Technical Writing & Presentation: The Commonwealth and International Library: Social Administration, Training, Economics, and Production Division

By: W. S. Robertson and W. D. Siddle

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Synopsis: Technical Writing and Presentation is a guide to writing reports and articles for presentation to technical people or to the scientific community. The book deals with the special requirements in writing technical and highly specialized reports. The book covers the complete phase from planning the work to be done to finally editing the manuscript. To start writing, the writer aims to have a clear objective and properly identifies his kind of readership. Then the author provides tips on gathering information and how to arrange these in standard sequences. The author then discusses the style of writing, choice of words and sentences, paragraph length, use of appropriate jargon and clichés and the use of passive construction of sentences. After providing some examples of good writing, the book addresses the importance of a good layout. This includes margins, spacing, headings, and preparing the manuscript. The use of illustrations, tone drawings, graphs, and photographs is discussed. The book then focuses on the editing process when the writer reviews his own work objectively. The text also gives tips on editing procedures as well as miscellaneous problems (use of copyrighted materials, footnotes, and references). Many scientists, researchers, technologists, students, and academic professors who have to write articles and papers of a technical nature will find this book handy.