Engineering a Paper: The Structure is Already There
What does writing for an engineering major involve?
I interviewed a junior at Case to find his perspective about the issue.
I’m going to be honest: writing in regard to engineering does not seem like fun. When I think about engineering, the first thing that comes to mind is lab reports. Engineering is about conducting research and then writing a lab report about the data collected. After interviewing a fellow Case student, my suspicions were confirmed, but a new idea was presented to me. The writing itself is not the “point” of studying engineering. Instead, the experimentation, the lab work, and the knowledge gained are what make it worth studying. The lab reports are structured in order to keep data as organized as possible.
I interviewed Nick Magdziak, a junior at Case who is majoring in mechanical engineering. When asked about the kind of writing he completes for his major, he told me it was “…very technical.” He explained that the writing largely consists of lab reports, which are structured and “…don’t allow for any creativity.” The lack of creativity bothers Nick, but he told me that he understands it has no place in engineering. He explained that engineering writing needs to be structured and formal in order to allow ideas to be presented and analyzed more clearly.
The English Department of the University of Illinois at Chicago released a paper online that explains portfolio writing for engineers. One paragraph stated: “Written communication differs from oral communication in that writing freezes ideas... For engineers, written communication is vital since not only text, but also calculations, plots and figures need to be communicated in documents such as lab reports, progress reports, user manuals and journal articles. In most of these texts, the proper choice of language and format as well as the amount of detail and complexity can mean the difference between success and failure.”
Nick confirmed this assessment when I asked him about the importance of writing in engineering. He explained that although an engineering major’s writing is very structured, the content itself is determined by the student. The content is what separates a good paper from a bad one, rather than the form of the writing. The actual experimentation and research end up being more important in the end than the writing itself. In other words: there is no way to sweet-talk yourself out of bad research.
Writing in an engineering major is not based on creativity or form; rather, the research and experimentation are more important. How the information is presented is less important than the information itself, since papers are all similar in structure. An engineering student needs to be prepared for a specific type of writing that involves lab reports, technical terminology, and graphs and figures.
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