Training for Technical Report Writing FLOYD 0. SLATE Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
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UST how good is scientific writing, in particular chemical writing, a t the present time? Recently there has been some slight awakening of interest in this matter. Some people, atleast, are beginning to realize that the quality of the material published in the chemical journals is woefully inadequate. Most frequently tlie purpose of this material is to report clearly, concisely, and correctly on experimental work in such a manner that areader skilled in the science can repeat the work and obtain the same results. Of course there are other types of publications, such as presentations of theories, descriptions of apparatus, book reviews, abstracts, topic reviews, textbooks, and patents; however, the reports of experiments far outnumber all the others. Another type of writing important to the chemist is the unpublished technical report; often this is a progress report for his supervisor or a final report dealing with confidential matters. Through most of his formal education, the-student is constantly referred to textbooks which greatly influence his manners of thinking and writing, especially since these textbooks are usually looked up to as being authoritative. What a pity it is that all too often the writers, although they may be masters of their subject, either cannot or do not write in a manner to inspire or help the student to write welll A large proportion of the errors made, especially in the common dashed-off textbook, must be the result of mere carelessness. It requires no careful reading to pick out dozens of errors in many popular freshman ,college textbooks. Obviously some of these mistakes were not made through ignorance, although some doubt flight be expressed in view of the number and nature of them. Of course i t is asking too much that all books be free from errors, but surely the number of these errors could be reduced by a little more care in composition and proofreading. It is perturbing to the student to come across such things as incorrect use of nomenclature, notation, and significant figures, just after being admonished about these very things in the class'room. After this kind of training, how can the neophyte chemist be criticized for his inability to express his ideas well in writing? Some schools still have an unwritten law that the promotion of a st& member to a professorship is partially dependent on the condition that he write a textbook. This practice sometimes introduces such trash into the educational system that our educators should wake up to its effects. Since we have more than an abundance of textbook writers, surely more critical specifications for the quality of textbooks would result in better teaching material. Many journal articles are written so poorly that sev-
eral readings are necessary if one is to get a t the meaning, and frequently it never appears a t all. This condition can be corrected in a large degree by better (maybe "some" is a more appropriate word) training in perspective, organization, grammar, construction, and analysis. The benefits of good writing will appear distinctly if one compares an average article with a well-written one, such as one of the classic Curie reports on radium or the Smyth report on atomic energy. But perhaps the most atrocious of all chemical writing is found in the unpublished report. Maybe this is because many published reports pass through committees, whereas the author alone contributes to the unpublished ones. This writer has found that in industry he has had, time after time, to teach the basic elements of report writing to graduate chemists. These people, supposedly trained in the basic principles of chemistry, could not even write a presentable informal report of their laboratory experiments. In fact, many of them could not so much as keep a decent daily log of laborato+ procedure and results. What.a reflection that is on their teachers and on their schools! Most colleges and universities require no training in technical writing for chemistry students. Some of them require that once.d&ng the student's junior or senior ye&, a term report be sent to the English department for review. It should be noted that few teachers of English are trained to judge the validity of conclusions, the best manner of presenting data, graphing practices, proper statementof problem, items essential to a good discussion, and methods of presenting references. If the student%writing abilities are so bad as to appear almost hopeless, he may be assigned to a composition c o u r s e n o t , mind you, to a course in technical report writing, but reassignment to a type of course he once passed as a freshman. Is that logical? This type of haphazard arrangement, if in fact any arrangement a t all has been made, is partly responsible for the poor quality of technical report writing. Why should any self-respecting chemist allow such conditions and practices to exist? Even though he cannot, and probably should not, tack on fancy flourishes, can he not take enough pride in his article or book to make i t accurate enough to assure other men that they can take his word? When the chemist is in his laboratory isolating his pet compound by his pet means, no care is too scrupulous, no method of insuring greatest accuracy is overlooked. It is his work, his pride, his joy. Why, oh, why is not his write-up of this experimental procedure an integral part of this same work, this same pride, this same joy? In reality his contem(Continued on Paw 4151
TRAINING FOR TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING poraries have little or no opportunity to peep into his laboratory and criticize, but he then glibly exposes himself to every criticism by carelessly dashing off what first pops into his head. Is i t not his creation--something to be proudly held aloft in knowledge of its superiority? This whole deplorable situation can be improved by proper and adequate college training. It is true that if such training existed, the men who are already in industty would still be laboring under a disadvantage, but higher standards of writing would force better mate-
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rial from them, and the next generation would arrive a t work better prepared to write. The entire trend of chemical writing can be changed from a collection of error-saturated material to writing that is a t once clearly understandable and worthy of being taken at face value. The author proposes that a t least a one-hour course in technical report writing be required of all science and engineering students, even though it may have to replace part or all of a highly technical and specialized course in the plan of study.
