© 2001 ASM International. All Rights Reserved. www.asminternational.

org
Engineers’ Guide to Technical Writing (#06218G)

ENGINEERS’ GUIDE TO

TECHNICAL WRITING

Kenneth G. Budinski

Materials Park, OH 44073

www.asminternational.org
© 2001 ASM International. All Rights Reserved. www.asminternational.org
Engineers’ Guide to Technical Writing (#06218G)

Copyright © 2001
by
ASM International ®
All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright
owner.

First printing, March 2001

Great care is taken in the compilation and production of this book, but it should be made clear that NO WAR-
RANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF MER-
CHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ARE GIVEN IN CONNECTION WITH
THIS PUBLICATION. Although this information is believed to be accurate by ASM, ASM cannot guarantee that
favorable results will be obtained from the use of this publication alone. This publication is intended for use by per-
sons having technical skill, at their sole discretion and risk. Since the conditions of product or material use are out-
side of ASM’s control, ASM assumes no liability or obligation in connection with any use of this information. No
claim of any kind, whether as to products or information in this publication, and whether or not based on negli-
gence, shall be greater in amount than the purchase price of this product or publication in respect of which dam-
ages are claimed. THE REMEDY HEREBY PROVIDED SHALL BE THE EXCLUSIVE AND SOLE REMEDY
OF BUYER, AND IN NO EVENT SHALL EITHER PARTY BE LIABLE FOR SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CON-
SEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHETHER OR NOT CAUSED BY OR RESULTING FROM THE NEGLIGENCE
OF SUCH PARTY. As with any material, evaluation of the material under end-use conditions prior to specifica-
tion is essential. Therefore, specific testing under actual conditions is recommended.

Nothing contained in this book shall be construed as a grant of any right of manufacture, sale, use, or reproduction,
in connection with any method, process, apparatus, product, composition, or system, whether or not covered by
letters patent, copyright, or trademark, and nothing contained in this book shall be construed as a defense against
any alleged infringement of letters patent, copyright, or trademark, or as a defense against liability for such in-
fringement.

Comments, criticisms, and suggestions are invited, and should be forwarded to ASM International.

ASM International staff who worked on this project included Steven Lampman, Acquisitions Editor, Bonnie
Sanders, Manager of Production, Nancy Hrivnak, Copy Editor, Kathy Dragolich, Production Editor, and Scott
Henry, Assistant Director, Reference Publications.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Budinski, Kenneth G.
Engineers’ guide to technical writing / by Kenneth G. Budinski
p. cm.
1. Technical writing. I. Title
T11 .B83 2001 808.0666—dc21 00-046476

ISBN: 0-87170-693-8
SAN: 204-7586

ASM International®
Materials Park, OH 44073-0002
www.asminternational.org

Printed in the United States of America

© 2001 ASM International. All Rights Reserved. www.asminternational.org
Engineers’ Guide to Technical Writing (#06218G)

This book is dedicated to my technical writing professor

Robert E. Tuttle of General Motors Institute.

iii
© 2001 ASM International. All Rights Reserved. www.asminternational.org
Engineers’ Guide to Technical Writing (#06218G)

Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

CHAPTER 1: What Is Technical Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Purpose of This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Attributes of Technical Writing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Pertains to a Technical Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Has a Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Has an Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Conveys Information/Facts/Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Impersonal (Third Person) Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Be Concise. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Directed to Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Style and Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Archival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Attributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Other Types of Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Instructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Advertising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Creative Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Administrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Entertainment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

CHAPTER 2: Reasons for Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Excuses for Not Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Benefits of Technical Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

iv
© 2001 ASM International. All Rights Reserved. www.asminternational.org
Engineers’ Guide to Technical Writing (#06218G)

CHAPTER 3: Performing Technical Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Types of Technical Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
General Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Proposing a Project—The Idea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Gathering Background Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Designing Test Plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Performing Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Reporting Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

CHAPTER 4: Writing Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Analysis of Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Importance of the Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Selecting Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Scope of Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Number of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Depth of Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Level of Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Purpose and Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Writing to Various Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

CHAPTER 5: Document Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Document Hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Report Types and Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Patents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Technical Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Formal Technical Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Informal Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
E-Mail Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

CHAPTER 6: Criteria for Good Technical Writing . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Technical Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Language Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

CHAPTER 7: Writing Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Elements of Style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Word Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Sentence Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

v
© 2001 ASM International. All Rights Reserved. www.asminternational.org
Engineers’ Guide to Technical Writing (#06218G)

Paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Summary of the Elements of Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Examples of Writing Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Recommended Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

CHAPTER 8: Using Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Reasons for Using Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
How to Prepare Effective Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Photographs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Line Art (Graphs, Charts, Schematics) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Summary of Illustration Preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Captions for Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Referring to Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

CHAPTER 9: Formal Reports: The Outline and Introduction. . . 163

Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Title . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Front Matter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Writing the Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Purpose and Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Statement of Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Putting It Together. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Formal Report on “The Nibbler”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

CHAPTER 10: Formal Reports: Writing the Body . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Writing a Procedure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Describing Machines/Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Writing Test Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Writing the Discussion Section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

CHAPTER 11: Formal Reports: Closure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Writing an Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Back Matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Report Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

vi
© 2001 ASM International. All Rights Reserved. www.asminternational.org
Engineers’ Guide to Technical Writing (#06218G)

Saving Reports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

CHAPTER 12: Informal Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

Elements of an Informal Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Investigation Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Service Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Action Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Proposals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

CHAPTER 13: Review and Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

Types of Review and Edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
Edits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Review and Editing Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
Examples of Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

CHAPTER 14: Oral Presentations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

Types of Oral Presentations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
Preparation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Visual Aids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

CHAPTER 15: Getting It Done . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

Impediments to Writing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Making the Time to Write . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Dealing with Interruptions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Resist the Urge for Additional Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Dealing with Weak Writing Skills. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Dealing with Writing Mechanics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Dealing with Computers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Setting Deadlines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
Maintaining Writing Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Measuring Report Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300

APPENDIX 1: Example of a Laboratory Test Report . . . . . . . . . 303

APPENDIX 2: Example of a Formal Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

APPENDIX 3: Example of an Informal Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315

vii
© 2001 ASM International. All Rights Reserved. www.asminternational.org
Engineers’ Guide to Technical Writing (#06218G)

APPENDIX 4: Example of Visual Aids for a Verbal

Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

APPENDIX 5: Some Meanings of Questionable Phrases . . . . . . 321

APPENDIX 6: Grammar and Punctuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

Parts of Speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Sentence Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
Paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
Punctuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336

APPENDIX 7: Additional Report Mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339

Page Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Abbreviations/Acronyms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
Capitalization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
Contractions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
Indentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Numbers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Appendixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

APPENDIX 8: Other Types of Documents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

Executive Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Meeting Agendas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
Meeting Minutes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
Newsletters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
Resumes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Biographical Sketch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
Patents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355

APPENDIX 9: Example of a Technical Newsletter. . . . . . . . . . . 357

APPENDIX 10: Example of a Journal Article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363

APPENDIX 11: Example of a Patent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

APPENDIX 12: Document Review Checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381

APPENDIX 13: Example of a Simple Project Planning Form . . . 385

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387

viii
© 2001 ASM International. All Rights Reserved. www.asminternational.org
Engineers’ Guide to Technical Writing (#06218G)

Preface

THIS BOOK contains material used to train new engineers and techni-
cians in a large manufacturing plant of a Fortune 500 company. It was not
a company-training course. To the contrary, it was one engineer’s attempt
to get coworkers to document their work in a reasonable manner. Cowork-
ers who attended my tutorial sessions went on to become effective techni-
cal writers. In my opinion, our department is the model for the corporation.
Everybody finishes his or her projects with a report. There is a format for
each type of document and a system for archiving these documents. For-
mal reports go to the corporate library, and they are available to all on-line.
It is quite an effective system. The weak link, even today, is that not all
technical people in the company know about the company’s technical doc-
ument protocol, and up to now, there was no text to explain types of tech-
nical documents and how to write them. That is the purpose of this book.
We do not focus on the “laws of the English language.” This book discusses
most types of documents that the average technical person will encounter
in business, government, or industry. The overall objective of the book is
frequent, effective, written documentation and the cost savings produced
by effective communication.
The first iteration of this book was directed toward college students in
the sciences and engineering. The eight or so reviewers, selected by the
publisher, were all English professors, and they thought that the text ma-
terial was somewhat overwhelming for twenty-year-olds who never had
full-time jobs. One reviewer said, “My students do not even know what an
abstract is.” I had to agree with the reviewers; I wrote this book from my
tutorial notes and “my students” were all working technical people. Some
were engineers with twenty years of experience.
I started with a clean sheet of paper and rewrote this book for the prac-
ticing technical person, but in my heart, I feel that this material is not too

ix
© 2001 ASM International. All Rights Reserved. www.asminternational.org
Engineers’ Guide to Technical Writing (#06218G)

much for young minds. Young minds can handle anything. In my opinion,
this book can help students as well as working technical people.
The first four chapters are intended to bring the reader on board—to con-
vince him or her that it is worth the effort to become a reasonably good
technical writer. There is also a chapter on how to conduct technical stud-
ies. I have encountered many experienced technical people who did not
know the basics of conducting a scientific investigation. There is a chap-
ter on how to make effective illustrations and one on how to make oral
presentations. The remaining “teaching” chapters cover specific types of
technical documents: informal reports, formal reports, proposals, corre-
spondence, etc. The book ends with another philosophical chapter. This
one is on how to discipline yourself to get writing tasks done in a timely
manner. Grammar, punctuation, and report mechanics is relegated to the
appendix. Readers who need help can use them. The appendix also con-
tains examples of just about every kind of technical document that one
would encounter including a complete technical paper and a patent.
In summary, this book contains the writing suggestions of a typical en-
gineer with five years experience in the auto industry and thirty-six years
in the chemical process industry. I have written over forty papers for
archival journals, a teaching textbook, and a reference text, and I review
papers for four technical journals. I became heavily involved in writing as
part of a career in research and development. This book reflects what is
needed in industry, and I believe these needs are common in business and
government as well. Effective communications is a prerequisite for a suc-
cessful technical career, and this book presents a system that has proven to
be successful in making effective communicators.
This book is the culmination of five years’ work, including lots of re-
views and rewrites. I thank all reviewers for their honest and helpful sug-
gestions, in particular, Steve Helba and Nancy Kesterson for their work in
getting knowledgeable reviewers and to J.M.J. for ideas. I acknowledge the
talent of Judy Soprano for the chapter and cover art and the hard work of
Angela Leisner at Home-Office Connection in converting my handwritten
text and illustrations into an orderly electronic file. I could not have done
this book without her.

Kenneth G. Budinski

x
 ASM International is the society for materials
engineers and scientists, a worldwide network
dedicated to advancing industry, technology, and
applications of metals and materials.

ASM International, Materials Park, Ohio, USA

www.asminternational.org
This publication is copyright © ASM International®. All rights reserved.
Publication title Product code
Engineers’ Guide to Technical Writing #06218G

To order products from ASM International:

Online Visit www.asminternational.org/bookstore

Telephone 1-800-336-5152 (US) or 1-440-338-5151 (Outside US)

Fax 1-440-338-4634
Customer Service, ASM International
Mail
9639 Kinsman Rd, Materials Park, Ohio 44073-0002, USA
Email CustomerService@asminternational.org
American Technical Publishers Ltd.
27-29 Knowl Piece, Wilbury Way, Hitchin Hertfordshire SG4 0SX,
In Europe United Kingdom
Telephone: 01462 437933 (account holders), 01462 431525 (credit card)
www.ameritech.co.uk
Neutrino Inc.
In Japan Takahashi Bldg., 44-3 Fuda 1-chome, Chofu-Shi, Tokyo 182 Japan
Telephone: 81 (0) 424 84 5550

Terms of Use. This publication is being made available in PDF format as a benefit to members and
customers of ASM International. You may download and print a copy of this publication for your
personal use only. Other use and distribution is prohibited without the express written permission of
ASM International.
No warranties, express or implied, including, without limitation, warranties of merchantability or
fitness for a particular purpose, are given in connection with this publication. Although this
information is believed to be accurate by ASM, ASM cannot guarantee that favorable results will be
obtained from the use of this publication alone. This publication is intended for use by persons having
technical skill, at their sole discretion and risk. Since the conditions of product or material use are
outside of ASM's control, ASM assumes no liability or obligation in connection with any use of this
information. As with any material, evaluation of the material under end-use conditions prior to
specification is essential. Therefore, specific testing under actual conditions is recommended.
Nothing contained in this publication shall be construed as a grant of any right of manufacture, sale,
use, or reproduction, in connection with any method, process, apparatus, product, composition, or
system, whether or not covered by letters patent, copyright, or trademark, and nothing contained in this
publication shall be construed as a defense against any alleged infringement of letters patent,
copyright, or trademark, or as a defense against liability for such infringement.