The book lacks a glossary, which would also be a helpful addition.

The text is adequately consistent from beginning to end, but at times the sections feel disconnected. In this respect, the text works well as a modular book with distinct sections. The various parts do seem separate, however. The crossover between chapters could be stronger. This is probably the case due to chapters being derived from other sources. The differences do not render the text unreadable, just lack cohesive than the average textbook.

This text excels as a modular work. The sections are distinct and could be read independently. Teachers can easily pick and choose between sections without assigning the entire text.

The order in which the book’s contents are presented is somewhat arbitrary. (The section on resumes, for example, comes at the end—in many technical writing texts, this would come at toward the beginning.) Still, the ordering of the text is not confusing.

Navigating the text can be slow, with lots of scrolling and clicking through. Some of the sections are particularly long, and can be tiresome to scroll through. However, the table of contents is accurate and helpful. The book also has a search feature.

The text has no grammatical errors. The overall quality of editing is high.

The text is geared towards an American culture. However, the text discusses at length the importance of audience awareness and cultural differences in writing, particularly applications that span multiple cultures.

The greatest value this book offers is the ease with which teachers can select limited portions to assign to students based on the class objectives. This could easily replace a standard technical writing textbook in many courses, particularly if other texts further supplemented the class.

Reviewed by Susan Engel, Instructor, St. Cloud Technical and Community College on 6/19/18

Although an index/glossary is not provided, the Table of Contents organizes the material and allows for readers to see the breadth of areas and subjects within the Technical Writing textbook. Topics common to technical writing courses are explored... read more

Although an index/glossary is not provided, the Table of Contents organizes the material and allows for readers to see the breadth of areas and subjects within the Technical Writing textbook. Topics common to technical writing courses are explored in this text and include an important section (4.6) on evaluating sources as well as sections on plagiarism and the importance of citing sources. Topics that could perhaps be added to the text include social media (LinkedIn in Chapter 12: Employment Materials, for example) and technical writing for web pages or using online technologies.

Overall, the content appears accurate, error-free, and generally unbiased. Figure 13 in Chapter 11.4, however, doesn’t offer a resume sample for the exercise and simply states “Text of fake resume here”.

Content appears to be mostly relevant and offers up-to-date information on information literacy and other important technical writing concepts. Some of the content could be further updated, however. For example, chapter 12 discusses the idea of the cover letter being potentially outdated but then proceeds to offer guidance on writing one. This and other sections could offer updates, particularly regarding electronic and online documents.

The text is accessible and concise in delivery. Further clarification is offered through examples/samples in the sections on emails, memos, outlines, cover letters, technical reports, and others. Examples could be given in sections on proposals, progress reports, and other sections to offer further clarity.

The text offers consistency through the organization of the chapters and sections. Some chapters have features that others do not have, however. For example, Chapters 11 and 13 are structured with interactive activities not found in other chapters. The “activity” and “try this” in these chapters would be helpful in other chapters, too.

Chapters and sub-units within this text are clearly labeled. Although some overlap is offered, overall chapters and sections can be used individually in a course.

The organization is clear, user-friendly, and easily navigable using all-cap chapter headings and numbers and lower case section headings and numbers.

This text is offered in various formats which likely will help eliminate interface issues with certain sections. The section on resumes and cover letters, for example, might offer display differences depending on the format.

Grammatical errors were not detected.

Much of the text appeared to be neutral, and sections were dedicated to discussing cultural sensitivity within workplace writing. With that said, additional work on representation could be added within the examples. Also, ideas for inclusivity through accessibility in design of workplace documents might be added, too, as well as an updated discussion on gender in written communications beyond using Mr. or Ms. in the sections on email, cover letters, and audience.

This text is well organized with topics appropriate to technical writing, and I will consider using it in technical writing and workplace writing courses for first- and second-year students.

Reviewed by Erica Stone, English Instructor, Technical Writing, University of Missouri Kansas City on 6/19/18

The textbook is comprehensive; however, it seems to cover both technical writing and professional or workplace writing. It is absolutely appropriate for a comprehensive service course, but the authors should consider another title. Perhaps... read more

The textbook is comprehensive; however, it seems to cover both technical writing and professional or workplace writing. It is absolutely appropriate for a comprehensive service course, but the authors should consider another title. Perhaps Technical and Professional Writing would be more accurate.

There are a few minor typos and notes from a previous editor in the document and a few leftover editing notes. Regarding bias, the entire text does seem to be written for a particular course. While it is generalized, it does refer to particular assignments and contexts, sometimes without an example given.

The content is up to date; however, it may require revision as technologies evolve and change. For example, the texting section may need to be updated within the next year to account for newer texting apps and conventions.

The entire textbook is clear and accessible. In some places, it is conversational; however, I find that quality increases its accessibility and approachability, which is necessary for a technical writing service course.

The framework and organization of the textbook is consistent and easy to follow.

The modularity is helpful, and the text is well-organized.

All of the topics are presented in a logical and clear fashion.

All of the available interfaces work well.

I did not see any grammatical errors during my review. I did, however, see a few leftover notes from the editor.

The text is culturally appropriate and all example are relevant and inclusive.

In some places, the example links do not work. When there is time, the editors and/or authors should review the book to check for errors and broken links.

As mentioned in my first comment, the textbook could benefit from separating technical writing and professional writing as they are separate disciplines.

Reviewed by Michael Nern, Associate Professor, Emeritus, Ohio University Zanesville on 2/1/18

The book does not contain an index or a glossary. The book's primarily focuses on the proposal but also covers other traditional technical writing assignments such as the cover letter and resume. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

The book does not contain an index or a glossary.

The book's primarily focuses on the proposal but also covers other traditional technical writing assignments such as the cover letter and resume.

The content is accurate. I would not call the book error free.

The book contains relevant content that could be updated with relative ease.

The book's prose is not tightly edited, but the prose is accessible.

The book's content is consistent.

The text is well-organized for assigning smaller sections of reading at different points within a course.

The book's organization is solid and clear.

The text does not have interfacing issues.

The book needs a careful and close editing by one person.

I found the short chapter on ethics to be presented almost as an afterthought and believe it would be of little help to students.

I would use the book as a resource but not as a textbook for students. I might assign certain sections for reading but would more than likely use information from the book to add to already existing lectures and discussions, of course, giving credit to the authors.

In general, I believe both the Web and open source materials provide enough material to work with that textbooks in writing courses are unnecessary.

Reviewed by Jennifer Dareneau, Assistant Teaching Professor, The Pennsylvania State University- Berks on 2/1/18

Based on the Table of Contents, all subject areas mentioned there were covered adequately. However, there are several mentions of the technical report being the main document produced at the end of the term (which is true) and mentions of several... read more

Based on the Table of Contents, all subject areas mentioned there were covered adequately. However, there are several mentions of the technical report being the main document produced at the end of the term (which is true) and mentions of several prefatory documents needed for benchmarking along the way. Only a couple of those mentioned documents are detailed or explained in the book.

There are a few minor typos and notes from a previous editor in the document, including a question about permission to use a chart. Content itself seemed accurate.

Content is up to date. With the inclusion of sections on MLA and APA citation style as well as the job application chapters, it would need to be updated in about 5 years to reflect changes to those areas.

Clarity of language and expression of concepts is well done. Language is easy to understand but remains at a college student's level. Special terms are explained and defined.

For the most part, the book is internally consistent. There are some inconsistent elements- some chapters include links to samples, but not all; there is a link to one video only; some chapters include an activity prompt, but others do not.

Modularity is well done. Each larger unit is broken into smaller, easily understood and relevant sub units.

Organization is simple and logical.

I did not experience any navigation problems. Some images had an editor's note next to them, or were quickly covered by a small icon in the top right. The chapters on graphics had some photos that did not connect well to technical writing, and I suspect students in a class would struggle to understand the rhetorical significance of them (particularly the sections with Obama and the girls gymnastics team).

I noticed only one or two minor typos. There were some fragments and sentences beginning with And or But, which I hope were stylistic choices.

There were no culturally insensitive examples or remarks.

Reviewed by Ethan Jordan, Lecturer, Bowling Green State University on 2/1/18

The book covers a broad range of technical communication genres, and it covers everything I would hope to cover in my upcoming course. read more

The book covers a broad range of technical communication genres, and it covers everything I would hope to cover in my upcoming course.

Due to the objective nature of most technical writing, this book certainly follows suit and contains little in terms of bias or subjectivity. The document genres covered fit with standards in the field, and I have found very few errors.

I agree that this book will remain relevant over time. Certainly, notions of "netiquette" and online forms might change, but the essential tech comm genres covered will remain an essential component of workplace literacies, and as such, this book should remain relevant and be easy to update as needed.

The textbook is written in a voice that is straightforward and no-nonsense for students. It isn't the most scintillating reading, but a book on technical writing clearly doesn't need to be! The voice of the text is one that I feel students would appreciate - let's get to the point!

I don't see any major inconsistencies. The text works to reinforce technical communication concepts both in its subject matter and in the style of the text itself. Clarity and intelligibility are essentials, and the text appears to work within those frameworks.

I appreciate the way the sections aren't overly extended or complicated - the individual components make up the larger whole and could easily be reconfigured to suit the needs of instructors. I feel like this is less of a textbook to read in order, but a set of modules for instructors to customize.

The overall structure of the piece makes sense, and I found myself following the process outlined within the overall book structure. It also is able to be modified quite easily if needed, so that's a plus.

Some of the graphics are a bit low-res, but nothing that would inhibit meaning... it's well presented overall.

Very few that I can see!

I see no issues here - it's quite objective overall.

I'm really happy I found this one! It will be a huge help in my upcoming course, and I'm excited to use this as a supplement to my in-class discussions!

Reviewed by Elizabeth McClure, Lecturer, University of Maryland, College Park on 2/1/18

This text includes several sections that I would expect to see in a technical writing textbook: job search materials, reports, proposals, using graphics, professional communications, and audience analysis. It also includes a couple of sections I... read more

This text includes several sections that I would expect to see in a technical writing textbook: job search materials, reports, proposals, using graphics, professional communications, and audience analysis. It also includes a couple of sections I wouldn't necessarily expect, but that would be very useful in any professional writing class: discussions of the ethics involved in report writing, information literacy, and document design. However, there was no section related to manuals or instructions, which is a large gap.

In terms of usability in relation to comprehensiveness, the table of contents is nicely detailed, but no index appears so locating overlaps of information among and between chapters would not be as simple or straightforward as it could be.

In general, the information in the text is accurate, although some areas and issues would benefit from more nuanced or complex discussion. For example, in the section on job materials, professional advice varies widely related to the design of resumes, but this text does not discuss any of the variety of advice.

One minor note: There are several sentence-level errors (i.e., subject-verb agreement) that don't compromise communication but are occasionally jarring.

The content generally seems up-to-date, and the chapter organization and breakdown appear to lend themselves to easy updating.

Clarity rating: 3

The text’s language is clear and accessible. Sufficient background information is presented to give context for new concepts.

Other structures that would enhance clarity are not consistently present, however. For example, not all chapters provide examples to illustrate concepts or discussion/reflection questions to encourage students to apply concepts to other situations. Additionally, most chapters have no graphic material – pull-out text boxes, illustrations, summary lists, etc. – that would offer a different presentation method for readers.

This text is consistent in its approach, terminology, and framework.

This text is divided into sections in such a way that individual sections could easily be assigned out of order and at different points in a course. There are few, if any, instances in the text that refer to earlier material in a way that would make non-consecutive reading unworkable or unwieldy. In general, sections are relatively short and are organized under useful headings. Few subheadings are used within the text itself, although chapters are broken down into sections, each of which is labeled on the page and in the table of contents with a heading. These headings should make finding relevant sections in the text fairly easy.

The topics in this text progress clearly enough to avoid confusion, but less clearly than they could. For example, starting with Audience Analysis rather than with a variety of workplace communication genres (text, email, memos, etc.) would be more rhetorically sensible. The progression from Proposals to Information Literacy (research) to Citations to Progress Reports makes sense in that it follows the progression one might follow in a particular workplace project. However, while the order of chapters follows the process of writing a workplace document (proposal, research, progress report, technical report), it doesn’t necessarily follow the order of writing skills. For example, research is usually an integral part of developing a writing topic rather than something that happens at a single defined point mid-way through a project; likewise, a discussion of ethics should happen before a technical report is underway, perhaps in relation to an analysis of audience or to a discussion of the rhetorical situations present in professional writing generally. Because these chapters can be read out of order, the problem isn’t serious, but the chapter order doesn’t make as much use of logical development as it could.

In general, the text’s interface is user-friendly. There are a couple of places, however, notably in the chapter on design, where graphics don’t appear above the caption.

The text is overall clean but there are a handful of grammatical errors.

The text is inoffensive. Its examples aren’t culturally specific – examples don’t refer to particular groups at all, so diversity does not seem to be at issue.

Reviewed by Pam Orel, Senior Lecturer , University of Maryland College Park on 2/1/18

This is a very compact book, with easily managed lessons in basic concepts that are a quick and easy read for most students in the sciences and technology fields (STEM). Where it summarizes the key details, it does so with general clarity and the... read more

This is a very compact book, with easily managed lessons in basic concepts that are a quick and easy read for most students in the sciences and technology fields (STEM). Where it summarizes the key details, it does so with general clarity and the links to other, more detailed resources appear to be effective, although one or two are dated. It is not designed as a comprehensive or exhaustive resource on technical writing and avoids a heavily academic tone.

The book’s advice, while brief, is extremely solid, backed up by authoritative evidence, and easy to follow. Students would appreciate the very good detail in the table of contents as well as the ease of navigating from section to section as needed. Charts, where used, easily help students find the key differences in concepts, which is something that more detailed, less approachable textbooks tend to overlook.

In general I don’t teach with a textbook, so my comments should be taken in the context of someone who uses texts more as a resource than a work that guides the entirety of our semester’s journey as writers. This is a very relevant work for busy writers who need to grasp the essentials quickly, and get leads on how to find more detail as needed. It is particularly good at using graphics to shape ideas which is a factor in more and more writing courses. If I had to point to one area where it might need updating, it might be in allowing more space for instructions, presentations and video content, as these are emerging as valuable tools and I am not seeing a lot in the text. It appears to focus a lot on the preparation of reports and print materials, but is a good basic resource in those areas.

Very clear, with short, effective paragraphs and guides to other resources clearly labeled as such. As noted earlier, graphics are well supported in the version that I reviewed. It should be noted that different formats might have issues relating to page presentation, as I have noticed that in other primarily online references I have seen.

It can be inconsistent in terms of the amount of space given to, say, some issues over others. However, in general the issues which are not treated in great detail are those for which often there are other, key resources focusing on general principles involved that are attached. Also, in some instance (plagiarism is one example) there are a wealth of other resources available in most higher education communities.

The sections in the book are effectively broken into segments which are short but emphasize key points in about a page or so. This is one of the areas where it might be most attractive to students who rely on it as a reference rather than a week-to-week resource. Teachers who wish to use, say, one or two segments while not using others would find this a very helpful resource.

This is an area of strength for this publication, as it shapes very well around ideas for most proposal writers as well as the ethics of the field as we know it today. Ethical concepts are generally brief, but clear as to impact on the STEM fields. It would be stronger with a little more emphasis on presentations and video, as noted, which are important as digital communications tools for STEM majors.

The online interface I used was generally very easy; with both arrows and a table of contents, writers can easily move to where they need to get their information. It is noteworthy that it does not have questions in the back of each section, so it’s not designed for, say, test development or study for exams. But most technical writing courses don’t focus on exams (there may be quizzes on concepts) so that is not a significant barrier.

I was not able to find any significant errors in grammar.

This could be stronger in its approach to culture across the STEM communities, which is not a small issue in a global economy. However, one challenge with that is attempting to keep it current -- culture, like everything else in science and technology, changes very rapidly.

I have taught from a range of different resources, which change from year to year as it’s important to keep a course relevant in the rapidly evolving STEM fields. I have had trouble finding resources, particularly open source ones, that are approachable but convey the key concepts in an easy to access format. Students in my classes use a text as needed, rather than as the foundation of an entire course. This has worked very well in that role in this semester, and I am hoping to keep it on my list of resources moving forward.

Reviewed by Amanda Izenstark, Professor, Reference & Instructional Design Librarian, University of Rhode Island on 2/1/18

This text covers numerous facets related to technical writing, including basic business correspondence and determining how best to reach the audience for the particular type of technical writing being done. The authors cover related and integral... read more

This text covers numerous facets related to technical writing, including basic business correspondence and determining how best to reach the audience for the particular type of technical writing being done. The authors cover related and integral elements that help writers produce better documents, including using outlines and graphics as well as information literacy skills that writers should have. While there is no index or glossary, the table of contents clearly displays the content of the text. It’s worth noting that the table of contents on the Open Textbook Library website does not include the two final sections of the book, which cover “Design and Readability of Publications” and “Employment Materials.”

The book is accurate, and even in sections where elements might change - such as screenshots in the Information Literacy chapter - they are general enough that even if the interface changes, the instructions will be relatively similar.

The topics in the book are not likely to become dated immediately. Some of the basic material related to communication and being concise will be consistently useful. While some of the linked material may change over time, that isn’t the fault of the authors. When I reviewed this text, the links tested were still working and relevant.

The text is written at a level accessible for college-level students, and perhaps some high school students. The materials are logically arranged and easy to understand.

As some of the material includes elements remixed from other open texts, there are some differences in the language and layout of chapters. For example, some of the elements of chapter 12 related to cover letters and resumes use color, and have more modern examples than those in chapter 1, which focuses on online etiquette.

Many of the chapters will do well on their own. I plan to adopt this for my information literacy and writing course, and anticipate re-arranging sections to fit the course structure.

This may be a result of my background as a teacher of information literacy first, but it might make more sense to start with the sections on information literacy and citations, then progress to audience analysis and outlines. It seems the chapter on “Professional Communication” might fit better toward the end. Otherwise the flow and structure are generally logical.

The online version of the book is hosted on the Pressbooks platform, which is intuitive to use, but long sections require significant scrolling. The PDF version of the book works as expected, with functioning links in both the table of contents and the text.

There are no grammatical errors in the text, which is what one would expect from a writing textbook.

As appropriate, the book highlights cultural issues to consider when writing for an audience. Examples don’t highlight a variety of backgrounds, but neither are they so pervasive that it’s a problem.

Given the appropriately broad coverage of this text, I can envision it being useful to students after they leave my course and have jobs in their chosen fields.

Reviewed by Jim Crawford, Adjunct English Instructor, Germanna Community College on 2/1/18

I examined this textbook as a resource for a 100-level Technical Writing class. In this context, questions of comprehensiveness arose almost immediately. The authors offer no discussion of theory, despite a claim on page 1 that theory underlies... read more

I examined this textbook as a resource for a 100-level Technical Writing class. In this context, questions of comprehensiveness arose almost immediately. The authors offer no discussion of theory, despite a claim on page 1 that theory underlies technical writing. There was no mention of the writing process, a confusing oversight on two fronts. First, the omission raised questions about course level. Did the textbook assume students already understood writing as a process? That would put this text higher than entry-level; writing as a process is usually taught in 100-level English. Or, by omitting the writing process, does the textbook defy modern writing pedagogy and emphasize the products of technical writing over the process?

There was also no mention of the rhetorical situation: the amalgamation of purpose, stance and tone, genre, media, and, of course, audience. The text offers a separate chapter on analyzing the audience, but no holistic examination of the roles that purpose, stance and tone, genre, and media play in reaching the audience.

Omitting a discussion of the rhetorical situation elicits more questions about course level and students’ prerequisite knowledge. Does the text assume students understood the interaction of purpose, stance, and genre in a writing project? The textbook mentions purpose, almost in passing - the purpose of a memo, for instance, or a report. Stance - how the writer feels about the topic versus how she expresses it through her tone - was not addressed at all. Given that technical communicators may be asked to write about things they don’t care about or may disagree with (e.g., an environmentalist writing a press release on new oil exploration), a discussion of stance and tone is important.

Lacking an essential discussion of theory and concept, the textbook covers a limited range of genres, another writerly term that is not mentioned. The first chapter reviews types of correspondence, starting with, oddly enough, texting. Next, comes e-mail, then an interjection about netiquette, followed by brief discussions of memoranda and letters. Later chapters describe proposals and progress reports. A recent revision added a chapter on employment-related documents, such as résumés.

While this is an adequate list of technical genres, the choices seemed limited and specific. Why the focus on progress reports? A broader chapter covering incident or recommendation reports seems more thorough. Other key genres are missing entirely. Instructions get no mention, although giving directions and documenting procedures are common workplace tasks. Presentations are another key genre for technical communication that is overlooked in the textbook.

Among the genres that are discussed, accuracy falters due to a handful of random, undocumented prescriptions. On page 12, for example, the authors declare,” a good e-mail should get to the point and conclude in three small paragraphs or less.” Really? According to who? In my 30 years of experience in the technical workforce, I have read, and written, countless e-mails longer than three short paragraphs. While I agree that students should keep e-mails short and direct, especially when corresponding with the instructor, there is nothing inherently wrong about a longer e-mail message. Some arguments cannot be made in three short paragraphs. Are the authors saying that longer arguments are better suited for a memorandum or a letter? If so, that indicates a need to discuss the conventions of genre. If the authors are recommending the abbreviated length as a best practice for emerging technical communicators, they should say so. If the authors proclaim the three-paragraph limit as their personal preference, they should say that, too. However, they must also inform students that they may occasionally need to write, and read, longer e-mails in the workaday world.

A similar prescription occurs on page 36, with the decree that “an average between 15 and 25 words per sentence is about right. Sentences over 30 words are to be mistrusted.” Again, I wondered, “Says who?” Had the authors cited evidence — a study finding that sentences over 25 words are ignored by readers, for instance — the claim might be more compelling. Lacking documentation, it’s puzzling at how five additional words can separate an effective sentence from an untrustworthy one.

Furthermore, while conciseness is an essential feature of technical and professional writing, establishing an arbitrary sentence length may encourage students to emphasize conciseness at the expense of clarity and accuracy. It would be more effective to educate students on the relationship between clarity, conciseness, and accuracy, and teach them to use the shortest, clearest, most direct language needed to effectively address the audience and accomplish the purpose of the text. But this relationship is impossible to discuss with this text, since overarching concepts and conventions are never introduced.

The digital nature of the textbook assures easy editing and the potential for long-term relevance. In fact, between July 2017, when I downloaded a PDF copy for review, and October 2017, when I began writing the review, the authors added chapter 11 on design and readability, and chapter 12 on writing employment materials. They also expanded chapter 10, adding information about successful report design.

As with comprehensiveness and accuracy, clarity is marred by odd omissions. Page 12 advises that “professional communications require attention to the specific writing context” but there is no explanation of what context is. Again, a question about prerequisite knowledge arises. Can the authors assume that students understand what context is, and how it impacts a writing product?

Another missed opportunity occurs on page 16, where the authors admonish “culture and even gender can play a part in how people communicate.” While this is undoubtedly true, two questions arise. First, can instructors assume that students will recognize this intricate interaction? Second, can instructors assume that students will tailor their writing to navigate the interaction and improve communication? Lacking examples, explanations, or a declaration of prerequisite knowledge, the answer to both questions is “no.”

Clarity is further diminished by Inconsistencies within the text. Chapter 8, “Creating and Integrating Graphics,” recommends “including identifying detail in the graphics” (128), yet does ignores its own advice. The sample bar chart on page 123, depicting types of produce grown in Sisters, Oregon, has axis titles, but the y-axis, entitled “Percentage produced in 2015,” has no scale. The chart shows that potatoes are the most plentiful crop. Its bar towers over that of carrots, the closest competitor, by about two-thirds. But, without a scale, the value for potatoes could be 30 percent, or 3 percent, compared to carrots at 10 percent or 1 percent.

A pie chart on page 122 shows a similar dearth of detail. The chart is entitled, simply, “Success with Vegetables Grown.” Potatoes account for 60 percent of vegetables grown; carrots for 23 percent. But percent of what? The pie chart doesn’t say. Is it percent of all total crops grown? Is it percent of crop yield, compared to crops planted? Students are left guessing, and, from this, may learn to create charts that inspire their own guesswork. More subtle inconsistency arises in the textbook’s formatting. Chapter 1, on correspondence, uses at least three different formats for bullet points. Pages 12-13 list characteristics of e-mail with bullets featuring a bolded opening phrase. Pages 15-16, on netiquette, uses headings, along with simply, un-bolded bullet points. Meanwhile, page 24 presents a list of correspondence types with no bullets at all; the different types are simply bolded. These inconsistencies model poor document design for students. This is especially problematic given the text’s emphasis on longer documents, such as the progress reports, which require consistent formatting throughout.

Formatting inconsistencies notwithstanding, the text is well-marked for modularity. Clear, consistent headings and sub-headings are used throughout. Students should have no trouble identifying a reading assignment such as “chapter 9, sections 9.1 through 9.3.”

Alas, the headings and sub-headings demarcate a haphazard arrangement of content. Topics are not grouped according to theory (should there be any) and practice, strategies and genres, or from easiest material to more challenging. The chapters appear randomly, with an early chapter often referring to material that has not been introduced yet. Chapter 1, on correspondence, advises, “careful consideration should be given to the audience...” (9), but the chapter on audience analysis follows 14 pages later.

Considering the recent addition of chapters on design and employment documents, it appears that chapters are organized in the order that they’re added. New chapters are simply tacked on at the end. While such labor-saving is understandable, it may be worth the effort to reorganize the textbook by introducing overarching concepts, such as audience, research methods, and ethics at the beginning, with specific writing strategies (e.g. outlining) and genres to follow.

This review was prepared from a print-out of a PDF file generated on the textbook’s Web site. Although the charts and graphics conveyed when printed, the videos, understandably, did not. It would have been helpful to include URLs for the videos, so that students preferring a paper-based text could find and watch the videos while reading.

The interface for the Web version of the book is clear, simple, and unobtrusive. [Home] and [Table of Contents] buttons are fixed on the right-hand side, allowing students to easily jump among sections. Gray “forward” and “backward” arrows, on the right and left, respectively, make it easy to flip pages. A “search” box, almost invisible in the upper, right-hand corner, offers quick full-text searching. A search for “audience” returned a list, itemized by clickable links to specific sections containing the term. Traditional search conventions, such as double-quotes to find phrases, work as expected. However, more sophisticated search operators, such as “AND,” “OR,” “NOT,” and “NEAR” do not work, though this is not a major shortcoming.

There were no noticeable grammatical errors, though there were occasional long, wordy, confusing sentences. The sentence describing crop yields in Sisters, Oregon was a staggering four lines long, strung together with “and” between three independent clauses (121).

Generally, the text is inoffensive. There was, however, one off-putting cliché: the notion that older people are slow to grasp technical concepts. The book’s Introduction advises, “…plan to write in such a way that even Grandad can understand!” (3). While this was surely a throwaway attempt at levity, the cliché may be discouraging to older students, while cultivating the bias of younger ones.

Reviewed by Linda Stewart, Instructor, Portland Community College on 6/20/17

The text covers proposals and progress reports in depth with links to examples of other types of technical writing including resumes and instructions (but no discussion of these forms in depth). The text does not cover multi-cultural audience in... read more

The text covers proposals and progress reports in depth with links to examples of other types of technical writing including resumes and instructions (but no discussion of these forms in depth). The text does not cover multi-cultural audience in any depth and does not consider disabled audiences (including visually impaired audiences). The text does not include an index or glossary.

The book is accurate, error-free, and unbiased.

The text begins with the most common kinds of professional communication, including texts and e-mails, which demonstrates an understanding of current workplace needs. This section may need updating since technology brings changes to workplace communications. The section on research rightly emphasizes electronic sources, and this too, may need updating as library databases and other electronic sources may change. Other sections, like the ones on audience and ethics, will not need updating.

Students would enjoy the bulleted lists and simple, readable prose. The authors provide some excellent, labeled figures and graphics so that students can comprehend the main ideas quickly. The authors do a good job of defining terms, but students will need to read the text to discover the important terms; no sidebars or lists are used to call attention to specialized vocabulary.

The formatting and tone are consistent with good use of numbered sub-topics and bulleted lists in each chapter. The sources provided as links are not consistent with the formatting of the main text. For instance, the link to examples (titled "Online Technical Writing: Contents") uses yellow background and blue lettering, and does not include any explanatory text. This linked resource is not formatted as professionally as the main text. The terminology is internally consistent.

The text is well organized and clearly divided into smaller reading sections that can be assigned at different points within the course.

Problems with organization: Since the topic of "ethics" is one that applies to all forms of technical writing, it seems out of place as "Chapter 9." It also seems that "Outlines" might be addressed sooner since those could apply to writing proposals as well as progress reports. Finally, it seems odd to separate the chapters on graphics and document design (they are chapters 8 and 10 with the ethics chapter in between them.

The overall organization progresses logically from shorter forms of technical writing to longer, more complex ones.

The text is free of significant interface issues, including navigation problems or problems with display.

The authors observe standard conventions of grammar.

The text is not culturally insensitive or offensive. The authors could do more to include a variety of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds as part of their discussion of "audience"

The text does an especially good job of explaining how to write proposals and reports in a clear, step-by-step manner.

Reviewed by Carol Jacobson, Instructor, Century College on 6/20/17

The text covers all areas that are part of the technical writing curriculum. There is a detailed Table of Contents that lays out the subjects that are covered. There is no index or glossary. read more

The text covers all areas that are part of the technical writing curriculum. There is a detailed Table of Contents that lays out the subjects that are covered. There is no index or glossary.

Content is accurate and error-free.

Content is current for the technical market. It covers current topics and concerns, but also includes all the traditional topics expected for Technical Writing courses.

The text gives full explanation of the content.

The text was consistent with its terms.

The text is divided into multiple sections that are each on a different topic or focus so these sections could be easily assigned at different point for a course.

The topics of the text are ordered in a logical way, beginning with topics that should be covered first in a Technical Writing course.

Some of the images are blurry and hard to see. The 2 videos are designed by an instructor for a specific course and reference specific assignments for that course so these are not good choices for this textbook that is meant to be a general source for any Technical Writing course.

The text contains no grammatical errors.

The text is presented in a neutral way with no offensive or insensitive words or examples.

The format of the content is very text heavy in paragraph structure, which is odd for a Technical Writing book because a general rule in Technical Writing is to use shorter, concise paragraphs with more lists, bullets, and tables for easy reading and referencing of the information. In addition, the text needs more real-life example that demonstrate the points being made in each section.

Reviewed by Shannon Kelley, English Faculty, Chemeketa Community College on 6/20/17

The text covers a good amount of information related to technical writing; some of the sections are more in depth than others. Many sections would benefit from further inquiry to assist students with more complex issues in the field of technical... read more

The text covers a good amount of information related to technical writing; some of the sections are more in depth than others. Many sections would benefit from further inquiry to assist students with more complex issues in the field of technical writing and communications. While all of the topics are relevant, it sticks to the basics of each topic without exploring innovations and trends in the field. The topics covered are appropriate for a low-level, introductory course in technical writing.

The book is accurate and unbiased. It is a straight-forward text that introduces the basics of technical writing in a clear, error-free format. Each chapter provides references and is accurately cited. The examples are neutral and helpful.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

The content is relevant, but not exhaustive. The text does not cover new trends in the field. Many technical writing students, particularly in community college courses, are entering a variety of fields. While this text provides the basics of technical writing, it does not help with a variety of concerns students may face in their chosen fields.

The text is arranged in way that will allow for necessary updates moving forward. The text seamlessly incorporates modalities, like video links, that prove helpful as examples. More of these new modalities are desirable as writing and reading moves to the Internet. There are places in the text that could benefit from utilizing new, innovative examples.

The text is written clearly and concisely. Each chapter is divided into sections. The section and chapter headings create parallelism that helps its overall clarity. The table of contents is clear and easy to use. There is not a lot of technical jargon present; the lack of technical writing terminology is one reason the book reads like introductory material.

The text is consistent in its layout. It is easy to use and access. The structural framework of the text is effective for online reading.

The text is not self-referential, but it does reference information only relevant to COCC. The text is divided in a way that feels manageable for students. The downside is the text borders on being too modular. The sections felt purposefully shortened and many chapters left me wanting more information. For instance, visual rhetoric and page layout were lumped together with audience. And in terms of this topic, topics like those deserve their own exploration.

The text works itself through the basics, from small workplace writing tasks like emails and memos, up through more complex writing like proposals and reports. Thought was given to the order of the text and it is logical and predictable.

There were no interface issues as I reviewed the text. i downloaded it as a PDF and also read some parts online.

The text contains no grammatical errors. It was edited well. The grammar is basic and reads at an introductory level reading.

The text remains neutral and uses voice or cartoon like figures in some of the videos. I would have liked to see more examples throughout the text. Visuals and page layout are important features of a lot of technical writing and this text doesn't take advantage of opportunities to incorporate a variety of examples. There are opportunities throughout the book that allow for incorporation of examples from fields of nursing, human services, engineering, computer science, and education.

It should be noted that I am reviewing this text for a 200 level course. At Chemeketa Community College students enter technical writing after completing two-three levels of prerequisite writing courses. Technical writing is the highest level of writing students receive before they enter their professional fields or transfer to four-year universities. The book is well written, clear, useful, and comprehensive for an introductory course, but not for a higher level technical writing course. Much of the focus felt repetitive and covered skills students in technical writing should already possess. There were missed opportunities to expand some of the more relevant topics, like the importance of visual rhetoric in page layout; solicited and unsolicited proposals; and, analytical report writing like feasibility studies.

Reviewed by Daniel Hocutt, Web Manager & Adjunct Professor, University of Richmond School of Professional & Continuing Studies on 4/11/17

The text does not include an index or glossary, but does provide a comprehensive table of contents. The text introduces itself as an introductory text to technical writing (or communication), and provides a definition of technical communication... read more

The text does not include an index or glossary, but does provide a comprehensive table of contents. The text introduces itself as an introductory text to technical writing (or communication), and provides a definition of technical communication that is limited to the types, content, and coverage of texts created. A more comprehensive text would address some of the responsibilities of technical writing as it relates to the technical writer herself: team building and collaboration, intermediary across multiple departments and divisions; and negotiator of meaning in workplace cultures. Also missing from the text are generous examples of document types generated by technical writers, like websites, brochures and flyers, and other types of written communication. The text's focus on report writing seems limiting, and its approach to technical writer as largely autonomous does not accurately reflect the complexity of technical writing workplaces.

The content is up-to-date and appears to be thoroughly accurate. Its authors clearly understand and practice technical communication, and its integration of external tools and links are current, complete, and appropriate to the content of the text itself. Chapters in the text address real-world examples and seek to connect communication techniques to workplace and technical contexts. Of particular importance is the text's approach to communication as audience focused and customized; this reflects theoretical accuracy and currency in technical and professional writing and, more broadly, in rhetoric and communications.

The applicability of this question to a text on technical communication is somewhat misplaced; technical writing handbooks must follow technical advances that will necessarily render older technologies less relevant. For example, the section on texting would not have appeared in earlier editions of this text, while the section on memoranda feels somewhat dated in paper-less or paper-reduced workplaces. As a result, the content will regularly have to be updated as modes and media of communication and writing evolve. This is a problem of all technical writing texts, but it's particularly acute as it relates to an online text, which will likely be expected to be current, relevant, and inclusive of the latest trends in technology and writing.

The text is remarkably approachable to its intended audience, those entering into the field of technical writing or those who will, by virtue of their technical positions, be required to compose technical artifacts. Its prose is clear and specific, and it follows the guidelines for writing technical prose that it presents to reader: clear, concise, and effective.

The field of technical and professional communication tends to use terms somewhat synonymously, so the conflation of certain terms in the text is not unusual in the field. For example, “writing” and “communication” are often used largely synonymously in the field, and that practice is also followed throughout this text. The same is true of “business” and “professional” as it relates to writing and communication. An introductory text should seek to better follow consistency while explaining the issues that exist in the field.

The text is quite modular, to the point that certain parts of it might be combined to keep from creating extremely short chapters or sections. This is especially true of several introductory sections. In general, segments are only a few paragraphs in length, with modules easily excerpted for re-use or revised usage. I could definitely see the potential of a teacher taking certain sections and incorporating them into class notes or as a customized resource. But I also see the value of using the entirety of the text as a stand-alone text; I believe the text’s structure enables both uses with little revision or customization necessary.

The text’s organization is not as clear or logical as I would expect. Given that modules or sections can be reordered on demand, this is not a significant drawback. However, I found the default order of modules confusing, shifting between more general, theoretical approaches (like audience analysis and information literacy) and more specific practical approaches (like proposals and progress reports) without a clear rationale for shifting from one to the other. A more logical structure might be to address the general theory in an opening section that includes examples for illustration, then to include a second section to address specific genres and types of technical writing. The structure is not off-putting, but as someone who might consider teaching from this text, I question the rationale behind the logic but am given little explanation.

The text’s interface is clean and clear. Serif fonts are a little unusual in web documents, but the type style used is quite readable online. Table formats don’t always fit on the page, and this requires left/right scrolling to access some of the columns. The text includes few images; most are linked to accessible PDF versions, which are full-screen and easy to read. Embedded videos appear to function as expected; the interface could benefit from a column-width inline viewer that would keep the video window from being narrower than the text columns. This is likely a result of making the interface mobile responsive, and represents what is often a necessary compromise.

Like its prose, the grammar appears to be clean and normalized to American standard English. The tone can be academic, but that is to be expected from a text used in an introductory classroom. I found no grammatical errors.

I did not encounter ethnicity- or gender-specific language in the text. The examples provided represent a number of different document types and genres, generally focused on the professional workplace or the academic environment. However, no text will free itself completely from ideology; I might like to have seen the text more directly address this issue as it relates to business writing. The text could do more to explore cultural contexts in which technical documents are planned, prepared, and consumed, especially given increasing internationalization of workforces. This may reflect an issue with the field — we tend to classify international communication differently from general technical communication — but a section on writing in the global community and for cross-cultural audiences might be useful.

I did not expect to find an open textbook as useful or well-constructed as this is. While its cover and design are unassuming — which, for a text on technical writing, might be a drawback — its content is erudite and targeted to its primary audience and purpose. I would consider using this text in an introductory technical writing class, with the addition of several notable sections identified elsewhere in this review.

Reviewed by Ruth Perkins, Adjunct instructor, Chemeketa Community College on 4/11/17

The text clearly focuses on research and report writing in a business context. These are appropriately and adequately covered. The table of contents is detailed and accessible on each page with a link to each section. The chapters lead students... read more

The text clearly focuses on research and report writing in a business context. These are appropriately and adequately covered. The table of contents is detailed and accessible on each page with a link to each section. The chapters lead students through the steps of producing a formal report including research, proposals, citation, and progress reports. There is a useful section on information literacy and conducting research beyond the first items in a Google search.

The importance of keeping readers in mind is stressed throughout. In addition to a link to an audience worksheet, there is a clear explanation of how reports might be used by different readers.

Chapter 10 includes a link to a wide variety of examples of technical writing.

Missing are sections on topics often included in technical writing: instructions, procedures, descriptions and definitions. These could be easily fit into the overall structure of the text although obviously other sources of information would need to be found.

The principles of professional communication are accurately presented. The authors make the useful point in several places that a business, agency, journal etc. will likely have its own preferences for professional communications but that some aspects, such as avoiding plagiarism, doing proper research, are consistent.

The content is up-to-date since there are not apt to be quick changes to the principles of technical writing nor to the precepts of e-mail, texting etc. and their place in business. Any changes could be quickly made.

There are links that are specific to or have comments that are specific to COCC that instructors will probably want to point out and substitute their institution’s or their class policy. Examples are the links in 1.3 and 6.2.

The book is clearly written in an informal, conversational tone that should appeal to students. The terminology is basic without down-writing. Any specialized terms are defined.

The link in 8.4 to visuals that need revision is probably not useful for most classes. Figures 1 and 2 are very specialized.

The text is consistently organized. There are clear signals that link each section to the main section. The emphasis is on professional communication throughout so chapters are linked through that context.

In section 4.1 there is inconsistency in terminology where “academic” and “scholarly” are used interchangeably.

The book is clearly arranged into chapters with clear titles and headings. The table of contents is linked to each section for quick finding. The pages have ample white space and large readable type.

The book is clearly organized around the perspective of researching and writing a final report. The chapters can easily be rearranged according to an instructor’s preference since the table of contents is linked to each section.

However, the book is arranged in a logical progression through the different aspects of research and writing the formal report.

The book is posted in 4 different formats which makes it readily accessible to students. There is an important missing link in 9.2. This link in 4.3 is no longer valid: The Research Cycle derived from A Cycle of Revolving Research by UC Libraries, CC: BY-NC-SA 3.0 Otherwise there are no issues.

There are grammatical errors in section 9 as well as confusing switches in point of view.

Grammar errors: 9 “Writers . . . she” 9.3 “. . .your employer to pursue and action” and “the groups’ goal”

Point of view First, chapters 1-8 and 10 are written in second person. Chapter 9 is written partly in second person, partly in third person. While some references to “the writer” are logical, it inconsistently directly addresses readers or talks about writers in general.

Second, there is inconsistency in an attempt to be gender neutral in the third person. In 9 “she” and “he” are used interchangeably. 9.3 uses “her/himself,” “s/he,” and “his/her.”

The examples in the text and references to writers are neutral. There is nothing to identify a particular culture, race or ethnicity.

The book doesn't completely fit the course in technical writing that I teach but I would consider using if it did. However, I do have some problems with Chapter 9, ethics in technical writing, that I would like to see addressed. These are in addition to the grammatical issues.

In 9.1 General Principles, the authors give examples of ethical dilemmas that range from trivial to life and death. These do more to complicate the subject than clarify it. Part of this is due to the phrasing about the friend’s haircut, “This lie, though minor, preserves . . .” What is “though” doing in this sentence? It signals a contrast which isn’t there.

More of a concern though is the phrasing of the third choice of saving lives. The person might “risk [her life] to save her children” but to save the stranger, she would have to “choose to die.” Risk and certainty are not equal choices.

The second paragraph concludes that “If you would . . . lose your job. . . the action is probably unethical” oversimplifies -- one can lose a job for being ethical as well.

Section 9.2 includes the Challenger disaster as an example of unethical writing. The missing link is vital here since there are definitely different accounts of the underlying causes beyond the O rings. The authors speculate about possible motives of the engineers with no source information to support their conjectures. They make statements about the priority of information in the engineers' report which imply that they are in a position to make that judgment.

I suggest deleting or re-writing this section of the book.

Reviewed by Corrine Holke-Farnam, Instructor, University of Northern Iowa on 2/8/17

The text provides an adequate overview of the field for beginners in technical writing. read more

The text provides an adequate overview of the field for beginners in technical writing.

The content is accurate and straight forward.

The text is up-to-date and covers the range of topics addressed in introductory technical and professional writing courses.

The information is presented effectively in clear, concise language. Provides accurate definitions and many links to examples for easy understanding.

I found no internal inconsistencies.

Text is user-friendly. Effective use of white space. Employ small chunks of text, bullet point lists, and hyperlinks.

Many technical writing textbooks begin with audience analysis. Hamlin, Rubio, and DeSiva begin with common types of professional communication like email and memo format; doing so provides an effective context for beginning writers. The chapters of the book could be easily reorganized to fit user needs and/or preferences.

The text is free of interface issues. Navigation between and within chapters is smooth. Website links opened easily.

Technical Writing contains no grammatical errors.

The text revolves around professional communication. Does not contain offensive or insensitive material or links.

This text seems like a good fit for students in my Technical Writing for Electrical Engineering Technologists course. Practical information, concise presentation.

Reviewed by Jennifer Barton, Advanced Instructor, Virginia Tech on 2/8/17

The book appears to be written for a course designed around a specific major project that asks students to write a proposal for a technical report and then to research and write the report itself. Those sections are adequate, but I would like to... read more

The book appears to be written for a course designed around a specific major project that asks students to write a proposal for a technical report and then to research and write the report itself. Those sections are adequate, but I would like to see more content in general.

In particular, I would like information on writing instructions and technical descriptions, as well as the finer points of correspondence writing, like strategies for persuasion, or handling negative news, or emphasizing reader benefits. I would also like to see information on team writing—a must for the modern workplace. The book would also benefit from a section on presentations and a broader section on document design. The current section on design is specific only to reports and is really about organization, not design.

The content is accurate. The book sticks to the basic writing principles which don’t change much over time. I especially appreciate the repeated emphasis on audience and that while particular elements are expected for particular genres, organization and approach can and should be modified to suit the writer’s purpose and the needs of the audience.

The core principles aren’t likely to go out of date any time soon. The limited scope and lack of discussion about the design expectations of the modern audience does make the book feel dated.

Although the concept of linking to examples and additional information is an excellent use of this medium, the choice of links could be improved. For example, many of the linked reports are nearly twenty years old, and while they may demonstrate many of the writing principles that stay constant over time, they do not demonstrate contemporary expectations for design, and the topics are so dated as to make them seem irrelevant to most students.

The authors do an excellent job of adhering to plain language principles. The style is clear, simple, and direct. It reads like the authors are speaking directly to the audience.

As mentioned previously, the book reads as though it were designed for a very specific class. It shifts quite a bit between universal advice about writing for a professional audience and specific advice about writing for an instructor. That’s confusing and limits the book’s applicability.

The book is divided into logical sections that would make it easy to customize for a course if not for the problem previously cited of its being designed around a specific course’s project.

Follows a familiar and standard organization for workplace writing textbooks, beginning with basic correspondence and working towards longer and more complex reports.

Some easily correctable issues here: Many widowed headings (which the text advises to avoid). Figures and tables are not always labeled correctly.

The visual weight of “Chapter Attribution Information,” which is currently the same as chapter titles, should be reduced. In some chapters, that information is repeated before every section, which adds visual clutter.

There are additional problems in the pdf version that make it the pdf only partially usable: Text boxes tend to exceed the width of the page and cannot therefore be read. Everything is rendered as plain text, which means that table formatting is screwy and all images (including images of example documents) are missing. Citations get embedded directly into the text.

Grammar looks fine.

Deals very little with cultural issues, which is surprising given the global ventures of many companies and the increasingly diverse workforce in the US.

The book has the potential to be quite good, but I don't think it’s yet ready to compete with the for-profit options. I look forward to seeing subsequent editions.

Table of Contents

• 1. Professional Communications
• 2. Audience Analysis
• 3. Proposals
• 4. Information Literacy
• 5. Citations and Plagiarism
• 6. Progress Reports
• 7. Outlines
• 8. Creating and Integrating Graphics
• 9. Ethics in Technical Writing
• 10. Technical Reports: Components and Design
• 11. Basic Design and Readability in Publications
• 12. Employment Materials
• 13. Communicating across Cultures
• 14. Thinking about Writing

Ancillary Material

About the book.

This open textbook offers students of technical writing an introduction to the processes and products involved in professional, workplace, and technical writing. The text is broken up into sections reflecting key components of researching, developing, and producing a technical report. Readers will also learn about other professional communication, designing documents, and creating and integrating graphics. Written especially for an academic setting, this book provides readers with guidance on information literacy and documenting sources. This book was collected, adapted, and edited from multiple openly licensed sources.

About the Contributors

Annemarie Hamlin is an Associate Professor of English at Central Oregon Community College.

Chris Rubio is an Assistant Professor at Central Oregon Community College in Bend, OR.

Contribute to this Page

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Writing Essays

Dawn Atkinson

The current chapter focuses on essays , pieces of persuasive writing developed around defined topics. This genre’s persuasiveness rests in large part on its logical structure, inclusion of quality evidentiary support, and consistent design, as explained herein; hence, essay writing calls for planning, researching, synthesizing, and revising. Although essays are generally considered a form of academic rather than technical writing, the division is not absolute, and the prevalence of essay assignments in both writing and other university-level courses merits our focus on them here.

While reading this chapter, keep in mind that college essays typically require use of a formal writing style, although the specifics may vary depending on the particular assignment and area of study. For an overview of formal writing guidelines, see the George Mason University Writing Center’s (2017) handout entitled “Reducing Informality in Academic Writing” ( https://writingcenter.gmu.edu/guides/reducing-informality-in-academic-writing ).

Essays can be divided into two broad types: expository and argumentative essays. To define these categories using information adapted from Student Academic Success Services, Queen’s University (2018b, para. 13), expository essays explain—they teach, illustrate, or clarify a subject for a reader—while argumentative essays make claims and seek to convince a reader to accept a position or point of view.

Focusing an Essay

For an essay topic to be manageable, its focus must be narrow enough so that it can be addressed adequately within the word or page count available; however, the topic should not be so narrow so as to impede your research efforts. When deciding on a topic, conduct initial research using library or internet resources to get a sense of current scholarship in the area, as well as points of agreement and contention, which may lead you to a focused direction for research. To pinpoint your particular interest in a topic, you might also consider using listing, mind mapping, outlining, freewriting, looping, or questioning, the brainstorming strategies described in the “Maintaining a Productive Writing Schedule” chapter of this textbook. Talking with your instructor or a librarian about a topic may also help you decide a paper’s focus.

What other methods could you use to narrow the focus of an essay?

Figure 1, a multi-page handout adapted from the Writing and Communication Centre, University of Waterloo (n.d.a, pp. 2-3), illustrates the process of narrowing an essay topic.

Developing and Narrowing a Topic

Develop and Narrow a Topic

A well-written paper depends on a strong topic that is focused and specific. To get there, you need to develop some topic ideas, choose the best one, and narrow that topic further.

Developing A Topic

Researching your subject, brainstorming ideas, and sharing your ideas with others are three steps that can help you develop a strong topic.

Do your research

Doing preliminary research will help you to discover what people who work on the topic are interested in or concerned about.

There are countless ways to brainstorm ideas for a topic; below are three common approaches.

• Freewriting: Jot down ideas without revising or proofreading
• Questioning: Write down questions you have about your topic without revising or proofreading
• Mapping: Starting with a main topic, write down subtopics that come to mind, drawing links that show how the different subtopics relate.

Talk about your ideas

Talking to others helps you to understand your ideas from a reader’s perspective. It can help you refine the topic or even move in a new direction.

Narrowing Your Topic

Narrowing your topic makes your work more manageable and your paper more likely to succeed. A good paper takes a smaller portion of a larger issue or problem and investigates that part in depth. Narrowing your topic allows you to choose a problem that is specific enough to research with vigour. Below is an example of the process:

Move from abstract to concrete

A manageable topic is concrete. As we narrow the scope of a topic, the subject matter moves from abstract concepts to ideas that are more precise. Let’s use bicycles, again, as our example.

Main topic:  Bicycles

Subtopics: Design, Safety, Health impacts, Charity drives, Bicycle usage, Bicycles and education, Reuse, Infrastructure, Environmental impacts, Policies, Bicycles and urban development, Bicycles and commercial products, Bicycle culture

Although bicycles are concrete “things,” the word bicycles could mean different things to different people. These ideas, such as design, bicycle culture, or infrastructure, are subtopics of “bicycles.”

Add specific details

As you narrow in on one subtopic, the number of subtopics decreases:

Revised main topic: Bicycles and policies

• safety standards for bicycle design
• safety gear policies
• urban development policies and bike lanes
• road policies and cyclists

Tip: Is it narrow enough?  In our last example, notice that when you begin to narrow a large topic, the initial subtopics that come up are still broad, general ideas. The more you narrow, the more specific your descriptions become. You can use the traditional journalistic questions (Who, What, Where, When, Why) to help you move towards more specific topics:

• road building policies?
• building zone policies?
• other infrastructure?
• metropolitan areas?
• medium-sized cities?
• small cities?
• construction companies?
• planning committees?

Using these questions to target the subject matter, we might narrow the topic, bicycle lanes and urban development , even further to the following:  policies related to bike lanes in mid-sized metropolitan areas .

As the handout illustrates, deciding upon a suitably narrow essay topic is a process that may require several attempts to complete. Regardless, devoting time to this initial planning process is a wise investment since a defined essay topic will usefully guide a paper’s development.

Structuring an Essay

Essays, like letters and memos, follow an introduction, body, and conclusion structure, although these sections may also be subdivided. The sections need to be fully developed to coherently deliver an essay’s central message to readers. They also need to be proportionate to an essay’s overall length: for instance, a brief essay requires a brief introduction and conclusion, whereas an extended essay can accommodate a longer introduction and conclusion. In general, budget 10 percent of the paper’s word count for the introduction, 80 percent for the body, and 10 percent for the conclusion.

Composing an Introduction Section

An essay introduction establishes context for the reader by commencing discussion of the document’s central message, around which all the other content will coalesce, and by revealing how the essay will unfold. To be more specific, the introduction delimits the scope and purpose of the essay so that readers understand its direction, range of coverage, and intent.

The context-setting information provided at the beginning of an introduction might include definitions of key terms that will be used throughout the rest of the paper, a summation of how something works, essential background on the topic to be addressed in the piece, or articulation of circumstances pertinent to a problem—perhaps a concise discussion of historical events surrounding the topic, previous research conducted in the area, or treatment of the topic in the news. A writer has considerable leeway when deciding how to articulate context-setting information, and inventiveness in this section can help draw readers into the essay. Schall (2014, para. 7), for instance, describes how narration , storytelling in other words, can be used to stimulate reader interest in an essay. The following examples, adapted from Schall (para. 7), present the initial lines from two essay openings, one focused on the “generic nature of America’s highway exit ramp services” and the other on shape constancy in relationship to human visual perception, to demonstrate the interest that narration can inspire.

• The observation struck me slowly, a growing sense of déjà vu. I was driving the endless miles of Interstate 70 crossing Kansas when I began to notice that the exits all looked the same. → Notice how the writer uses I to communicate his/her experience.
• Our eyes often receive pictures of the world that are contrary to physical reality: a pencil in a glass of water miraculously bends and railroad tracks converge in the distance. → Notice how writer omits I but is nevertheless reflective about the subject matter.

Regardless of the flavor of context-setting information you provide in an essay, the information should help readers connect with the text’s central message. Therefore, avoid beginning an essay with an overly general statement, such as “People argue about many controversial topics,” that could apply to any number of papers. This kind of nondescript material wastes readers’ time.

An essay’s central message is delivered in its thesis statement , a sentence, sometimes more, that articulates the theme of the paper and the writer’s view on it. The thesis thus explains the paper’s controlling idea by specifying what the writer has to say about a particular topic and by clarifying what will and will not be covered. The thesis statement is typically placed at or near the end of the introduction to initiate the reader’s progression into the rest of the paper. Schall (para. 8) explains that a well-written thesis statement should be inexorably tied to the essay it accompanies, carefully constructed, and revealingly focused: “concretely announce the most important elements of your topic and suggest your fundamental approach—even point [readers] toward the paper’s conclusion if you can.”  The following two thesis statement examples, adapted from Schall (para. 9), fit this description.

• This paper reviews the problem of Pennsylvania’s dwindling landfill space, evaluates the success of recycling as a solution to this problem, and challenges the assumption that Pennsylvania will run out of landfill space by the year 2024.
• As this paper will show, the fundamental problem behind the Arab-Israeli conflict is the lack of a workable solution to the third stage of partition, which greatly hinders negotiations for peace.

Notice that each example indicates the paper’s unifying theme and the writer’s viewpoint on the matter.

Developing an effective thesis statement for an essay requires work on a writer’s part. Try using these steps, adapted from the Writing and Communication Centre, University of Waterloo (n.d.c, “Building Effective Thesis Statements”), when building a thesis statement to make the task more straightforward.

• Read the assignment directions carefully so you are clear about the expectations.
• Conduct preliminary research to gather and organize information about your topic.
• What is new about this topic?
• What is important about this topic?
• What is interesting about this topic?
• What have others missed in their discussions about this topic?
• Conduct additional research once you have narrowed your focus in order to find evidence to support your thesis. As you research, your understanding of the topic may further develop and evolve.
• Refine your thesis statement so it clearly expresses your angle or position.

As this list points out, an effective thesis statement typically develops over time and with concerted effort.

A thesis statement should fulfill the functions set out in its definition otherwise it will not guide the development of an essay. The following list, adapted from McKeever (n.d.c, paras. 12, 16, 17) and Sweetland Center for Writing, University of Michigan (2020a, para. 8), identifies markers of weak thesis statements.

• A simple observation (Example: NASA scientists regularly conduct experiments in space.) Although an observation may be true, it cannot initiate a lively and extended discussion of the multiple views surrounding a complex topic.
• A statement of fact (Example: Some people are opposed to stem cell research.) To determine whether a statement is a fact, ask if anyone could reasonably disagree with it. If everyone would agree that the statement is true, it is a fact, meaning that it is not open to interpretation or discussion.
• A broad generalization (Example: Politics requires working for the people.) It may seem that a broad thesis statement creates the possibility for numerous essay directions, but broad issues contain too many specific arguments within them, and making a broad claim leads to making a shallow argument.
• A question (Example: Why are self-service checkout machines popular in stores?) A thesis must be phrased as a statement, although you might decide to narrow the focus of an essay by devising a research question (a question that a research project seeks to answer). A thesis statement answers a research question in sentence form.
• A misleading statement (Example: This essay will prove that a person who is old enough to vote and serve in the armed forces should be allowed to drink alcohol too.) The word prove points to a fact, something that is indisputable, and a thesis cannot be a statement of fact. More troubling about the example, however, is that an essay cannot irrefutably prove something, so the statement is misleading.
• A statement that uses figurative language (Example: The runaway train of individualism must be controlled and not allowed to jump the tracks and obliterate innocent bystanders.) A thesis statement should enable a reader to clearly and immediately identify the focus of an essay. Figurative language, such as that used in the example, is wordy, vague, and quite frankly confusing, so avoid it.
• An unfocused statement (Example: I think the inconsistent penalties for drunk driving, even if enhanced, because of the impact of drinking and driving on families who lose their children, fathers, mothers, or other family members to death and/or disability, are not strict enough in the various states, allowing drunk drivers to go free although there is a high risk of offending again.) A thesis statement that contains multiple clauses and lists is confusing. Oftentimes, such statements also present details that should be discussed in body paragraphs. Remember that a focused thesis statement identifies and delimits the direction of an essay, as this revised example does: The United States needs a consistent, national law that strips drunk drivers of driving privileges for five years after their first offense. Notice that the revised example omits I think since the phrase is redundant; the writer’s view is implicit in the sentence. In general, avoid the phrases I think , I feel , and I believe since they add unnecessary words to an essay and give the appearance of uncertainty.

Prevent the thesis statement problems listed by focusing on a specific topic and articulating your view on that topic in a clear, concise, and unambiguous way. In addition, be prepared to revise the thesis statement as necessary during your essay’s development.

Depending on assignment specifications, disciplinary conventions, educational context, or authorial choice, a writer may integrate a route map , a brief outline of the specific topics the essay will cover and in what order, in the thesis statement or provide this information in a separate sentence or sentences at the end of the introduction. The order of topics in the route map should match the sequence in which they are addressed in the body of the essay; the route map thus serves as a skeleton outline of the essay by giving readers a sense of how the text will be organized.

The essay introduction structure described here takes the form of the inverted triangle presented in Figure 2, with the reader connecting with broad context-setting information before moving on to a more narrow discussion of the essay’s focus area and organizational structure provided in a thesis statement and route map.

Figure 2. Moving from general to specific information as an essay introduction proceeds

Figure 3, adapted from the Academic Writing Help Centre, Student Academic Success Service at the University of Ottawa (2016c, para. 10), shows the introduction elements at work in a sample paragraph.

Figure 3. An introduction with context-setting, a thesis statement, and a route map

If an introduction is clearly focused, comprehensibly organized, and grammatically and mechanically sound, it can inspire a reader’s interest in the remainder of the essay.

Composing a Body Section

The body of an essay expounds upon the central theme articulated in the text’s thesis statement until that theme is fully developed. The body section is divided into paragraphs, and each paragraph centers on one main point that unifies the content of the paragraph and is articulated through an explicit or implied topic sentence. A topic sentence encapsulates a paragraph’s focus, and in technical writing, explicit topic sentences typically appear at the beginnings of paragraphs to expediently deliver needed information to readers. Using this structure, everything that follows the topic sentence in a paragraph—examples, illustrations, explanations, quotations, paraphrases, summaries, reasons—supports the point made in the topic sentence. If a writer instead opts to use an implied topic sentence, he or she may discuss a source, viewpoint, question, or piece of evidence slowly in the paragraph, allowing the paragraph’s momentum to develop the text’s key takeaway. The reader is consequently responsible for inferring the paragraph’s topic sentence in this situation. Whether the topic sentence is explicit or implied, the reader should leave the paragraph with a clear understanding of its main point.

To successfully communicate a paragraph’s main point and give readers a sense of the paragraph’s direction, a topic sentence must be specific. A topic sentence that simply announces the subject matter of a paragraph—“In this paragraph, I will discuss…”—does not fit this description, as the professionals at Student Academic Success Services, Queen’s University (2018a, para. 5) explain. To devise a precise alternative, think carefully about the paragraph’s key takeaway and how that point ties in with surrounding paragraphs and ultimately links back to the essay’s thesis statement; then try to articulate the key takeaway in one focused and unifying umbrella sentence underneath which all the other points in the paragraph fall.

In the process of developing an essay’s central theme through the inclusion of focused topic sentences and relevant and substantive follow-up sentences, the body section of an essay aims to be compelling: for example, an author might try to convince readers to adopt his or her position on an issue; to take a careful look at a text and how it is constructed; to contemplate the layers of complexity surrounding an area of investigation; or, more generally, to consider the well-informed nature of the essay and its fluid delivery of information. The body section thus involves persuasion. To address an essay’s central theme in a comprehensive and fair way, a writer who aims for maximum persuasiveness will speak to the multifaceted perspectives surrounding points of discussion rather than focusing exclusively on his or her own viewpoint. The latter signals bias in an argument, a situation to avoid in academic and technical writing.

Writers may employ certain patterns of development to present information in body paragraphs so that it is logical and compelling. The following list, adapted from Student Academic Success Services, Queen’s University (2018b, paras. 12, 17-21), describes a number of these patterns.

• Description: Conveys specific details about the look, taste, smell, sound, or feel of something.
• Illustration/Example: Illustrates a general concept with specific examples or uses an example as evidence to support a point.
• Spatial: Describes how something looks in relationship to how it occupies space (e.g., inside to outside, top to bottom, front to back, or left to right).
• Comparison/Contrast: Examines two or more things to determine their similarities and differences using clearly defined criteria.
• Cause/Effect: Examines the causes that have led to certain results.
• Evaluation: Measures something by examining it in relation to a given set of criteria; may discuss the thing’s strengths and weaknesses in light of this evaluation.
• Classification: Examines something by dividing it into categories or subtypes.
• Sequence/Process: Explains how something works in sequential or step-by-step fashion.
• Narration: Tells a story in chronological order.
• Definition: Explains the distinguishing features of something.
• Order of Importance: Places the most important information in a strategic place to affect reader perception.

Writers may combine these patterns when developing body paragraphs or use them separately; assignment directions may also specify the use of a particular pattern in an essay.

Figure 4, adapted from the Academic Writing Help Centre, Student Academic Success Service at the University of Ottawa (2016a, para. 11), demonstrates elements of persuasion at work—in this case a viewpoint (claim) supported with a reason and evidence—in an argumentative body paragraph.

What do you think of the paragraph?  Apart from the argument elements identified in the paragraph, what else helps to make it persuasive?

Figure 4. A body paragraph containing a claim supported with a reason and evidence

While Figure 4 uses a quotation as evidence to support a claim, evidence in body paragraphs can take many forms: for example, summaries, paraphrases, tables, figures, equations, anecdotes, personal experiences, facts, statistics, and numerical and word field data.

Composing a Conclusion Section

A conclusion emphasizes an essay’s central message by reiterating its thesis (without repeating it word for word) and summarizing its key points. Because a conclusion brings an essay to a cohesive end, it should not discuss new information; instead, it should follow on logically from content already covered. A conclusion’s very definition—“an articulated conviction arrived at on the basis of the evidence you have presented” (Schall, 2014, para. 15)—points to its unifying function. The following conclusion sample, adapted from Schall (para. 16) and excerpted from the paper “Exercise in the Prevention and Treatment of Osteoporosis in Women,” reflects directly on the paper’s hypothesis, stated in the introduction, and presents a logical realization of the paper’s goals.

The majority of evidence presented in this paper supports the hypothesis that exercise positively affects bone mineral density in both premenopausal and postmenopausal women. Importantly, exercise has been shown to increase bone mineral density in premenopausal women even after the teenage years, and it helps preserve the bone mass achieved in the subsequent decades. Evidence also shows that exercise adds a modest amount of bone mass to the postmenopausal skeleton. As these findings demonstrate, women of all ages can benefit from regular weight-bearing exercise, an increased intake of calcium-rich foods, and—for postmenopausal women—the maintenance of adequate estrogen levels. Women of all ages can prevent osteoporosis or lessen its severity by making appropriate lifestyle choices.

If you experience a roadblock when constructing a coherent conclusion such as this, Schall (para. 14) recommends reviewing the essay’s introduction and body to revisit what the paper set out to do and how it accomplished its aims or reviewing these sections to determine the paper’s contributions to the particular research area addressed.

While focusing squarely on the essay’s central message and the document’s particular purpose, a conclusion may also discuss how the essay’s findings compare with other research in the area; emphasize the implications of the findings (what they mean and why they are important—the so what , in other words); consider the limitations of the research conducted for the essay; or make recommendations for further research. Again, these elements should link back to the essay’s central message so readers understand the context for their discussion. Here is a conclusion example, adapted from the Academic Writing Help Centre, Student Academic Success Service at the University of Ottawa (2016b, para. 7), that emphasizes the essay’s central message and summarizes its key points before underscoring the implications of the findings and proposing a solution to the issue discussed in the paper.

In the end, there is no way to deny the seriousness of the environmental threat. If the current clear-cutting practices continue, the Ungolu rainforest will be unable to support the red-tailed swallow, and it will become extinct. Without this bird, the tree-eating corkscrew beetle will have nothing to stop its spread, and it will disrupt the rainforest’s ecosystem even further. Although the inhabitants of the area request the commercialization of land and wood to encourage the economic development of Ungolu, initiatives with regard to ecotourism and biological agriculture can be pursued to ensure both the growth of the economy and the survival of the red-tailed swallow. Because of the dire environmental consequences of its extinction, it is vital that this species be preserved—and it is possible to do so with a reasonable amount of effort and resources. Indeed, the best way to encourage the inhabitants of the area to let the Ungolu rainforest recover is for northern countries to stop purchasing the products obtained from logging practices and to subsidize the local initiatives discussed in this paper, otherwise the local population will not be motivated to make a significant change. Without quick and decisive action, rainforest tracts will be eliminated, and the inhabitants of the area will be even worse off than before the introduction of logging.

The implications and call to action discussed in this conclusion coherently link back to the introduction and body sections of the essay.

Gathering Quality Evidence for an Essay

In addition to a logical structure, an essay’s effectiveness largely hinges on the quality of its evidentiary support. Evidence that is inaccurate, untrustworthy, irrelevant, insufficient, dated, or flawed in some other way is unlikely to convince a reader to adopt a writer’s perspective and may actually inspire the opposite effect. On the other hand, sound evidence can contribute to the persuasiveness of an essay and demonstrate a writer’s research ability. While the “Writing Topic Proposals” chapter of this textbook supplies tips for evaluating the quality of sources and the evidence they provide, the multipage handout in Figure 5 (adapted from McKeever, n.d.a) offers additional points to consider.

Does anything on the handout surprise you?  Why or why not?

Figure 5. A guide to evaluating information sources

You might decide to use the checklist items in Figure 5 to evaluate sources of information for your essay. Figure 6 (Webber, 2018, p. 1) presents an alternative tool: a visual scorecard for source evaluation.

Figure 6. A scorecard tool for evaluating source information

The instruments in figures 5 and 6 can help you apply consistent evaluation criteria to potential sources of evidentiary information for an essay.

Incorporating Quality Evidence into an Essay

After locating quality evidentiary support for an essay, you must incorporate it into your text in a logical and ethical way so that readers understand its presence, its origin, and how it relates to your own ideas. Quotation, paraphrase, and summary offer three means by which to integrate evidence into an essay.

Before attempting to quote, paraphrase, or summarize a source, make sure you fully understand the text’s meaning and feel confident about discussing it. If you are unclear about what the source text says, do not try to integrate its information into your essay; such confusion can damage the persuasiveness of a paper since savvy readers may detect the issue. Instead, read the text several times slowly to grasp its meaning or discuss it with your classmates and instructor before attempting to incorporate its information into an essay. Class discussions about confounding texts can oftentimes provide clarification and fruitful avenues for writing projects.

Using Quotations

When writers quote , they use the exact words from source texts, enclose those words in quotation marks, and cite and reference the sources to document the origin of information. Quotations can provide telling evidence in a paper if they are used sparingly and strategically. Conversely, their overuse can affect the flow of a piece of writing and give readers the impression that the writer cannot formulate his or her own thoughts about a text. Table 1 explains when to use and avoid quotations.

Table 1. Reasons to use and avoid quotations when writing

If you decide to use quotations in an essay, take care to integrate them cohesively.

Quotations cannot on their own provide compelling evidentiary support for an essay; a writer must consequently explain their presence and relevance to readers. In other words, a writer must contextualize a quotation so readers understand its use. The quotation sandwich offers a helpful method for working quotations into papers in a cohesive way. Using this technique, a writer introduces a quotation, provides the quotation, and comments on the quotation’s relationship to the paper. Figure 7, adapted from McKeever (n.d.b), demonstrates use of the quotation sandwich approach.

Figure 7. A quotation sandwich can contextualize source information for readers

  The sandwiching method in shown in Figure 7 can also be used with paraphrases, summaries, visuals, and lists to interweave those elements into a document so it flows together effectively.

Using a quotation from the first page of Charles Dickens’ 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities —“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”—textbook writers Last and Neveu (2019, pp. 236-237) explain that the seamless integration, signal phrase, and colon methods can also be used to integrate quotations into a text in a cohesive manner. The following list, adapted from Last and Neveu, explains and exemplifies these methods.

• Seamless Integration: Embed the quotation or parts of it into your sentence so that if you read the text aloud, listeners cannot distinguish the quotation from the rest of the sentence.

Example: Charles Dickens begins his 1859 novel with the paradoxical observation that the eighteenth century was both “the best of times” and “the worst of times” (p. 1).

• Signal Phrase: Use a signal phrase (author + reporting verb) to introduce the quotation, clearly indicating that the quotation originates from a specific source.

Example: Describing the eighteenth century in his 1859 novel, Charles Dickens observes, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” (p. 1). → Notice that a comma follows observes since the verb signals the beginning of a quotation.

• Colon: Use a colon to introduce a quotation when your own introductory words constitute an independent clause (i.e., a complete sentence); the colon emphasizes the quotation.

Example: In his 1859 novel, Charles Dickens defines the eighteenth century as a time of paradox: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” (p. 1).

Any of these techniques can be used in conjunction with a quotation sandwich for maximum cohesive effect.

Although a quotation extracts the exact words from a source, a writer might need to adjust the quoted material to interleave it into his or her own text so the language flows together in a concise, grammatical manner that makes sense to readers. For example, the writer might need to alter the verb tense of the quotation so it matches the tense used in the rest of the sentence or insert a clarifying comment into the quotation to help readers understand its meaning. Both of these situations call for the use of brackets (i.e., [ ]). Ellipses, three periods in a row (…), are used to show that irrelevant words have been omitted from the middle of a quotation; four periods are used when a sentence or more is omitted from the middle of a quotation. Instead of quoting full sentences, writers oftentimes integrate short phrases or parts of sentences into their texts, using ellipses in these circumstances. If a writer omits words from the beginning or ending of a quotation, the ellipses are unnecessary.

Last and Neveu (2019, p. 238) call upon the following text from Petroski (2014) to demonstrate the use of brackets and ellipses in action. The text is a long quotation (40+ words), so it begins on a new line and is indented rather than enclosed in quotation marks. When citing a long quotation such as this, place the citation information (in this case, the page number of the quotation) outside the final mark of punctuation at the end of the quotation. These are standard conventions for incorporating long quotations into a piece of writing. The examples that accompany the text are adapted from Last and Neveu (2019, p. 238).

Engineers are always striving for success, but failure is seldom far from their minds. In the case of Canadian engineers, this focus on potentially catastrophic flaws in a design is rooted in a failure that occurred over a century ago. In 1907 a bridge of enormous   proportions collapsed while still under construction in Quebec. Planners expected that when completed, the 1,800-foot main span of the cantilever bridge would set a world   record for long-span bridges of all types, many of which had come to be realized at a great price. According to one superstition, a bridge would claim one life for every  million dollars spent on it. In fact, by the time the Quebec Bridge would finally be        completed, in 1917, almost ninety construction workers would have been killed in the course of building the $25 million structure. (p. 175)

Petroski, H. (2014). To forgive design: Understanding failure . Belknap Press.

• Brackets can be used to signal a change to the verb tense in a quotation:

Petroski (2014) recounts the story of a large bridge that was constructed at the beginning of the twentieth century in Quebec, saying that “by the time [it was done], in 1917, almost ninety construction workers [were] killed in the course of building the $25 million structure” (p. 175).

• An ellipsis can be used to signal the omission of words from a quotation:

“Planners expected that when completed, the…bridge would set a world record for long-span bridges of all types,” according to Petroski (2014, p. 175).

• Brackets can be used to signal a clarifying insertion into a quotation:

“Planners expected that when completed, the…cantilever bridge [built using structures that were anchored at one end and projected horizontally at the other] would set a world record for long-span bridges of all types,” explained Petroski (2014, p. 175).

Brackets and ellipses help authors cohesively incorporate quotations into their own writing.

When source material contains a misspelling or other composition blunder, signal the error’s presence to readers in a quotation by enclosing the italicized word sic (Latin for thus ) in brackets and placing it right after the error. Here is an example of the notation used in a sentence.

According to Jones’ (2019) Best Journal review, the book is “an important contribution    to gender studies, suceeding [ sic ] where others have fallen short” (p. 2).

The notation informs the readers that the mistake appeared in the original text.

Lastly, when quoting text that already contains quotation marks, change the internal double quotation marks (“ ”) to the single variety (‘ ’) to help readers distinguish the elements. Here is an example that illustrates this use of punctuation.

In their journal article “Fish Tales: Combatting Fake Science in Popular Media,” authors Thaler and Shiffman (2015, p. 88) classify “‘bad science’ as unsound conclusions drawn from invalid premises; ‘pseudoscience’ as sound conclusions drawn from invalid premises; and ‘fake science’ as unsound conclusions drawn from invalid premises.”

Help readers understand how you have integrated quotations into your own sentences by using the standard conventions discussed herein.

Using Paraphrases

Paraphrasing is another technique that can be used to integrate evidence from sources into an essay. When paraphrasing , a writer articulates a text’s ideas using his or her own words and sentence structures and cites and references the original source. This technique has a number of benefits, as the following list explains.

• To compose a paraphrase, a writer must have a strong command of a source. Thus, inclusion of a paraphrase in an essay demonstrates that a writer has engaged actively with the source and can discuss it in an informed way using his or her own words.
• A writer can oftentimes incorporate a paraphrase into an essay in a more straightforward way than a quotation by maintaining his or her own writing style.
• If a source uses complex technical terms, a writer can translate this wording for a general audience of essay readers by articulating the ideas in a paraphrase.

Paraphrase when a text’s ideas are more important than how a source communicates them. Also bear in mind that paraphrasing and summarizing are the norm in much academic and technical writing, while quotations are used sparingly if at all.

To be certain you are using your own words and sentence structures when paraphrasing, follow these steps.

• Read the source text carefully to make sure you understand it.
• Decide which short section of text (a sentence or two or a brief paragraph) you intend to paraphrase.
• Note down key points about the text on a separate piece of paper using your own words.
• Put the source text away so you cannot see it.
• Write your own version of what the original text said using your notes.
• Leave the paraphrase alone for a while, and then revisit it to see if it can be improved.
• Check that the paraphrase expresses the overall idea of the source text in a new form.
• Enclose any unique terms borrowed from the original source in quotation marks.
• Provide an in-text citation and accompanying reference list entry for the original text.

The example below, adapted from Last and Neveu (2019, p. 239), follows the principles conveyed in the list while paraphrasing the final two sentences of the Petroski (2014) text presented earlier.

At the end of its construction, the large cantilever bridge in Quebec cost $25 million, explains Petroski (2014, p. 175), but the cost in lives far exceeded the prediction of one death for each million dollars spent. While the planners hoped that the bridge would set a global record, its enduring reputation was much grimmer.

An unacceptable paraphrase is one that simply replaces source language with synonyms. To avoid this form of plagiarism, use the steps listed here to express the meaning of a source in your own words.

Using Summaries

Summarizing , when a writer communicates a text’s central idea or theme in his or her own words while excluding details, is another technique that can be used to integrate source evidence into an essay. Although the “Reading Actively” chapter of this textbook contains detailed summary-writing guidance, Figure 8, a handout adapted from the Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre, University of Toronto Mississauga (n.d.), lists essential reminders for constructing a summary.

In what instances might you use summaries in essays?

Figure 8. Steps for composing a summary

The following example, adapted from Last and Neveu (2019, p. 239), follows the principles discussed herein when summarizing the Petroski (2014) text.

According to Petroski (2014, p. 175), a large bridge built in Quebec during the early part of the twentieth century claimed the lives of dozens of workers during its construction. The collapse of the bridge early in its construction represented a pivotal design failure for Canadian engineers that shaped the profession.

As the sample illustrates, a summary condenses an extended text down to its essential meaning, providing readers with an overview; a summary also supplies readers with a citation and reference for the source text.

Synthesizing Ideas for an Essay

Although this chapter has discussed quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing as means to integrate source information into essays, before you can use these techniques to their fullest potential, you must think carefully about the points your essay sources make, how they concur or disagree with one another, and how they connect to and extend your own ideas about an essay topic. Collectively, these activities facilitate synthesis , or connecting with sources by responding to their ideas and research in a piece of writing in order to contribute your own unique insights to the area of focus. Many composition scholars liken synthesis to engaging in conversation with sources since it involves establishing how sources relate to one another and to your own thoughts about a subject.

Using Summary to Synthesize

To demonstrate synthesis in action, we will explore a scenario adapted from Excelsior Online Writing Lab (2020f). Imagine you are researching a topic. You will likely encounter a variety of sources about the subject that contain different information and points of view, and you will need to compare and evaluate this information to draw your own conclusions—a process that leads to the synthesis of new ideas. It may help, at this point, to compare synthesizing to analyzing. Whereas analysis breaks something into parts to examine how they work together, synthesis combines ideas to form new ones. Regardless, synthesizing is not the same as summarizing; summary involves concisely stating someone else’s ideas, while synthesis is a critical and creative process in which you compare or combine the ideas you have read to form new ones. Although synthesis can involve summarizing ideas from other texts in order to compare them and draw a conclusion, the result is a new idea.

To continue the scenario, we will read two passages that express different points of view about bike lanes: first, we will summarize the authors’ main ideas, and then we will compare them and draw a conclusion. The author of this first passage is in favor of bike lanes.

Bike lanes are an essential feature of modern, urban life. Indeed, many urban residents have traded their cars for bicycles. Bicycling offers many advantages to driving: bicycles do not get stuck in traffic, run out of gas, break down often (and even when they do, repairs are inexpensive), need insurance, produce pollution, or receive parking tickets. They also offer an excellent way to add exercise to a busy schedule. Many cities across the nation have encouraged bicycling to cut down on traffic, accidents, and pollution and have added bike lanes to downtown areas to provide safe and speedy thruways for bicyclists, producing a net positive result for all parties.

We can summarize this argument by pulling out some keywords: bike lanes, advantages, urban, traffic, accidents, pollution, inexpensive, safe, and exercise. Putting this information together, we can summarize the author’s argument as follows.

Placing bike lanes in urban areas is beneficial because bicycling reduces traffic, accidents, and pollution and offers an inexpensive, safe, and healthy way to travel.

The author of the second passage opposes bike lanes, as this text reveals.

Bike lanes remove valuable space from already crowded inner-city streets. Urban areas already suffer from traffic and pedestrian congestion, and such overcrowding is worsened by the introduction of legions of reckless bicyclists. Many bicyclists also ignore street signs, causing additional accidents with cars and people. Furthermore, parked bicycles clutter congested sidewalks, making many areas impassable. These problems far outweigh the benefits of bicycling. People who do not want to drive can hop on a bus or subway and gain most of the benefits of bicycling without taking up precious space on the roads.

We can use several keywords to summarize this argument: bike lanes, urban, space, crowding, accidents, congested sidewalks, problems, buses, and subways. Combining this information leads to the following summary.

Placing bike lanes in urban areas is problematic because bicycles take up valuable space, create additional crowding, cause accidents, and congest sidewalks. Bike lanes can also be replaced with better alternatives, such as buses and subways.

Having summarized the passages, we can practice synthesizing by combining the two summaries and drawing a conclusion.

• In the first passage, the author argues that placing bike lanes in urban areas is beneficial because bicycling reduces traffic, accidents, and pollution and offers an inexpensive, safe, and healthy way to travel.
• Synthesis: These opposing viewpoints demonstrate that while bike lanes encourage a healthy, safe, and low-cost way to travel in cities, they also cause problems that need to be addressed through better urban planning.

The synthesis statement fuses the two passages by combining and comparing the two summaries and then drawing a conclusion that raises a new idea about the need for better urban planning to support bicycling.

Using a Matrix Tool to Synthesize

When exploring the connections among various sources for an essay, you might also decide to use a matrix tool to create a visual representation of source relationships. When using this type of tool, a writer groups common themes, arguments, or points raised in sources in tabular fashion to facilitate synthesis. Table 2 is an example of a synthesis matrix.

Table 2. A matrix tool to facilitate synthesis

When using a matrix tool, it is vital to consider your own thoughts regarding groupings in order to encourage synthesis, as the right column of the figure indicates.

Signaling Synthesis in an Essay

When synthesizing ideas in an essay, you can help readers understand how they connect by using sentence structures that signal relationships. Bruce and Gagich (2018, p. 93-94) explain that these sentence structures oftentimes point to a writer’s agreement or disagreement with sources, although you can also use them to discuss patterns of thinking, errors in logic, omission of points, or other matters that add to the research conversation. The textbook authors provide examples of sentence structure templates (adapted below) that can be used to establish synthesis.

• Source A asserts…Source B agrees when stating…
• According to sources A and B…
• The combined conclusions of sources A and B seem to indicate that…
• The evidence shows that…
• Source A is correct that…However, source B’s point that…is also valid.
• Source A makes a convincing case when she argues…
• I agree with source A’s conclusion that…
• Source A asserts that…, while source B offers a different perspective by…
• Sources A and B disagree regarding…
• Contrary to what source A has argued, my view is that…
• I argue that X is the best option even though source B proposes a different solution.
• I would like to offer several objections to the opinions expressed by source A…
• While source B makes a strong argument, I would disagree with…because…
• Instead of focusing on…as source A does, source B emphasizes…
• While most of the experts on X see…as the primary cause of…, only source A acknowledges that there may be other…causes.
• When I began researching topic X, I expected to find…To my surprise, neither source A, B, nor C address this reason, which leads me to believe that…
• Because source A is an expert in the field of X, most others writing about X accede to A’s authority, but a closer examination of A reveals an important omission about X.

These templates demonstrate how you can weave together source information with your own thoughts to create new ideas about a topic.

Although synthesis is critical to developing an effective essay, you will also regularly call upon the skill when producing other types of writing assignments as well.

Formatting an Essay

As with any other type of document you write, design an essay with the principle of consistency in mind so that readers can concentrate on its content rather than on formatting variations. When producing an essay, use double spacing throughout, one-inch margins, and indentation to signal the beginnings of new paragraphs, unless you are told otherwise. This list, adapted from Lambert (2019, paras. 4-8), indicates other ways to stay consistent with design.

• Make sure your font and type size is the same throughout the entire paper. If you opt to use different fonts or type sizes for headings and body text, employ this design decision consistently.
• Use the same style bullet points throughout lists in the paper. Remember that numbers and letters indicate rank or sequence, whereas bullets do not.
• Design lists in a consistent manner. In general, capitalize the first letter of the first word in a list, and use punctuation at the end of full-sentence list items.
• Format all same-level headings the same way, using uniform design choices (bold or italic lettering), standardized positioning (center or left alignment), and a consistent pattern of capitalization.
• Apply the design principle of repetition when implementing color. If you decide to employ color in visuals, aim to use the same or a similar color in more than one visual.

Keep in mind that certain formatting conventions (e.g., heading design and placement) are associated with documentation styles. The “Reporting Research Outcomes” chapter of this textbook provides specific guidance on formatting documents using APA (American Psychological Association) style.

Developing an Essay Title

An essay’s title offers insight into the accompanying text’s direction, purpose, and content, so devise a precise title that is particular to the paper you are developing and is clearly written with an envisioned audience in mind. Implementing this piece of advice may mean fully drafting the essay before composing its title.

To elaborate on the previous paragraph while adapting advice provided by the Sweetland Center for Writing, University of Michigan (2020b, paras. 5, 11-16), readers typically find titles like “Essay One,” “Society and its Many Problems,” “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words,” and “Technical Writing Assignment Two” unhelpful. These types of titles are simply too general to provide any needed context. To avoid such titles, think carefully about the essay’s thesis, research, and implications, and identify keywords that succinctly encapsulate these. Imagine, for instance, that you are writing an essay about animal behavior. You have a particular species to study, conduct relevant research, and have conclusions to offer. Here is your first attempt at an essay title: “Monkey Behavior.”  This title says nothing about the kind of monkey or its distinctive behavior and does little to attract or inform the reader. Your second attempt is a little better: “The Effects of Sugar on Monkey Behavior.”  This title is clearer and somewhat amusing. Regardless, it still does not offer many specifics or include key terms from the paper. Readers can already conjecture that sugar would have some effect on monkey behavior, so the title needs to be markedly more precise. Here is a revised version: “Sugar Stimulates Intensity of Tail-Twitch Social Behavior in Panamanian Monkeys.”  This title contains specific terms, includes a clear location, and provides an explicit claim—information the reader can use to immediately identify the paper’s focus.

Developing Essay Headings

Create specific and informative headings for essay sections since headings signal a paper’s organization and scope and help readers follow the text’s development. So, rather than using the vague Body as a heading, divide the body section of the paper into segments organized by the main points covered in paragraphs, which should all relate back to the paper’s thesis statement, and give the sections explanatory headings. By reading an essay’s explanatory headings, the reader should be able to discern the general progression of the piece and what the essay sections cover.

Revising an Essay

Like any quality piece of extended writing, an essay requires time and effort to prepare, and revision is a key step in the composition process. Revision is most effectively completed in stages: a writer begins the process by looking for big-picture issues that might affect an essay’s coherent construction, then considers mid-level issues that can impact paragraph development, and finishes by checking for sentence-level errors that can influence reader understanding. The following list provides guiding questions that can be used during each stage of revision.

• Do you have a clear thesis? Do you know what idea or perspective you want the audience to understand upon reading your essay?
• Is your essay well organized?
• Is each paragraph a building block in your essay: does it explain or support your thesis?
• Does the essay need a different shape? Do parts need to be moved?
• Do you fully explain and illustrate the main ideas of your paper?
• Does your introduction grab the reader’s interest?
• Does your conclusion leave the reader with an understanding of your point of view?
• What is your paper’s strength? What is its weakness?
• Does each paragraph contain solid and specific information, vivid description, or examples that illustrate the point you are making?
• Can you add other facts, quotations, paraphrases, examples, or descriptions to more clearly illustrate or provide evidence for the points you are making?
• Can you delete any sentences, words, descriptions, or information because they may confuse or tire the reader?
• Are your paragraphs in the right order?
• Does each paragraph explore one main idea?
• Do you use clear transitions so the reader can follow your thinking?
• Do any of your paragraphs contain redundancies that can be deleted?
• Have you been consistent in your use of tense?
• Do your pronouns agree with their antecedents (referents)?
• Have you accurately and effectively used punctuation?
• Do you rely on strong verbs and nouns to enhance descriptions and build clear sentences?
• Are your words as accurate as possible?
• Do you define any technical or unusual terms that readers may not know?
• Can you delete any extra words from your sentences?
• Have you avoided clichés and slang?
• Do you vary your sentence structures?
• Have you accurately presented facts?
• If you are writing an academic essay, have you tried to be objective in your evidence and tone?
• If you are writing a personal essay, have you used a lively narrative voice?
• Have you spellchecked your paper?
• Have you ethically incorporated source material by effectively quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing it?
• Have you consistently cited and referenced source information using a standard documentation style?

Although a draft paper represents an important milestone in a writing project, a draft typically needs considerable revision and refinement before it is ready for submission. Figure 9, an essay extract reproduced courtesy of Excelsior Online Writing Lab (2020d, “Rough Draft Example”), illustrates this point.

Figure 9. The revising process at work in an essay extract

Think of revising as a recursive activity, meaning that you may proceed through the previously listed revision stages multiple times during an essay’s development.

In addition to revising a paper in stages using the prompt questions listed, you may also have the opportunity to revise an essay based on peer feedback. Peer review sessions offer valuable chances to find out what others think of your writing and what suggestions they can contribute to help you during revision; the sessions also give you the chance to supply constructive feedback on your classmates’ writing—a vital skill you will need in the workplace. When supplying constructive criticism, identify what needs to be changed in a paper, why it needs to be changed, and how it can be changed. Alternatively, highlight what works well in a paper, why this is the case, and how the positive aspect affects you, the reader. Figure 10, a multipage handout produced by the Writing and Communication Centre, University of Waterloo (n.d.b), offers further peer review advice and a feedback template that can be used during peer review sessions to help ensure they are maximally productive.

Have you ever participated in a peer revision session before?  What did you think of it?  What do you think of the peer review advice presented in the handout?

Peer Review Theory and Practice

Peer review is one of a number of revision and proofreading strategies available to you. While there are many ways to structure peer review sessions, at its core, this technique involves soliciting feedback on one or more aspects of your writing from classmates or colleagues.

Peer Review: Purpose and Scope

While peer review has the obvious benefit of getting feedback on your writing, it also has benefits for the person doing the reviewing:

• We become better writers by being diligent peer reviewers
• We learn good writing habits by writing often and by reading the writing of others
• Giving feedback requires us to think carefully – not only about what we think about someone’s writing, but also about how writing is constructed and why we are making specific suggestions.

It is up to individual peer review groups to determine what aspects of writing a given session (or series of sessions) will look at. Broadly speaking, the following aspects of writing are the ones that you could potentially focus on:

• Content : arguments, analysis, logic, evidence
• Structure : organization, transitions, connections
• Style : tone, word choice, formality
• Mechanics : punctuation, sentence structure, spelling

General Tip :Avoid the urge to focus initially or primarily on mechanics. The revision and proofreading process will be more effective when you focus on higher-order concerns (content and structure) first and lower-order concerns (style and mechanics) second. See our handouts on revision and proofreading for more strategies that you can use.

Done correctly, the peer review process is a social, productive, and engaging way of participating in your discipline’s community of practice. However, though some instructors or supervisors will encourage their students to work together in a peer review process, others may require that projects be completed independently. In order to avoid any issues around academic integrity , make sure to consult with your instructor or supervisor before engaging in peer review.

Peer Review: Spaces

There are lots of spaces available for conducting peer review, including the following:

Face-to-Face

• Coffee shop
• Someone’s home
• Google Hangouts
• Google Docs

Peer Review: Practice

Steps in peer review.

• Write notes for your reviewer on the peer review sheet and exchange papers. If you are not using a peer review sheet, discuss the specific questions or concerns that you’d like your reviewer to pay attention to.
• Read actively and critically . Make notes in the margins of the paper or in the track changes feature if using Word. If using a review sheet, make general notes there, too.
• Return the paper (and the review sheet, if you used one) to the original writer; discuss the feedback and create an action plan for revision and proofreading.

Sample Peer Review Worksheet

Feel free to adapt the templates of these peer review worksheets to suit your needs Printable version of Peer Review Worksheet  (PDF) Fillable Peer Review Marking form (PDF)

Peer Review Marking Sheet

Name of Writer:

Name of Reviewer:

Notes from the writer to the reviewer:

Aspect of Writing Being Reviewed: Content / Structure / Style / Mechanics

Additional comments on writing :

Post-Review Discussion

Action Plan: How will you (the writer) incorporate the suggestions of your reviewer into your edits? What steps will you take during the editing process? Be specific:

  Figure 10. Peer review guidance and a feedback template

  Notice that the final procedure on the handout asks you to specify how you will use peer comments to revise your paper, a crucial step when working with feedback.

Drawing the Chapter to a Close

Take the advice in this chapter into account when preparing an essay to persuasively communicate with readers.

Activity A: Producing a Reverse Outline and Answering Questions about an Essay

This chapter discusses revising in stages and peer reviewing as means to facilitate the revision process. A reverse outline offers another technique that can be used to revise an essay, as the following handout, adapted from Student Academic Success Services, Queen’s University (2018c), describes.

Reverse Outline

Practice using the reverse outline technique with the sample proposal essay provided on upcoming pages (Hanna, 2020, as cited in Excelsior Online Writing Lab, 2020e, “Sample Essay”). The essay argues for streamlining the recycling infrastructure on a college campus to encourage recycling.

Sample Essay

After reading the proposal essay, also answer the following questions about it. Be prepared to share your answers in class.

• In what way does the author create a narrowly defined focus for the essay?
• Does the author provide sufficient coverage of her topic in the paper? How?
• Identify the introduction, body, and conclusion sections of the essay. Are they logically structured and easy to follow? What makes them so?
• A proposal aims to persuade readers. What does the author do to try to persuade you in her essay?
• What do you think about the evidence the writer uses? For instance, is it accurate, trustworthy, relevant, sufficient, and timely?
• How does the writer incorporate source evidence into the essay? Could her technique be improved in any way?  If so, how?
• Where do you detect synthesis in the essay?
• What do you think of the essay’s formatting? Could it be improved in some way?
• Do you think the writer has put sufficient effort into revision? What makes you think so?
• Imagine you are giving constructive criticism to the author during a peer review session. Identify one thing that needs to be changed in the paper, why it needs to be changed, and how it can be changed. In addition, name one thing that works well in the paper, why this is the case, and how the positive aspect affects you, the reader.

  Activity B: Reading and Answering Questions about an Essay Focused on Source Credibility

Read Warrington et al.’s (2020) essay entitled “Assessing Source Credibility for Crafting a Well-Informed Argument” located at https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/writingspaces3/warrington.pdf . To reflect on the essay and its relevance to your own academic work, answer the five questions starting on page 202 of the text. Be prepared to talk about your answers in class.

Activity C: Applying the Ideas Discussed in the Essay to a Text

Working with a group of classmates, apply the credibility questions Warrington et al. discuss in their essay to the journal article “Fish Tales: Combatting Fake Science in Popular Media” (Thaler & Shiffman, 2015), which is available at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0964569115000903 . Afterwards, share your group’s determination about the article’s credibility with the whole class during a brief informal presentation. This activity is adapted from Warrington et al. (2020, p. 203).

Academic Writing Help Centre, Student Academic Success Service, University of Ottawa. (2016a). Body . License: CC-BY 4.0 . https://sass.uottawa.ca/sites/sass.uottawa.ca/files/awhc-body.pdf

Academic Writing Help Centre, Student Academic Success Service, University of Ottawa. (2016b). Conclusion . License: CC-BY 4.0 . https://sass.uottawa.ca/sites/sass.uottawa.ca/files/awhc-conclusion.pdf

Academic Writing Help Centre, Student Academic Success Service, University of Ottawa. (2016c). Introduction .  License: CC-BY 4.0 .   https://sass.uottawa.ca/sites/sass.uottawa.ca/files/awhc-introduction.pdf

Bruce, Y., & Gagich, M. (2018). Synthesizing in your writing . In M. Gagich, E. Zickel, A. Lloyd, C. Morgan, J. Lanning, R. Mustafa, S.M. Lacy, W. Breeze, & Y. Bruce , In practice: A guide to rhetoric, genre, and success in first-year writing (pp. 93-94). MSL Academic Endeavors.   License: CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0.  https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/csu-fyw-rhetoric/

Excelsior Online Writing Lab. (2020a). Revising stage 1: Seeing the big picture . License: CC-BY 4.0 . https://owl.excelsior.edu/writing-process/revising-and-editing/revising-and-editing-revising-stage-1/

Excelsior Online Writing Lab. (2020b). Revising stage 2: Mid-view . License: CC-BY 4.0 . https://owl.excelsior.edu/writing-process/revising-and-editing/revising-and-editing-revising-stage-2/

Excelsior Online Writing Lab. (2020c). Revising stage 3: Editing up close . License: CC-BY 4.0 . https://owl.excelsior.edu/writing-process/revising-and-editing/revising-and-editing-revising-stage-3/

Excelsior Online Writing Lab. (2020d). Rough drafts . License: CC-BY 4.0 .   https://owl.excelsior.edu/writing-process/essay-writing/essay-writing-rough-drafts/

Excelsior Online Writing Lab. (2020e). Sample proposal assignment . License: CC-BY 4.0 . https://owl.excelsior.edu/argument-and-critical-thinking/argumentative-purposes/argumentative-purposes-sample-proposal-argument/

Excelsior Online Writing Lab. (2020f). Synthesizing what you read [Video transcript]. License: CC-BY 4.0.   https://owl.excelsior.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/02/SynthesizingTranscript2019.pdf

George Mason University Writing Center. (2017). Reducing informality in academic writing .  https://writingcenter.gmu.edu/guides/reducing-informality-in-academic-writing

Lambert, R. (2019). Writing with consistency . Colorado School of Mines Writing Center. License: CC-BY-NC 4.0 .  https://www.mines.edu/otcc/wp-content/uploads/sites/303/2019/12/OTCCConsistencyLesson.pdf

Last, S., & Neveu, C. (2019). Appendix C: Integrating source evidence into your writing. In S.    Last, Technical writing essentials: Introduction to professional communications in the technical fields (pp. 235-242). University of Victoria. License: CC-BY 4.0 .  https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/technicalwriting/

McKeever, R. (n.d.a). Post-truth: Evaluating sources . Yuba College Writing and Language Development Center. License: CC-BY-NC 4.0.  https://yc.yccd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/EvalSourcesPostTruthAccessibleMarch2019.pdf

McKeever, R. (n.d.b). The quote “sandwich.” Yuba College Writing and Language Development Center. License: CC-BY-NC 4.0.  https://yc.yccd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/QuoteSandwich.pdf

McKeever, R. (n.d.c). Thesis statements . Yuba College Writing and Language Development Center.  License: CC-BY-NC 4.0.  https://yc.yccd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ThesisStatementAccessibleFebruary2020.pdf

Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre, University of Toronto Mississauga. (n.d.). Six effective tips to write a summary . License: CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 . https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/asc/sites/files/asc/public/shared/pdf/tip_sheets_writing/Summary_6Tips_web_v1.pdf

Schall, J. (2014). Essays and term papers: Effective technical writing in the information age . Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. License: CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0 .  https://www.e-education.psu.edu/styleforstudents/c6_p13.html

Student Academic Success Services, Queen’s University. (2018a). Developing the “what”: Effective topic sentences . License: CC-BY-NC-SA 2.5 .  https://sass.queensu.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Developing-a-Topic-Sentence.pdf

Student Academic Success Services, Queen’s University. (2018b). Organizing the body of an essay . License: CC-BY-NC-SA 2.5 .  https://sass.queensu.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Process-Essay-Body-Organization.pdf

Student Academic Success Services, Queen’s University. (2018c). The reverse outline . License: CC-BY-NC-SA 2.5 .  https://sass.queensu.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/The-Reverse-Outline.pdf

Sweetland Center for Writing, University of Michigan. (2020a). How can I create a strong thesis . License: CC-BY-NC-SA. https://lsa.umich.edu/sweetland/undergraduates/writing-guides/how-can-i-create-a-stronger-thesis.html

Sweetland Center for Writing, University of Michigan. (2020b). How do I write a great title for my academic essay? License: CC-BY-NC-SA.   https://lsa.umich.edu/sweetland/undergraduates/writing-guides/how-do-i-write-a-great-title-.html

Thaler, A.D., & Shiffman, D. (2015). Fish tales: Combating fake science in popular media. Ocean & Coastal Management, 115 , 88-91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2015.04.005

Warrington, K., Kovalyova, N., & King, C. (2020). Assessing source credibility for crafting a well-informed argument. In D. Driscoll, M. Stewart, & M. Vetter (Eds.), Writing spaces: Readings on writing (Vol. 3, pp. 189-203). Parlor Press. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 .  https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/writingspaces3/warrington.pdf

Webber, N.R. (2018). Activity: Source evaluation scorecard. Information Literacy, 19 . License: CC-BY 4.0 .  https://digscholarship.unco.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=infolit

Writing and Communication Centre, University of Waterloo. (n.d.a). Develop and narrow a topic . License: CC-BY-SA 4.0 . https://uwaterloo.ca/writing-and-communication-centre/sites/ca.writing-and-communication-centre/files/uploads/files/narrow_your_topic.pdf

Writing and Communication Centre, University of Waterloo. (n.d.b). Peer review: Theory and practice . License: CC-BY-SA 4.0 . https://uwaterloo.ca/writing-and-communication-centre/sites/ca.writing-and-communication-centre/files/uploads/files/peer_review.pdf

Writing and Communication Centre, University of Waterloo. (n.d.c). Thesis statements . License: CC-BY-SA 4.0 . https://uwaterloo.ca/writing-and-communication-centre/sites/ca.writing-and-communication-centre/files/uploads/files/thesis_statements.pdf

Mindful Technical Writing Copyright © 2020 by Dawn Atkinson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Technical Essays & Help Writing a Technical Report

(Updated on September 28, 2023)

T here are many courses for which a student may have to complete a technical essay.  However, most students will have to write technical essays for mainly science-oriented courses, such as physics, mathematics , computer science, or similar.  A technical essay is a very distinct kind of assignment that requires students to not only understand how a particular "thing" works/operates/functions, but also be able to clearly and subjectively relay that knowledge to the reader.

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A technical essay combines hard facts with a point-of-view.  Traditionally, essays are short, informal academic documents that allow students to express their opinions or points-of-view on a topic.  However, technical writing is a formal class of writing that's very straightforward.  When a student completes a technical document, he/she will avoid using adjectives and subjective viewpoints.  Technical documents may include manuals and instructions, for example.  Therefore, to combine technical writing with essay writing can be a challenge for many learners—and it's something that many learners have to practice in order to perfect.

Many technical essays are effective because they not only explain how to do something, but they help readers to understand the significance of their actions.  Therefore, if a student is completing a technical essay about clearing a gooseneck pipe, he/she may want to also provide information about how pipes can get clogged, which materials work best to unclog them, how an entire piping system works with gases, and more.

While it may be difficult for many learners to understand how to write technical essays, they should do their best to understand what elements make a technical essay different from other types of academic works.  While many other college works simply provide an opinion or point-of-view on a topic, a technical essay will provide instructions—or an in-depth explanation—of a topic, as well as the context of the topic.  Therefore, technical essays provide supporting material that relates to guidelines or instructions.

How to Write a Technical Report

W riting a technical report, which is also referred to as a "scientific report," involves completing a concise and clear report to convey technical information to the reader.  Remember, the primary purpose of a technical report is to share information.  Therefore, it should be as clear and easy to understand as possible.  At the same time, you should strive to make the report entertaining and stimulating so the reader isn't bored while reading it.  If you're unable to be both entertaining and informative, however, you should make being informative your top priority.

In order to guarantee that your technical report is informative you'll need to do a great deal of planning before you begin work.  In order to complete the pre-writing stage, you must first determine what the report will be about.  You will then arrange the key facts in a logical order that makes it easy for the reader to scan through the report if necessary.  At the same time, you should try to include the most important facts at the beginning of the technical report.  This way, the main ideas can be conveyed with just a few minutes of reading.

In addition to determining what you'll be writing about, you need to decide who your target audience will be.  The amount of explanation you'll need to include in your technical report will be dependent upon your intended audience.  If you're writing for other experts in the field, for example, you might not need to explain many things in your work because your readers will already understand much of the information you're sharing.

Finally, you need to determine how long your technical reports need to be.  If you're writing the technical report for a class, this may have already been decided for you.  If not, you'll need to determine the length on your own.  Generally, it's actually more difficult to complete a shorter report than a long one.  This is because you'll need to be far more organized with a shorter technical report than with a longer one.

Once you're ready to write the report, your first section will be the introduction while the last section is the conclusion.  The conclusion should serve to answer the questions that you posed in your introduction.  Each of the sections, including the introduction and the conclusion, should be numbered.

Throughout the body of your technical report, you should refer often to the work that has been completed by other individuals in the field.  In addition, you shouldn't use informal language .  Rather, your technical report should be formal in nature and use impersonal language.  All of the factual materials and measurements included within the document should also be kept separate from interpretations and opinions included.

All of the sources used in the creation of the technical report must be properly cited.  After the report is completed, be sure to read through the report again in order to check for grammatical errors, punctuation errors, and errors in logic and flow.

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Technical Writing vs. Essay Writing

Major variations of writing in both styles, beyond common writing distinctions, key challenges, how is technical writing different from writing an essay.

• Read in 07 mins
• 14-Nov-2023

When we think of writing, we often connect it with articles, blogs or essays. But do you know there are many different styles and formats to consider while writing content? The two most popular writing types we are going to discuss here are technical writing and essay writing. Both of the styles involve the use of words and language to communicate ideas and information to a specific audience.

However, there are some key differences between the two styles that set them totally apart. Understanding these differences can help identify which approach is best suited for your particular needs. Through this article, we will explore how technical writing is different from writing an essay, their characteristics, as well as tips on how to excel in each style.

Technical writing and essay writing are two interesting styles of writing that have their unique characteristics and purposes for a diverse audience. So, whether you're a student working on an academic paper or a professional looking to communicate complex ideas, read on to discover the right way!

Technical writing focuses on providing clear and straightforward informative content to help readers understand complicated concepts. At the same time, essay writing aims to convince and engage readers with well-developed arguments and analysis. Understanding the difference between the two styles can help you figure out which approach is right for you.

For example , if you were writing a technical manual on how to assemble a computer, you would use technical writing to provide step-by-step instructions with clear diagrams and explanations. On the other hand, if you were writing an essay on the benefits of renewable energy, you would use essay writing to present compelling arguments supported by evidence and expert opinions.

Technical writing is highly objective and focuses on practicality and efficiency, aiming to convey information in a concise and precise manner. It is often used in fields such as engineering, technology, and science. Essay writing is more subjective and allows for the expression of personal opinions and interpretations. It is commonly employed in academic settings and aims to persuade and engage readers through effective rhetoric and logical reasoning.

Understanding the appropriate style for your purpose can greatly enhance the effectiveness of your writing and ensure that your intended message reaches and resonates with your target audience.

Four major variations of writing can be found in both technical and essay writing styles.

Formality and Tone

• Technical Writing: The language in this style is straightforward and specific. It resembles a set of instructions for assembling structured content, avoiding unnecessary details, and focusing on clarity.
• Essay Composition: Now consider it as a letter to a friend. It's informal, like a casual chat. The tone can be personal, expressing emotions and opinions freely. An essay weaves a narrative, allowing the writer's voice to shine through.

Use of Jargon

• Technical Writing: It often includes industry-specific terms and jargon. The goal is to communicate efficiently within a particular field, assuming a level of knowledge among the readers.
• Essay Composition: Essays generally avoid excessive jargon, opting for easy and accessible language. The emphasis is on connecting with a broader audience, making the content relatable and engaging.

Structural Framework

• Technical Writing: Technical documents follow a structured and logical format, just like maps. Whether it's a manual or a report, the information is organized systematically, allowing readers to navigate with ease.
• Essay Composition: Essays have a more flexible structure. While they may have an introduction, body, and conclusion, the content flows naturally, allowing for creativity and exploration of ideas.

Audience Considerations

• Technical Writing: Technical writing is tailored to a specific audience with a particular knowledge base. It assumes the readers have a certain level of expertise in the subject matter.
• Essay Composition: Essays adapt to various readerships, considering a broader spectrum of backgrounds and interests. The goal is to engage and resonate with a diverse group of readers.

Technical writing and essay writing both require solid skills in writing along with the ability to communicate information effectively. Let us understand some unexplored distinctions that can help writers tailor their approach and achieve their intended goals.

Intent of Communication

• Technical writing mainly serves a practical purpose. It aims to express information, focusing on delivering instructions or presenting facts. The focus here is on providing guidance or documentation for a specific task or process.
• Essay writing takes a more exploratory route. Essays are a platform for expressing ideas, opinions, and emotions. They invite readers to delve into the writer's thoughts, often without a predetermined practical outcome.

Emotional Engagement

• Technical writing is more objective and factual. The major goal is the transmission of information with minimal emotional engagement or personal biases.
• Essay writing encourages emotional connection. Essays often involve personal reflections, storytelling, or persuasive elements that light up emotions and relate with the reader on a more personal level.

Flexibility in Structure

• Technical writing follows a structured and standardized format. Whether it's a manual or a report, our technical writing services follow a predetermined framework to ensure clarity and consistency.
• Essay writing embraces a more flexible structure. It allows for creativity in the organization, enabling writers to experiment with different formats to suit the content and convey ideas effectively.

Language Complexity

• Technical writing prioritizes clarity over literary flair. The language used is straightforward, avoiding unnecessary complexity. The focus is on delivering information comprehensively to a specific audience.
• Essay writing celebrates the beauty of language. Essays often employ a more varied and expressive vocabulary, allowing writers to craft sentences that convey not only information but also evoke a particular atmosphere or emotion.

Objective & Subjective Evaluation

• Technical writing is subject to objective evaluation. Technical documents are assessed based on accuracy, clarity, and adherence to predefined standards. Success is measured by how effectively it fulfills its intended purpose.
• Essay writing involves subjective evaluation. The assessment of an essay includes factors such as creativity, originality, and the ability to engage the reader emotionally. Success is often measured by the impact on the reader's perspective.

Facing challenges is a natural part of life, and in various aspects, understanding the key challenges helps us find effective solutions. Here are some informative pointers illustrating key challenges to shed light on these hurdles:

Resource Limitations

Limited budgets and resources constrain growth and innovation. These limitations can hinder the ability to implement new ideas and strategies. In order to succeed in writing an impactful essay, it is important to incorporate factors such as creativity, originality, and the ability to engage the reader emotionally. However, one must also navigate technical communication hurdles and find a balance between creativity and coherence in the narrative.

Adapting to Change

Change is constant, but coping with it can be not easy. It requires individuals and organizations to be flexible and open-minded, willing to embrace new ideas and approaches. Adapting to change also involves overcoming resistance and fear of the unknown, as well as continuously learning and evolving to stay relevant in a rapidly changing world.

Market Competition

Staying competitive in a crowded market is a perpetual struggle. Companies must innovate and differentiate themselves to stand out from their competitors regularly. It involves understanding customer needs and preferences, conducting market research, and developing unique value propositions.

Regulatory Compliance

Following through complex regulations requires ongoing effort. Businesses must stay updated on changes in regulations, ensure their operations comply, and allocate resources to implement necessary changes. It may involve hiring legal experts or consultants to navigate the complexities of regulatory requirements and mitigate potential risks.

Talent Acquisition and Retention

Attracting and retaining skilled employees is a continuous battle. Businesses must develop effective recruitment strategies, offer competing remuneration packages, and develop a positive work environment to attract top talent. Additionally, implementing employee retention programs and providing opportunities for growth and development can help retain skilled employees and reduce turnover rates.

Technical writing and essays are distinct but equally valuable. In this guide, we have understood how technical writing is different from writing an essay. While technical writing ensures precision in conveying information, essays bring a personal touch, enriching the world of words with creativity.

As technical writing excels at delivering information with precision, essays unfold as a canvas for personal expression and exploration of ideas. Recognizing these differences empowers writers to choose the most suitable form based on their communication objectives and the nature of the content.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary has extensive experience of over 5 years in writing on a wide range of topics, including healthcare, technology, science, and business. She is highly knowledgeable and skilled in researching and crafting accurate, well-structured, and engaging content. Mary is a reliable and professional writer who is always willing to go the extra mile to ensure her clients are satisfied with her work. She is committed to delivering quality content on time and within budget.

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Technical Writing vs. Essay Writing: Differences & Similarities

Technical writing and essay writing are critical and valuable skills to have in any career, but they can be very different. If you are a writer who wants to learn more about technical writing and essay writing, then you have come to the right place.

Technical writing is one of the most important aspects of any business. Whether you are writing a resume or proposal, a product description, a white paper, a case study, an instruction manual, or any other document, it must be written well.

In contrast, an essay is a piece of writing that discusses an issue or topic, including a research paper, a business proposal, a term paper, or a personal essay. Technical writing is different from essay writing, but there are some similarities that you should be aware of before you start.

In this article, we compare the differences between technical writing and essay writing and explain how these two types of writing are different but also similar.

Also read: How to Create a Strong Brand Identity Through Writing

📖 Table of Contents

What is Technical Writing?

Technical writing is a subset of academic writing that focuses on the technical aspects of a particular field; it requires the writer to focus on a specific topic or subject and write about it in a specific way. It is a specialized form of writing that involves using specific skills and techniques.

Technical writing includes all forms that require specialized vocabulary and specialized language to convey information. The writer must also understand the subject to write about it.

The content of technical writing is usually focused on a particular subject to convey information to the reader. The writer has to consider the audience, the context, and the purpose of the document. The audience for technical writing is diverse, and technical writers must be able to communicate effectively across a wide range of audiences.

It is generally used for documentation , instructional design, and other documents requiring clear and concise communication. This includes the definition, explanation, and analysis of concepts and ideas. Software engineers, technical writers, and product managers often use technical writing.

Some common types of Technical Writing are:

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• Medical and Scientific Papers.
• User Manuals and Assistance Guides.
• Books and guides by Technical Writers.
• Assembly Manuals.
• Technical Documents, Reviews, and Reports.

What is Essay Writing?

Essay writing is a widespread type of writing. It is usually used to describe or explain a particular topic. The main idea of an essay is to discuss a topic and give your opinion. An essay is different from a story because it usually has more than one point. Essays are often used to write about what people believe and why they believe it.

They are also often used to write about personal experiences. It is not just about telling a story. An essay also includes a body paragraph that explains the reasons for your opinion. In an essay, you can use different kinds of sentences to express your opinion. You can use a question sentence to start your essay.

Essays are usually concise and are written in the third person. You should always do some research before you start writing your essay. This is because it is essential to know what you are talking about. If you don’t know what you are talking about, then you might not be able to express yourself adequately. You should always use the correct vocabulary and grammar to ensure that you can express yourself well.

You may think that essay writing is not a hard thing to do, but there are many things you need to know before you start writing your essay. If you are unsure how to start your essay, You can take essay help from online sites, and it is always advised to learn these skills at the earliest possible time. They can help you write an essay that is good and original.

A good essay starts with an introduction and includes three parts: a body (the main body), a conclusion, and a reference list. An introduction introduces the topic and states your opinion about it. It also provides the reasons for your opinion. A body explains your opinion, often by providing evidence for it. A conclusion sums up your points. It is usually written in the first person and ends in a question.

There are many types of essays. Some common types of Essay Writing are:

Argumentative: This type of essay is all about convincing your reader. Persuasive: This type of essay is all about persuading your reader. Narrative: This type of essay is all about telling a story. Explanation: This type of essay is all about explaining a concept. Description: This type of essay is all about describing something.

Technical Writing vs Essay Writing: The Differences

While both types of writing require research and a high level of organization, there are many critical differences between the two. When it comes to technical writing, there’s a lot of confusion about it. On the one hand, it’s often lumped in with “technical writing”, which is a fancy way of saying “writing”.

On the other hand, it’s often confused with “essay writing”, a more academic-sounding word that means “a piece of writing that discusses a specific topic or argument.” In other words, technical writing focuses on describing a specific topic, while essays focus on providing a point of view.

In technical writing, you’re writing about a topic or field of study that you are already familiar with. You’re writing about a topic you’ve studied before, and you’re writing about a topic you’ve written about in the past.

In essay writing, you’re writing about a topic or field of study that you’re unfamiliar with. You’re writing about a topic you haven’t studied before, and you’re writing about a topic you have never written about before.

• Technical writing tends to be more formal, while essay writing is more informal.
• Technical writing involves a lot of facts and figures, while essay writing tends to be more opinion based.
• Technical writing is more structured and organized, while essay writing is more open-ended and free-flowing.
• Technical writing tends to be less personal than essay writing.
• Technical writing tends to be more factual and objective, while essay writing is more subjective and personal.

Technical Writing vs Essay Writing: The Similarities

While there are some similarities between technical writing and essay writing, they are very different in terms of the purpose they serve and how they are used.

Both of them require the same time and effort. Both technical writing and essay writing are time-consuming processes. This is because the skills are based on facts and figures. Hence, the only thing that matters is to write the content correctly.

Both these skills are based on facts and figures; hence the preparation of both of these are the same. Hence, it is always advisable to prepare the facts and figures in advance. However, in technical writing, it is necessary to be more organized.

Both of them need the same skills and knowledge. In technical writing, you need to have good writing skills. You need to be able to use proper grammar and spelling. Also, you need to be well-versed with technical jargon. In essay writing, you need to understand the concepts of the topics and be able to present your thoughts coherently.

Both technical writing and essay writing must be presented in different mediums.

Both of them need to be revised several times . Both technical writing and essay writing are required to be revised several times. The technical writers need to revise the written document for technical errors. Similarly, the essay writers need to revise the paper for grammatical and spelling mistakes.

Also read: 12 Best Writing Tools for Bloggers

The two main types of writing that students and businesses encounter are technical writing and essay writing. There are many misconceptions about technical writing and essay writing. It is essential to know the similarities and differences between these two skills.

Both technical writing and essay writing focus on a particular subject; however, technical writing requires a more in-depth understanding, whereas essay writing requires a more broad understanding. Both these skills require a considerable amount of time and effort.

It’s easy to confuse the two because they both use the same format. However, technical writing and essay writing differ in their purpose. Technical writing aims to provide accurate information about a product or service, while essay writing aims to prove a theory or a point of view.

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Technical Writing

Though it was already observed in times of Aristotle, technical writing only paved its way as a profession in World War II. Starting from solely catering instructions, it expanded its constituents to various documents used in the specialized areas. However, not everyone is capable of creating this, technical compositions also require writing skills in order to be crafted. Presuming that you possess that attribute, read through this article to hone your technical writing skills.

For the mere purpose of clarifying things beforehand, technical writing is not a document but an action and a routine. Moreover, the specialized composition is also a profession which can be done as a freelance writing work. Nevertheless, this type of composition can be applied in numerous papers but does not encompass all. For you to be educated further with the fundamentals of technical writing, here are some samples and templates you can use as your reference.

Report Writing

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Technical Content

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Technical Essay Writing

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Business Technical

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What Is Technical Writing?

In its conventional definition, technical writing is depicted as the practice or routine with regards to process documentation which is presumed to be constrained to manual-like materials as it were. All things examined, this description was changed and in the meantime, this sort of composing gained its milestones to the documentation of complex specialized duties. It moreover incorporates the majority of the procedures of composing that demands direction, instruction, or clarification of a specific subject in a specialized field.

Some documents that fall under technical writing include:

• Analysis report
• Product assembling instruction
• Report summary
• Executive summary

To see these samples, you may view our gathered writing examples in PDF in this article.

How to Write College Admission Essays?

A college admission essay or college application essay is a composition that is freely written by an academic candidate to be admitted to a college or university. This writing is commonly included as a segment of college admission measurements. Additionally, this type of essay is apart from academic ones because of its massive probable impact to its proponent. In this segment, we are going to teach you how to compose an essay that would enable you to study in your dream college. Read through to learn how to write one of these free writing examples .

• Know the point.  In writing your college admission essay, the first thing you should ponder about is to understand the main question asked. It would be easier for you to plan and compose your essay if you are a hundred percent certain that you already recognized the pieces of information needed by the institution.
• Think over it.  Once you already have seen the target, hit it with the ideas you have in your mind. This prewriting process is truly vital and challenging because, in this step, we aim to juice your brain out with creativity and practical thoughts. You may write the details you can think of, as many as you can.
• Craft an outline.  Considering that you already have the pieces of information to compose your essay, at this point, plan on how you will construct it. For you to do that, make an outline. An outline is a helpful tool in writing. This framework aids an author to organize his/her thoughts easily.
• Write the essay.  Following your outline, compose your essay. Do this on a computer or paper, depending on the instruction of the college admission. You don’t need to do this perfectly in its first blow. You can always do numerous revisions if needed.
• Proofread.  Before submitting your essay , remember that grammar, sentence construction and all other technical aspects make some difference in your essay’s rating. Hence, do proofreading.
• Submit the essay.  After all of your hard work; at last, it’s already time for you to pass your composition. Though it may sound really simple and easy-to-do, be careful still. In submitting your work, make sure to include your name, contact details, general admission email account, and ID number if you already have one. These pieces of information are vital because it makes your entry valid and recognizable. Nevertheless, do not forget that a poorly written essay will always be better than a nameless one.

Technical Paragraph Writing

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Technical Communication

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Writing Instructions

Technical Writing Letter

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Writing Resume

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Importance of Technical Writing

Technical writing is seen by numerous individuals to be basically a variety of composition but in fact, there are loads of advantages tailed in engaging yourself in this writing type. Here are some of the significance of technical writing that you might not have realized previously.

• Communication.  A technical composition is specialized in a particular field of discipline; hence, it is comprehensible that the terms and word choices used in a composition are well recognized by individuals in a circle of particularity. As a result, better communication in the applied area is then achieved.
• Support.  In technical writing, authors see to it that their composition suits their goals and recipient. Taking into account that investors always want to see their investment worth it, technical writers have some sort of edges in this matter. Technical writing has that feature of knowing the message’s encoder and apply the appropriate formality in the document.
• Money-saving.  Recall, technical writers need to know what they are writing. Consequently, it is more common to see a technical writer that could act out what he/she writes than a person who knows the application of a certain discipline that also knows how to write a specialized composition. For this reason, recruiting the former type of people indeed saves an institution office space and money.

These enumerated significances may sound absurd but viewing our technical writing templates and examples would surely enlight you of the hidden potentials that a specialized composition possess.

Ideas for Technical Writing

Technical writing widely covers various forms of application. This form of composition is utilized from engineering, culinary, education, and even to sciences and medical purposes. For you to have a broader understanding of what technical writing truly is, here are some productive topic ideas you can use too.

• How-to topics.  Considering that technical writing is originally written to guide and direct, this composition type is most evident in instructional materials. Nowadays, the internet has provided the crowd with a reference to various how-to articles to help them with their D-I-Ys. If you want to take part in this trend, make one now.
• Proposing topics.   Business proposals are also under technical writing; hence, if you want to suggest something, a document for this purpose applies technical writing as well.
• Press releasing topics.  Whether most people need it or not, a fresh and strangely cool product or service is something we are crazy for. With the help of the emergence of the internet,   showcasing one is now a lot easier and faster. Try it yourself.

Here are more topic ideas for your technical document; nonetheless, if you can’t relate to these, you can always see our gathered writing examples in doc.

• Descriptive topics
• Website ideas
• Case studies

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Creating Essay about Technical Education

A technical essay is a matter of effort and critical thinking. That is, you will not find the task to be easy. When you need to produce a great technical essay in English, you will first need to explore various technical essay topics. Then, you will use numerous quotations on technical education essay to create a perfect paper. When you are done gathering all necessary information, you will need to have at least one spare day per page. In other way, you will hardly manage to write more than one page per day. Therefore, if you have a 10-page technical essay waiting for you, be ready to spend at least 10-12 days to complete it.

Of course, when writing a technical essay, you will need to explore tons of literature. An average technical education essay will have between 1400 and 2000 words in it. It is not that much, given the amount of information you wish to include. Your technical writing essay must include only the most relevant information and support your argument and thesis.

When you study in a technical school, you will need to write at least one essay on importance of technical education. Most likely, this will be the first time you do it.

Please, take a look at our technical essay examples. If this is not what you need, do not hesitate to order your technical paper from us today.

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Impact of Media and Globalization on Gender Equality The world has been becoming progressively more integrated. The changes, which began with greater trade openness, are interpreted into increasing global economic integration and interdependence due to the fact that transnational movements of capital and people expedite, while information becomes even more accessible. Technological enhancements are dramatically […]

Hubble Space Telescope: Beyond the Naked Eye

It is a fascinating aspect of the human nature that things that mesmerize a human soul generally have their technological reflection in the ideas of the mind. One of the most unique minds of the nineteenth century has changed the whole perception of the universe. It was Edwin Powell Hubble (1889–1953) who found himself lost […]

Virtual Meeting

Today, the ability to communicate online makes a huge difference compared to the past. In fact, such a possibility opens a wide range of opportunities for the people worldwide. Such opportunities could be used in the major areas of human focus, in particular, personal and professional development. In other words, the virtual meeting is an […]

Modeling Approach for Hybrid Integration of Renewable Energy Sources with Vehicle-to-Grid Technology 14-13-02-0013

This also appears in sae international journal of electrified vehicles-v133-14ej.

This article presents a technical study on the integration of hybrid renewable energy sources (RES) with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, aiming to enhance energy efficiency, grid stability, and mitigating power imbalances. The growing adoption of RES and electric vehicles (EV) necessitates innovative solutions to mitigate intermittency and optimize resource utilization. The study’s primary objective is to design and analyze a hybrid distribution generation system encompassing solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind power stations, along with a conventional diesel generator, connected to the utility grid. A V2G system is strategically embedded within the microgrid to facilitate bidirectional power exchange between EV and the grid. Methodologically, MATLAB/Simulink ® 2021a is employed to simulate the system’s performance over one day. This research addresses a critical research gap in comprehensively evaluating the synergy between hybrid RES and V2G technology within a microgrid context. The study contributes by demonstrating the potential of EVs as dynamic energy storage units, effectively mitigating the intermittency of renewable energy (RE) and supporting grid stability. This is achieved by injecting or absorbing energy to address frequency deviation events and improve power flow based on demand needs and generated power from the source. The results highlight the capability of the V2G system to optimize energy flow, regulate grid frequency, and alleviate power imbalances. Main findings underscore the significant role of V2G in enhancing grid resilience and flexibility, especially during RE fluctuations and unexpected events. Moreover, the study underscores the feasibility of achieving sustainable energy goals through the coordinated operation of hybrid RES and V2G systems.

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