Academic Writing For Engineering Publications

This textbook is designed for non-native English speakers who need to write scientific and engineering research articles, technical reports, engineering thesis, academic books, and other technical documents in English. The author focuses on formal academic writing in a professional language and frame. The book is written in standard English and provides useful guidelines on development of thoughts, organization of ideas, construction of paragraphs and sentences, and choices of precise words. It also pays attention to details such as visual creation, punctuation, and format. Informal writing is excluded from the scope of this practical guideline. Designed for non-native English writers who are studying and working in English-speaking countries; Uses hundreds of examples and emphasizes essential cultural difference for non-native English writers; Includes essentials of copyright and plagiarism, to help writers avoid challenges from readers or copyright holders. https://link.springer.com/.

Written communication is a type of skill, albeit an important one. Writing is more than a good command of grammar and punctuation, or fluent speaking. Writing is a much more complex task requiring training and practice of many techniques, such as organizing ideas logically, constructing sentences and paragraphs coherently, presenting with appropriate tone in a stylish manner, and executing with ethics and professionalism. Written communication reveals our intelligence of thinking, ability of using words, level of education, and so forth. Good writers are normally creative people with brilliant ideas, a trait that can make capable writers excel in their career development. Regardless of our jobs, we need to write almost everyday. Academic writing is also referred to as scholarly writing. It is the writing produced as part of academic works; it can be an article, a book, a report, a thesis, or the like. Academic works are primarily produced by graduate students and researchers, and they are shared with other students and professionals in their fields. We write at work everyday because writing is a great extension of our voices that conveys our thoughts to many people in the world. Some of them may never contact or meet us. Engineering academic writing is one type of technical writing produced by authors in engineering fields. The approach to writing in this book is presented in the order of time following typical writing sequence. Successful writing starts with a good preparation and outline, continues with drafting and editing, and ends with formatting and proofreading. Admittedly, they often relate to each other and overlap without a clear boundary. One step upstream may affect subsequent steps. For example, when you are working on outline, you may decide to expand your readers and scope of the work. It is difficult to quantify the time required for each step, but in general, more time is needed for a writing task with a greater complexity. By the way, dividing the writing process into different steps may be important to collaborative writing for multiple authors. However, collaborative writing is out of the scope of this book. The book is aimed at non-native English writers such as international students, researchers and staff who are studying and working in English speaking countries. They include many examples for contrast and comparison, a long list of challenging words, and necessary emphasis on cultural difference for dealing with these concerns. Furthermore, an in-depth introduction of copyright and plagiarism at the beginning helps a writer avoid unnecessary challenges from their readers or owners of copyrights. There are many books in technical writing; some are free online, and others are priced for sales. However, there are not many books dedicated to non-native speakers of English. Most international students in English speaking countries are capable of reading and understanding other authors' writing. As an engineering faculty member, however, I have seen many students who need systematic training in writing for their course projects, conference paper, journal articles, and theses. Following the guidelines in this book, the writers will write with clarity and conciseness. The readers of this book are not limited to non-native English speakers either. All postsecondary and graduate students may find that this book balances between writing theory and simplicity. Students and researchers in engineering schools as well as professionals working in engineering industries may find valuable writing techniques in this book. It is deemed useful to new or experienced writers; they should be able to further convey complex technical information in a simple way. Motivated students can use the book as self-study materials to improve their writing skills. The book can be also used as teaching materials for both undergraduate and graduate students in engineering discipline, especially for non-native speakers of English.

Writing for Engineering and Science Students is a clear and practical guide for anyone undertaking either academic or technical writing. Drawing on the author’s extensive experience of teaching students from different fields and cultures, and designed to be accessible to both international students and native speakers of English, this book: Employs analyses of hundreds of articles from engineering and science journals to explore all the distinctive characteristics of a research paper, including organization, length and naming of sections, and location and purpose of citations and graphics; Guides the student through university-level writing and beyond, covering lab reports, research proposals, dissertations, poster presentations, industry reports, emails, and job applications; Explains what to consider before and after undertaking academic or technical writing, including focusing on differences between genres in goal, audience, and criteria for acceptance and rewriting; Features tasks, hints, and tips for teachers and students at the end of each chapter, as well as accompanying eResources offering additional exercises and answer keys. With metaphors and anecdotes from the author’s personal experience, as well as quotes from famous writers to make the text engaging and accessible, this book is essential reading for all students of science and engineering who are taking a course in writing or seeking a resource to aid their writing assignments.

This textbook is designed for non-native English speakers who need to write scientific and engineering research articles, technical reports, engineering thesis, academic books, and other technical documents in English. The author focuses on formal academic writing in a professional language and frame. The book is written in standard English and provides useful guidelines on development of thoughts, organization of ideas, construction of paragraphs and sentences, and choices of precise words. It also pays attention to details such as visual creation, punctuation, and format. Informal writing is excluded from the scope of this practical guideline.

Scientific Writing in Engineering helps scientists, engineers, and students of all academic levels efficiently write scientific texts, such as scientific articles, conference papers, theses, reports, and research proposals. Drawing from long-time experience in academic teaching, the authors walk the readers through scientific writing step by step all the way from a blank first page to complete manuscripts. A comprehensive list of concise recommendations and more than one hundred examples, taken from real-life scientific texts, offer readers the chance to draw easy analogies between own scientific texts and the examples provided in this book. The elaborate recommendations, with emphasis on specific characteristics of writing in engineering sciences, serve as complete self-study material that renders the book a practical guide to effective scientific writing. Readers will enhance their knowledge on scientific text structuring and will learn to avoid pitfalls in use of English, including grammatical and syntactical phenomena. Readers are given the opportunity to handle non-textual elements in scientific writing, such as figures and mathematical equations and formulas. Finally, the book provides detailed discussions on citing and referencing along with recommendations on formal electronic correspondence.

A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO WRITING Technical ideas may be solid or even groundbreaking, but if these ideas cannot be clearly communicated, reviewers of technical documents—e.g., proposals for research funding, articles submitted to scientific journals, and business plans to commercialize technology—are likely to reject the argument for advancing these ideas. The problem is that many engineers and scientists, entirely comfortable with the logic and principles of mathematics and science, treat writing as if it possesses none of these attributes. The absence of a systematic framework for writing often results in sentences that are difficult to follow or arguments that leave reviewers scratching their heads. This book fixes that problem by presenting a “scientific” approach to writing that mirrors the sensibilities of scientists and engineers, an approach based on an easily-discernable set of principles. Rather than merely stating rules for English grammar and composition, this book explains the reasons behind these rules and shows that good reasons can guide every writing decision. This resource is also well suited for the growing number of scientists and engineers in the U.S. and elsewhere who speak English as a second language, as well as for anyone else who just wants to be understood.

Is a literature review looming in your future? Are you procrastinating on writing a literature review at this very moment? If so, this is the book for you. Writing often causes trepidation and procrastination for engineering students—issues that compound while writing a literature review, a type of academic writing most engineers are never formally taught. Consider this workbook as a "couch-to-5k" program for engineering writers rather than runners: if you complete the activities in this book from beginning to end, you will have a literature review draft ready for revision and content editing by your research advisor. So, You Have to Write a Literature Review presents a dynamic and practical method in which engineering students—typically late-career undergraduates or graduate students—can learn to write literature reviews, and translate genre-based writing instruction into easy-to-follow, bite-sized activities and content. Written in a refreshingly conversational style while acknowledging that writing is quite difficult, Catherine Berdanier and Joshua Lenart leverage their unique disciplinary backgrounds with decades of experience teaching academic engineering writing in this user-friendly workbook.

P. 160.