VOLUME 33, NO. 2, FEBRUARY, 1956
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TEACHING REPORT WRITING TO PROFESSIONAL CHEMISTS AND CHEMICAL ENGINEERS' W. H. WALDO Monsanto Chemical Company, St. Louis, Missouri
A SURPRISINGLY large number of industrial and governmental laboratories have taken the time and spent the money to augment the knowledge of their chemists and chemical engineers in report writing. Apparently these organizations believe that greater efficiency of their research effort can he realized if they can improve the quality of reporting. Several approaches to the report-writing problem are being taken throughout the country. Some laboratories accept the chemist as he is and hire writers to assist him. Others believe that scientists should do their own writing, and they try to teach the engineer and chemist how to communicate effectively in writing. The teaching takes on several forms. Some are subtle: they distrihute journal reprints on how to improve report writing; they buy books on the subject and put them on their library shelves; and through their library bulletin they distribute hints on writing. Some organizations are very subtle: they promote to group leader only those who, among other things, have shown distinct ability in report writing. A more direct form of teaching technical writing uses either of two methods: (1) informal seminars, consultations, and editing, or (2) formal on-the-job Presented as part of the Symposium on Training Chemists
and Chemical Engineers in Technical Writing before the Division of Chemical Literabure at the 128th Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Minneapolis, September, 1955.
training courses. This discussion roncerns these formal courses. This summer I sent out 188 questionnaires to industrial and governmental members of the Chemical Literature Division, among others, and the response was most gratifying (110 replies). Twenty per cent of these reported their experiences with formal rourses to teach chemists and chemical engineers to write better. These experiences are the basis for this paper. Many people having no experience with formal courses contributed valuable comments on other approaches they had used. Several sent report manuals they use, and most interesting were those who were hoping for or planning such a course. I asked on the questionnaire if there had been any on-the-job training courses given during the past five years to teach chemists and chemical engineers t,o write better. If so, were lectures, discussions, or work assignments involved? I wanted to know how many students had attended, the clualifications of the teacher, and the subjects treated. I asked about the length of the classes and the course. If it mas a success or not, I wanted to know how they knew. If a follow-up was employed, I asked the nature of it. Student reaction was important, I thought, so I asked about that. Finally I asked for any criticisms, conclusions, or suggestions about the course, and as an afterthought I asked for a copy of any style manuals in use.
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JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
A study of the returns revealed some interesting ing lecture notes or using a textbook or style manual. facts and data. All the formal courses involved lee- I n this way, much of the material could be referred to, tures by some teacher. Most of them allowed discus- discussed, practiced, or omitted as the situation desion, and over half of them required work assignments. served. Carefully prepared notes or a manual mould The 23 courses reported reached over 2000 chemists and also be handy for reference to help the author to prechemical engineers during the past two years. pare his reports after much that was said during the course had grown old and dim. PLANNING T H E TECHNICAL WRITING COURSE A t,ext or manual is about the onlv taneible material All of these courses required a great deal of planning that the student takes with him. '?hus,these courses hefore they were started. An obviously important did not have much follow-up after they were completed. step in planning was to procure a teacher. Apparently, Those that believe a follow-up should be included there are three types of teachers to choose from. One emphasized the personal, individual approach. I n may hire a consultant who is reputed to know my opinion, to sit down with one author and go over the needs, techniques, and psychology of technical his reports word-by-word, a never-ending task, is a writing. For a fee he will take on most of the burden most effective follow-up in such a "how-to" course. of running such a course. Over half of the reporting The work shop was suggested as a follow-up. Even research organizations who used this technique re- though such a procedure would involve considerable gretted it and called their courses a failure. In all more effort on the part of the teacher and students, fairness, however, I should report that hiring a con- each student could prartice what he had been taught, sultant in the field of writing was apparently successful and then subject his manuscript to the criticism of the in some cases, and considerable enthusiasm was gener- group. ated in favor of this approach. Another tvve of teacher is the orofessional teacher of COURSE CONTENT English from a local high school or college. Such There are five types of subject matter taught in these teachers were more frequently successful than not. courses. The three more objective subjects are (1) the Those who reported dissatisfaction with hiring English report system of the specific organization, (2) grammar, teachers complained of too much emphasis on grammar and (3) graphic arts. The less objective are (1)clarity and rules and not enough emphasis on principles. The and (5) organization. In the first three it is generally most successful choice of a teacher for an on-the-job found that instruction'is needed and millingly accepted. course in report writing was reported to be someone Grammar is the most explosive of the three, but an within the organizationan editor, a librarian, a senior experienced conference leader can keep the arguments staff member, or an interested laboratory scientist. about split infinitives and terminal prepositions from Actually the professional training of a prospective getting out of hand. The journals rhich report work report-writing teacher does not appear to be critical. related to that of the.laboratory can be studied for Professional English teachers, psychologists, and chem- their practice in spelling, abbreviations, punctuation, ists have all done acceptable jobs. The important use of active verbs, and other mechanical aspects of qualification for the teacher appears to be his under- writing. standing of the local needs, who the readers are, what A thorough review of what, to whom, when, and why t.hey want, who the authors are, and what ruts they reports are written in the research organization meets are in. I n short, the teacher should have empathy with favor. Many report,iwriting p~oblems can be for his students. He should understand the spot his traced to peculiarities of a specific organization's students are in. reporting system. Occasionally a piece of mork must Large classes should he avoided. Seventy-five per he twisted unrecognizably to fit into the report pattern. rent of my respondents permitted no more than 30 Discussion of the reporting system may also dispel students to attend class a t a time. To handle more the illusion that reports may be written but never read. Of considerable interest were discussions of the students, duplicate classes were held. The length of class period apparently makes no graphic arts. The recent innovations in methods of difference. Although none of those reported ran over composition and duplication can be discussed along three hours or under 40 minutes, there was no correla- with the principles of the most effective way of pretion of success with the duration of the class period. senting a given set of data. How to prepare a selfHowever, several complained that the subject matter explanatory table, when to use a table of data instead was presented too fast. Insufficient opportunity was of a graph, when and how to get a photograph taken, given to assimilate the points of issue or to prepare ways of duplicating copy, and the relative costs of the work assignments. I n keeping with the belief that various ways of duplication are among the many writing a good report takes time, teachers of report- graphic-arts subjects that are of interest. writing techniques should allow sufficient time for The other two categories of course content are the students to prepare exercises. It was pointed out that more subjective ones--clarity and organization. These preparing an exercise in class produced especially poor may be looked on as the "psychology and logic'' of report writing. Teaching these subjects is difficult results. One solution to the speed problem involved distribut- because standards depend so much on personal opinion.
VOLUME 33, NO. 2, FEBRUARY, 1956
Discussions of jargon, nomenclature, headings, the pros and cons of an appendix, writing down to the reader, and the difference between a summary and an abstract all are involved. There are few concrete rules for measuring clarity or for organizing a report in a logical way. Readability formulas are a step in that direction, but we are dealing with impressions and human intelligence, classically hard to measure. Neither this survey nor personal experience has indicated a way to justify the expense of a reportwriting course on a dollar-and-cents basis. A company probably never will correlate a profit increase with a writing course. But research work done for a profitmaking organization or for national defense is quickly abandoned if results do not appear promising to t,hose who read reports. Thus, science, industry, and government all are aided by the skillful reporting of research results. There are ways of measuring the success of a reportwriting course. Those who have conducted or attended successful ones enthusiastically endorse their value to a research organization. One way to determine the ratio of the amount taught by the teacher to the amount learned by the student is a final examination. :ilthough an examination may measure the amount learned, it does not necessarily correlate with improved
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practice in report writing. This much success can be guaranteed: the mere fact that management is milling to foot the bill for a report-writing course impresses some authors and as a consequence they pay more attention to their writing. Improvement follows, since there is always some carelessness evident in any organization's reports. There are two courses that deserve special mention. The first is one given under the auspices of the University of Pittsburgh's program of Graduate Work in Indust,ry. Classes are held for two hours earh week for 13 weeks. This is a very comprehen,'w e course and is taught by a chemist. The second is a course in the Graduate School of the National Bureau of Standards: two hours a veek for 15 weeks. I t will be given this academic year for the third time, tanght by a vell known chemist on the Bureau's staff. Although these are not the usual on-the-job training courses and are more of the academic variety, yet they show what can be done when the problem of scientific writing is attacked with vigor. From the many frank comments submitted in answer to my questionnaire, I feel that success in conducting a formal report-writing training course lies in the teacher's knowledge of the students' needs and his care in tailor-making his presentation to meet them.
