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RE: Remember secretaries? (was RE: Proof that content is moreimportant than style)
Subject:RE: Remember secretaries? (was RE: Proof that content is moreimportant than style) From:cpwinter -at- rahul -dot- net To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 29 Nov 2002 12:18:37 -0800
On 20 Nov 2002, at 6:31, Dick Margulis wrote:
>
> JB Foster <jb -dot- foster -at- shaw -dot- ca> wrote:b
> >Unfortunately, this type of knowledge (English and publishing) was (is?)
> >never considered important enough to teach professionals such as
> >architects, or engineers.
>
> Yes and no. It depended (and presumably still depends) where you went to
> school. The engineering students I knew at Cornell grumbled about
> engineering professors who graded them on the basis of their writing, but
> those professors taught core freshman courses. There was no escaping them,
> and they made it clear that anyone who left Cornell with an engineering
> degree would be able to write a clear and coherent engineering report.
> (That's at least the first step toward competent technical communication.
> Granted, it isn't everything.)
>
The University of Chicago also followed this strategy. (At least the
Astronomy Department did. I base this on Carl Sagan's writing, in which
he describes the curriculum -- prescribed, IIRC, by Gerard Kuiper -- as
including a substantial measure of "humanities" courses. I don't recall
him mentioning any specific emphasis on writing. But such a curriculum
could hardly have failed to help in that area. It certainly did in his case.)
> I learned, once out in the real world, that companies happily hired
> engineers who had been graduated from schools that did not have that
> requirement. Of course that has made it much easier for me to earn a living,
> so I'm not complaining. I just wanted to point out that at least some
> engineering schools consider competent use of language worth teaching.
>
Another data point comes from Donna Shirley's _Managing Martians_.
(She was project manager for the Sojourner rover on the Mars Pathfinder
program.) She started off as a technical writer at McDonnell-Douglas in
St. Louis, and writes (IIRC) that most of the engineers there had writing
skills inferior to hers.
(I sure would like to be more definite about these sources, but they
are currently in storage.)
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