Technical Report Writing

Once you've completed the technical tasks, it's time to bring all the data together into a complete, coherent report. This process often starts before all the data is available. In other words, you frequently need to begin writing the report before you have all of the information you need to complete it. You will feel a great deal less uncomfortable about this if you've thought through the purposes and intended audiences for your report. With them in mind, you should already have a complete, but flexible, outline for the final report.

How do you tell when it's time to begin writing? You are ready to begin writing when you have enough data to answer the most important technical questions posed by your report. If you are ready to draw some conclusions, you're ready to begin writing the substantive portion of the report. In other words, don't begin writing before you have something to say but don't wait until you know all the answers either. You will almost never have enough time in the real world to complete the report on schedule if you wait until every detail has been investigated and every doubt resolved.

In doing these tasks, a personal computer will be a great aid and is strongly recommended.

Editing is an art, but it can be learned. Whether you are editing your own work or someone else's, you will save a great deal of time if you edit the structure of the report before you begin to read each Chapter or section. Look over the whole report first to be certain it fits the outline and organizational scheme you decided on earlier. If it doesn't, reorganize it before going on so that it does. Unless you do, you will waste hours or days reading text that is in the wrong place in the report or is repeated unnecessarily. You will find yourself frustrated by having to wade through pieces of text which, because they are misplaced, do not relate to the subject of the Chapter or Section. If you find this, you know that the writer has forgotten the outline and his job as writer. That job is to craft the report in such a way that the rhetorical purpose of each paragraph, section, chapter and graphic is served.

Once you are satisfied that the report is organized in a logical way according to your original plan, you can begin editing for content.

Check Those Numbers! In technical reports, numbers are all important. Certain numbers will necessarily be repeated in several places within the report. These are especially important because if they are wrong one place they are likely to be wrong in another place. Such numbers can cause discrepancies if they are different in different parts of the report. Don't, for example say in Chapter 2 that the project will cost $3,350,000 and then say in Chapter 7 that the cost is 3,530,000. This kind of easily made transposition error confuses the reader and makes him doubt your technical ability as well as your ability to write, or add or multiply.

A second category of numbers which may cause problems are those from which many other values are derived. For example, in the design of a water system, the design population, the average day demand in the design year, and the assumed fire flows must be carefully selected or calculated. They provide the basis for every pipe size in the system, every well capacity, every storage reservoir, every pump and many other system components and directly affect the cost of the project to the users. You can make numerical mistakes in a report and still be considered a good technical writer but those mistakes had better be in insignificant things, not in basic numbers.

There are two kinds of references which often appear in technical reports about which the author need be concerned. If you refer to many previous reports or cite numerous authoritative sources, a List of References or Bibliography is advisable. It will save you much work by not having to repeat each full citation throughout the report. Listing and numbering them saves both you and your reader a lot of time and effort. Help him/her and help yourself by devising an easy way to refer to information sources succinctly.

A second, even more important reference, is the "internal" reference. Suppose, for example, that in Chapter 2 of your report you write the following sentence:

".......................Costs for each of the three alternatives are calculated in Chapter 7.................."

Suppose that somehow, by mistake, you either don't calculate those costs or you decide to put them in Chapter 8, instead. Your reader may find them or he/she may not. Either way, the reader will be annoyed at being sent him on a search and at having his/her time wasted.

One way to help avoid this problem is to highlight all text in the report which refers to some other part of the report. In the example above, the reference to Chapter 7 is bold faced so that it stands out from the rest of the paragraph . This system has two very important advantages and is recommended even for rough draft reports.

Its first advantage is to you and to those who have to edit your writing. It allows you both to more quickly cross check internal references to be certain that they really do agree. Your reader also receives a benefit from this practice because you lead the reader's eye to important parts of your report. This allows him/her to quickly scan the report, find the information he/she needs and not be forced to read every word. This, and other tricks mentioned in previous Chapters make, you report "scan-able." Few technical reports are ever read word for word, cover to cover. If you hope to get your message to the reader, you must assume he/she will scan the report first and if they don't find what they are looking for, will toss it aside.

A number of generic checklists are included in this syllabus for your use. But feel free to change them to fit your needs and the kind of reports you write. As an aid to your memory, a checklist can't be beat. It will serve you best by never allowing you to make that big, stupid mistake we all dread; like leaving out the conclusion section.

If you don't use, or feel you don't need, a computer, please reconsider. Even if all your reports are short and routine, a computer can be a great aid in many ways. Software, i.e., programs in the following general categories, are most helpful to technical writers:

1. Word Processors
2. Spreadsheets
3. Form Generators
4. Desktop Publishing
5. Style/Grammar Checkers
6. Presentation Graphics
7. CADD
8. Special Purpose Programs*

* Special Purpose Programs are those designed to do some special job you need to do in your position; especially one you do repeatedly. An example might be a program to calculate Chlorine feed rates for a water treatment plant based on flow and source water quality factors. If the program you need doesn't exist, ask around. Chances are some one of your colleagues have either found it or written one. If not, consider writing it yourself.

Even if you are not a typist, as I am not, a computer can bring you benefits of speed, accuracy, and improved appearance of the finished report. Perhaps most important, the computer gives you the ability to easily clone your reports for other purposes. You can take one report, already written, and with either major or minor editing, produce a second report thereby saving you hours, or days of dull work. You will, with a computer, also have opened the door to other possibilities. You can exchange data between programs so that you might, for example, import a spreadsheet calculation into your word processor and use it as a table of data then add a graph to illustrate the data from your graphics package.

To be computer illiterate today is to place yourself at least ten yards behind in the 100 yard dash. In some occupations this is not true, but you, as a technical practitioner and writer, have not chosen one of those occupations.

The cost of computer hardware and software has trended downward from the beginning of the Personal Computer age a decade ago. Even so, we cannot all afford all the things we'd like to have, or at least like to try. The following two sections describe some writing tools which are good, available and affordable. The lists are just personal opinion and others with more knowledge can produce better lists. The programs were selected mainly because they are low cost, or proven or involve little risk for the novice. Experienced PC users have no need of this list but beginners may appreciate a few suggestions.

This list is based mainly on the listings in Shareware Magazine, published by PC-SIG. More on this, and other shareware sources, below. Evaluation copies of shareware may be obtained for $3.00 to $5.00 per disk. Registered versions typically run $20.00 to $100.00, seldom more.

Several equally good alternatives to certain shareware programs exist. For a nominal cost you may try several in each category and decide which you like best. Then, register your copy and tell the author you appreciate his work.

PC-SIG
1030 D East Duane Ave.
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
Orders: 800 - 245-6717
Information : (408) 730-9291

Top selling programs are reported weekly in several of the popular computing magazines and by Softsell, a trade publication for computer software dealers. This list is based only partly on those sources and partly on personal prejudice. Expect this list to change frequently.

There are so many free programs around that no attempt is made here to even list them. Important sources for such programs include; PC Magazine, PC World Magazine, PC-SIG in Sunnyvale California, the Houston PC Club in Texas and any of a hundred local and national RBBS's (Bulletin Boards). Their size is usually small and their usefulness often limited but they are worth investigating.

Two such programs you will find very handy are CO.COM and WHEREIS.COM . CO.COM can replace the DOS command "DIR". It allows you to selectively copy, erase, move or re-sort the files in any directory or subdirectory. It works something like X-Tree but it costs nothing.

WHEREIS.COM will find any file on your hard disk even if you've forgotten exactly what you named it. As long as you can remember even a part of the name, WHEREIS.COM will find it for you. You can, for example, type <WHEREIS *.WQ1>and the program will search all the directories and subdirectories on your hard disk a list all the files having the file extension ".WQ1". Many useful public domain programs exist to solve these and similar problems

Chapter 1 * Chapter 2 * Chapter 3 * Chapter 4 * Chapter 5 * Chapter 6 * Chapter 7 * Chapter 8 * Chapter 9