From Prose Paladin to Peer Editor: Teaching Engineers (and Others) to Write and Communicate

Abstract

Many engineers and other technical/managerial professionals continually generate writer-centered memos, letters, and brief reports. Because such documents often contain needless repetition, excessive detail, and chronology-based information, an approach for encouraging writers to produce clear, well organized, rhetorically sound prose was developed. Technical writing teachers and communication trainers must 1) make these prose “paladins” aware of the essential ingredients for generating reader-centered prose, 2) familiarize these writers with the major steps involved in the writing process, and 3) operationalize the process through face-to-face writer-editor collaboration — involving peer editorial review. Only through frequent drafting and rewriting and the regular sharing of peer editorial response (oral and written) will clear, rhetorically effective prose accrue value. And only then will technical/managerial writers routinely generate reader-centered documents that communicate.