Engineers agree on several conventions when they write:
Engineers often work in teams on research and laboratory projects. In your classes, you will often collaborate with other students. Collaboration requires that team members delegate and accept responsibility, report to one another, share ideas, listen to one another, negotiate differences, and compromise on solutions. Usually one person on the team will be in charge of combining the individually written sections of a report into a single document. Some team members may not be engineers or engineering students. Developing relationships with nonengineering and nonscience students and professionals is essential to effective work and communication in engineering.
Each type of writing should include standard sections. For example, a laboratory report is complete only if it includes a section that interprets results.
Engineers must be brief and clear. When describing a process or an apparatus you used, you will need to write exactly what you did and what resulted. You must present the order of the steps you followed in logical sequence.
Engineers try to avoid ambiguous pronoun use so that readers will know exactly what a pronoun refers to. Instead of writing This confirms the original results, an engineer should write This new set of data confirms the original results.
Engineers use headings and subheadings in their reports and proposals. Engineering reports can be long and detailed, and headings mark the important categories of information and help readers follow the organization. Engineers also divide their reports into clear parts with combinations of numbers and letters denoting major sections and their subsections.
Engineering is a visual field. Readers expect writers to provide diagrams, illustrations, charts, tables, and graphs. Visuals should support the data and other information in a report; they should be easy to understand, with clear labels and captions.
Engineers use verb tenses deliberately. They use past tense for laboratory reports (These results demonstrated). They use future tense in proposals (This design will require). They use both present tense and past tense in progress reports (The design phase is on schedule or The foundation was poured during week 3).
Engineers usually use third-person pronouns (he, she, it, they rather than I, me, we). They use active voice where possible because it is more direct and concise. For instance, instead of writing The viability of the instrument was demonstrated by the results, they write The results demonstrated the viability of the instrument.