Chapter 7, Technical Communication
7.1 Introduction
Technical communication is one of the most important skills in engineering
practice. This is shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Important skills in mechanical engineering practice
Importance to Mechanical
Capability of recent ME
engineering practice
graduates from selected
schools
Most
Imp.
Important
Less
Imp.
Area of Competence
Superior
Adequate
Inferior
27
26
23
22
18
33
27
31
28
16
2
4
4
6
13
3
1
10
4
9
37
24
40
41
31
10
34
1
6
6
16
14
14
30
24
20
11
19
15
7
1
1
31
24
22
10
23
24
13
13
36
33
10
13
2
13
31
35
16
1
11
35
11
8
24
14
6
4
28
20
13
32
Engineering materials
Writing and speaking
Thermodynamics and heat
Fluid mechanics
Dynamics and vibration
controls
Machine design
Manufacturing methods
Individual project
experience
Engineering graphics
Computer and numerical
methods
Measurements and
instrumentation
Economics, law
Social science and
humanities
0
3
28
36
19
4
From Table 1, it can be seen that many new graduates are lack of appropriate preparation
and hence, it is worthwhile to discuss the basic principles of technical communication
herewith.
There are various forms of technical communication, namely verbal
communication, writing (informal and formal), and presentation. Writing can be further
decomposed into several categories: letters and memos, proposal, short report (e.g., a
progress report), and long report. Depending on the job function, you may work on these
forms more or less, as shown in Table 2.
Table 2: Typical communication time within organizations
Job title
Oral communication
Informal writing
Chief executive
65
10
Division manager
60
15
Department
45
20
Formal
2
2
5
manager
Section head,
Project head
Engineer or
scientist
Junior engineer
Technician
40
40
30
20
20
20
5
5
10
25
15
15
10
10
2
In this chapter, we will briefly describe some of the most important principles of
technical communication and their applications in various forms of technical
communications.
To begin with, let us consider a simple example. Assuming that you are a plant
engineer, and you find that the lighting in the plant is not adequate. So, you talk to your
boss and he asks you to write a memo to call for a meeting. Then, what do you write?
Here is what I would write:
To:
From:
Date:
Whom it may concern (you could identify the interested parties as well)
Ruxu Du, Plant Engineering (the title may not be necessary if everybody
know you)
Oct. 16, 1998
Subject: Meeting regarding to the plant lighting (use bold face to emphases the
subject)
According to the regulation by the Hong Kong Department of Industry, the
lighting in our plant (it is our plant) is not adequate. In order to find solutions, a meeting
will be held at 4 p.m. Oct. 20 (pick a good time and give a few days for people to react)
in the conference room (assuming there is only one conference room). If you have an idea
but cannot attend the meeting, please feel free to contact me at 2609-8487 (you don’t
want to wait but give another way to communicate).
Yours sincerely
(sign)
Examining some 15 writings from the students, I found several common problems
as shown below:
(1) The heading. The heading of the memo should following the order of
importance: To, From, Subject and Date.
(2) “As I found …” The word “as” is not necessary. Besides, “I found” does not
mean very much.
(3) “I would like to call a meeting about it.” This degrades the importance of the
meeting (since you are a plant engineer not the boss).
(4) “Please contact me if you are not available.” Not all the people are needed to
attend the meeting.
(5) “We are going to have a meeting.” This is too vague.
(6) “I would like to have a meeting with you in order to improve the situation.”
The meeting can only find a solution but will not improve the situation unless the actions
are taken.
7.2. Basic Writing Principles
There are two basic principles that should be followed all the time in technical
communications, namely: write a good topic statement and develop a clear pattern of
organization.
(1) Write a good topic statement. This is important as it allows the reader to guess
what’s coming and thus digest it more easily. In fact, technical communication is
characterized by getting the point cross as clear and concise as possible. The suspension
style of writing does not fit into this scheme and hence shall not be used. In the plant
lighting example, the memo begins by referring the regulation; so the involved parties
know something must be done.
A good topic statement also allows the reader to avoid reading the paragraph
altogether if subject matter holds no interesting for them. In the example above, the
secretaries and salesmen would know that is none of their business and hence do have to
worry about the rest.
(2) Develop a clear pattern of organization. There are several patterns that are
commonly used, as listed below:
(a) Chronological description;
(b) Cause-and-effect analysis; which includes to
 Use connective words, such as therefore, thus, consequently, accordingly, as a
result, so, …
 Use subordinate verbs, such as since, because (of), due to, owing to, …
 Use causative verbs, such as causes, results in, gives rise to, affects, requires,
produces, …
 Use conditional construction, such as when …., if ….,
 Use chain of reasons such as A  B, B  C, C  D, …
(c) Comparison and contrast; which include to
 Use connective words and phases, such as however, on the other hand,
conversely, similarly, likewise, in contrast to, …
 Use comparative constructors, such as more than …, less then …, -er, as … as,
rather than, is different from …, …
 Use subordinate verbs, such as while …, whereas …, but …
 Use modal verbs, such as X will be …, Y will be …,
 Use parallelism, such as X is …, Y is …
(d) Listing; which shall follow the rules below:
 List shall case in parallel grammatical form and
 If the items in a list are not equally important, they should be arranged in
descending order of importance.
(e) General-to-particular order of details.
To show how these rules work, let us consider the plant lighting example again.
Assume that during the meeting, the following information were collected:
(1) The original design of the plant lighting was probably inadequate or not clearly
specified
(2) Many light bulbs were faded because of aging
(3) Some add-on equipment and/or stock were blocking the lighting
Consequently, the following solutions were proposed:
(1) Change the light bulbs (energy saving types preferred)
(2) Add a few lights in the specified area
(3) Clean up the add-on equipment and/or stock if possible
(4) Paint the wall in light color to gain better reflection
Now, you are asked to write another memo to summarize the meeting.
Here is what I would write:
To: whom it may concern
From: Ruxu Du
Subject: Action plan for the plant lighting problem (use action plant to highlight the
topic)
Date: Oct. 20, 1998
The meeting on plant lighting was held on Oct. 19, 1998. A total of 20 people
attended to meeting representing various departments and parties in the plant (indicated
the interested parties were all represented). It was agreed that the causes of plant lighting
problem included the following:
(1) The original design of the plant lighting was probably inadequate or not clearly
specified
(2) Many light bulbs were faded because of aging, and
(3) Some add-on equipment and/or stock were blocking the lighting
In order to solve the problem, the following actions will be taken:
(1) Change the light bulbs. This will be done section by section starting on the coming
weekend by the maintenance department (specify the time so people know actions
will be taking soon). Also, in order to save energy, the energy saving light bulbs will
be used.
(2) Add several lights in the specified area as shown in the enclosed drawing (I did not
draw). This will be done by the maintenance department starting on the coming
weekend and will be completed in three weeks (again, specify the time).
(3) Clean up the add-on equipment and/or stocks. Each department shall remove the addon equipment and/or stocks, or report to the plant manager on why the add-on
equipment and/or stocks cannot be removed (specify who’s responsibility it is to
avoid confusion). This shall be done in three weeks.
(4) Paint the wall in light color to gain better reflection. Shall the company approve the
plan, the walls of the plant can be painted to light colors (e.g., light yellow) in the
next retooling.
If you have any other suggestion, please do not hesitate to contact (it is still not
too late). I will report to you again on the improvement of the plant lighting and the
compilation of the Hong Kong Industrial Department regulations (recapture the opening
statement of the previous memo) in one month.
Yours sincerely
(sign)
It can be seen that the above writing uses several basic principles of technical
communication. First, it uses the cause-and-effect analysis, which helps to