Guidelines for Writing Assignments in ME 2024



Michael Alley
E-mail: alley@vt.edu
Office: Durham 331


ME 2024 Links
 Style Guide
Sample Memo
Writing Class (Visuals)


Craft of Scientific Writing
 Chapter 1
Chapter 2 (Titles)


General Writing Links
 Writing Guidelines
Writing Exercises



The writing component of ME 2024 is designed to have you learn and practice the kinds of writing performed by engineers. For the writing component of the course, you have several resources. One is the style guide adapted from notes written by Professor Robert Mahan and presented on this web page. A second is the sample memo for ME 2024. A third is the "Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students," which presents general writing guidelines in engineering. Yet a fourth is the Writing Center at Virginia Tech.


Style Guide for ME 2024
Adapted from Notes by Professor Robert Mahan


  1. Writing for an Audience. In your careers, you will write for many audiences. These will include your bosses, your customers and clients, and your coworkers. Many firms have style guides that their employees are expected to follow when writing company reports. In any case, the first rule of technical discourse is "Write for an audience." These notes provide guidance for writing reports in ME 2024, Engineering Design and Economics. They do not represent an absolute truth, but the prejudices of your professor, who is the audience for your writing.


  2. Figures and Illustrations. In this day and age it is reasonable to expect artwork (be it an AUTOCAD drawing, a photograph, a graph, a line drawing, or a freehand sketch) to be electronically cut-and-pasted into a report. If no electronic version of the item exists, for example in the case of a freehand sketch, one can always be created using a scanner. Students need to get into the habit of using electronic media to prepare reports. This is a goal of the course. In this course we will refer to any item added to a report that is neither text nor a table as a figure. All figures should be imported to reports electronically. Also, all figures must be numbered and titled. Figure 1 is an example of a properly imported, numbered, and titled figure. Note that if at all possible the figure is presented in portrait format so that the report does not have to be rotated 90 degrees to read it. Note that figures are always referred to by figure number, and never by position (that is, we do not refer to "the figure below," but to "Figure 1").

    Figure 1. Eruption of Mount St. Helens [Smith, 1993].


  3. Tables. Tables must also be numbered, titled, and referred to in the text by number. Tables are different from figures in that the number and title appear above (rather than below) the table. Table 1 is an example of the correct way to include a table in a report. The previous sentence is an example of the correct way to refer to a table in a report. Note that, like the figure, the table is presented in portrait format if at all possible.

    Table 2. Physical characteristics of planets [Handbook, 1969].
    Planet Diameter
    (km)    		 Gravity
    (earth ratio)    		 Year
    (earth days)    		 Temperature
    (K)
    Mercury 5,100 0.40 88 700
    Venus 12,600 0.90 225 700
    Earth 12,800 1.00 365 350
    Mars 6,900 0.40 687 320
    Jupiter 143,600 2.70 4,333 150
    Saturn 120,600 1.20 10,759 138
    Uranus 53,400 1.00 30,686 90
    Pluto 12,700 ??? 90,885 80


  4. Equations. Equations should be centered on the page and numbered consecutively. Also, they should be incorporated in the text as if they were sentence elements. The following sentence illustrates the correct manner to include an equation in the text: The voltage V is given by

    V = IR, (1)

    where I is the current and R is resistance. The correct way of referring to Equation 1 is illustrated in the following sentence: "Equation 1 relates voltage to the current and resistance." Note that we do not write, "The above equation relates..." Note also the absence of punctuation introducing Equation 1.


  5. Report Organization. The introduction of the report should inform the reader what to expect in the report. The body of the report then uses sectioning, text, figures, tables, and equations to deliver what was promised in the introduction. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the body of the report and gives an overall perspective. Appendices supply information that is either secondary in importance or intended for a secondary audience.


  6. Compound Nouns and Adjectives. Sometimes words must be tied together by hyphens for clarity. This idea is best illustrated by the following sentence: "The most interesting aspect of our visit to the zoo was the man-eating fish at the entrance." Without the hyphen the sense of the sentence changes completely. The locution "man-eating" is referred to as a compound adjective. As a rule, the elements of a compound adjective are linked by hyphens when the adjective appears before the noun it modifies. However, consider the difference between a "one-inch gap" and a "gap of one inch" (or a "1.0-in. gap" and a "gap of 1.0 in."). The hyphen is used only when the compound adjective appears before the noun it modifies. Similarly, we use hyphens to designate compound nouns such as "down-time."


  7. Verb Tense. Use the natural tense. For example, if you are describing an action that you performed in the past, and you want to emphasize that it was your action that is being described, then it is natural to use the past tense to describe the action. However, if you are describing a procedure that is the same whenever it is performed and whoever performs it, it is better to use the present tense. For example, even if you baked a cake yesterday, it might be better to write, "The egg whites are separated from the yokes and then stirred into the flour," than to write, "I separated the egg whites from the yokes and stirred them into the flour." When alerting the reader to the content of the report it is better to write, "Described is a new design for a bicycle bell," than to write, "A new design for a bicycle bell will be described." After all, the reader is presumably reading the finished report, so use of the future tense, though idiomatically correct, is questionable.


  8. Voice. Style manuals often caution against use of the passive voice. For example, if you want to describe in writing the procedure your roommate used yesterday to bake a cake, it is probably better to write, "Then he separated the egg whites from the yokes and stirred them into the flour," than to write, "The egg whites were separated from the yokes and then stirred into the flour." That is, it is better to use the active voice than the passive voice.


  9. Possessive Forms. Possessive adjectives are normally formed by combining an apostrophe and the letters in the correct order. For example, "The dog's tail got caught in the car door," or if more than one dog suffered this indignity, "The dogs' tails got caught in the car door." Note that the word "its," as in "The dog is chasing its tail," is a possessive pronoun, not a possessive adjective, and as such is not written with an apostrophe. (The contraction "it's," meaning "it is," and other contractions for that matter, normally would not appear in a formal report.)


  10. Units. Engineering quantities, or dimensions (such as length, force, and temperature) have units (meter, newton, and kelvin). When units are written out, they are written in all lower-case letters (as in the previous sentence). However, when units appear with numerical quantifiers (numbers), they are always abbreviated. When the name of the unit is derived from the name of an individual, the abbreviation is always written in upper case (for example, 238 K, 121°F, 500 N, but 25 lbf, 36.4 in., 75 ft). Note that only the abbreviation for "inch" is written with a period (to avoid possible confusion with the preposition "in"). The only time a unit is written out is when the number is also written out (for example, "ten joules").


  11. A Note on Style. Avoid the over use of the locution "There is..." ("There are...") and related locutions ("There were...", etc.). It is much better to employ a more active locution. For example, note the difference between the following two sentences.

    "There is no good reason to choose one approach over the other."

    "No good reason exists for choosing one approach over the other."

    Or,

    "There are more than eight thousand students living on campus."

    "More than eight thousand students live on campus."


  12. Significant Figures. Calculators and computers tend to give answers to an inappropriate number of significant figures. Usually no more than three or four can be justified. Do not report excessive numbers of significant figures.


  13. Parallel Structure. The same parts of speech and verb tense should used in parallel locations in sentences or phrases comprising a list. The listing of paragraphs in item 8 is a good example of this principle.


  14. Spelling. Always use the "spell check" feature of your word processor. There is no excuse for a misspelled word in this day and age.


Last updated 9/03
http://www.me.vt.edu/writing/me2024/