Advice on Writing for Engineers

"How to Write and Publish Engineering Papers and Reports" by Herbert B. Michaelson, program administrator of trade journal publications at IBM, is a wise, up-to-date, and concise but comprehensive book on a subject highly important to engineers. It is a systematic effort to be practical and useful, with its 22 tightly written chapters, each of whose headings begins with "How to ..." It also is error-free, well introduced, well summarized, and logically organized. One may ask who actually would buy a book like this—the engineering student for a course in technical writing or the working engineer (either one with a general interest in self-improvement) or an engineer suddenly confronted with a big and scary writing job? What do such people need—an overview of how to communicate well and an aid to organizing that task, a discussion of the individuals (from coauthors to editors and reviewers) who must be dealt with along the path to publication, ...