Academic Writing for Engineering Publication

Book excerpt: Written communication is a type of skill, albeit an important one. Writing is more than a good command of grammar and punctuation, or fluent speaking. Writing is a much more complex task requiring training and practice of many techniques, such as organizing ideas logically, constructing sentences and paragraphs coherently, presenting with appropriate tone in a stylish manner, and executing with ethics and professionalism. Written communication reveals our intelligence of thinking, ability of using words, level of education, and so forth. Good writers are normally creative people with brilliant ideas, a trait that can make capable writers excel in their career development. Regardless of our jobs, we need to write almost everyday. Academic writing is also referred to as scholarly writing. It is the writing produced as part of academic works; it can be an article, a book, a report, a thesis, or the like. Academic works are primarily produced by graduate students and researchers, and they are shared with other students and professionals in their fields. We write at work everyday because writing is a great extension of our voices that conveys our thoughts to many people in the world. Some of them may never contact or meet us. Engineering academic writing is one type of technical writing produced by authors in engineering fields. The approach to writing in this book is presented in the order of time following typical writing sequence. Successful writing starts with a good preparation and outline, continues with drafting and editing, and ends with formatting and proofreading. Admittedly, they often relate to each other and overlap without a clear boundary. One step upstream may affect subsequent steps. For example, when you are working on outline, you may decide to expand your readers and scope of the work. It is difficult to quantify the time required for each step, but in general, more time is needed for a writing task with a greater complexity. By the way, dividing the writing process into different steps may be important to collaborative writing for multiple authors. However, collaborative writing is out of the scope of this book. The book is aimed at non-native English writers such as international students, researchers and staff who are studying and working in English speaking countries. They include many examples for contrast and comparison, a long list of challenging words, and necessary emphasis on cultural difference for dealing with these concerns. Furthermore, an in-depth introduction of copyright and plagiarism at the beginning helps a writer avoid unnecessary challenges from their readers or owners of copyrights. There are many books in technical writing; some are free online, and others are priced for sales. However, there are not many books dedicated to non-native speakers of English. Most international students in English speaking countries are capable of reading and understanding other authors' writing. As an engineering faculty member, however, I have seen many students who need systematic training in writing for their course projects, conference paper, journal articles, and theses. Following the guidelines in this book, the writers will write with clarity and conciseness. The readers of this book are not limited to non-native English speakers either. All postsecondary and graduate students may find that this book balances between writing theory and simplicity. Students and researchers in engineering schools as well as professionals working in engineering industries may find valuable writing techniques in this book. It is deemed useful to new or experienced writers; they should be able to further convey complex technical information in a simple way. Motivated students can use the book as self-study materials to improve their writing skills. The book can be also used as teaching materials for both undergraduate and graduate students in engineering discipline, especially for non-native speakers of English.