Comparison Analysis between Two Textbooks - Essay Example

Descriptive memo Shawn Gilmore Shuo Yu 22 Comparison Analysis between two Textbooks The primary textbook The Essentials of Technical Communication was written recently by two college professors teaching business and technical writing. The other textbook The Theory and Practice of Technical Writing was written more than a century ago and is considered one of the most original books on technical writing. The author of the second book, Samuel Chandler Earle, is a Latin teacher. He brought the idea of technical writing into classroom setting and this book is regarded as an immensely helpful guide for engineering professionals. It can be divided by three parts: the nature of technical writing, methods of study and opportunities for training. Professor Earle’s book is based on the assumption that the field of engineering makes use of a form of expression no less special than that of the lawyer, the novelist or the poet. The purpose of the primary text is to focus on how to achieve a readable style. The author assumes that, without the knowledge he prescribes, no one would really be interested in reading anything you write. It is only through learning the knowledge in the book that readers will be attracted to your writing. The second text gives us a more conceptual background on what technical writing is all about and how it differs from general writing. Throughout the text, Professor Earle emphasizes the succinctness of technical writing so that engineers can reach the best results without much waste of time. Both of the books discuss the requirements of technical writing and list some of the important characteristic of technical writing. At the introductory chapter, both books attempt to explicate how technical writing (expository) differs from the general writing. In the first book by Tebeux and Dragga, they listed four important specialties. These included the requisite awareness that legal liabilities might arise due to the content of the documents or that the documents might be read by unknown readers who might be interested in the organizations. Besides, the writing should achieve the intended job goals by a wide variety of readers who might be having completely different perspectives from the writer. In addition, they emphasize that a good technical paper should have the following qualities: accuracy, clarity, conciseness, readability, usability, and correctness. Professor Earle also elucidates the occasions when it may be necessary to apply the technical writing. Unlike what we did at school, there is actually no force to demand for people to write something. Technical writing, therefore, only becomes necessary in business or social settings. For a good engineering expository, Professor Earle outlines ‘accurate, complete, logical and economical’ as the four fundamental qualities that are considered. First, the accuracy of an expression denotes how correctly one has used the language to describe their thoughts or ideas. As an engineer, accuracy would be considered as the top priority, especially in gathering data and taking record. Second, completeness is often reflected in the coherence of the paper as writer would be unable to give serious attention to the subject matter without being complete. Third, the logic of form represents inestimable value as a trainer of exact expression and consequently of exact thought. Professor Earle considered this one that was largely abandoned in English school and universities. He says, “Now students, especially beginners, get little of any such drill, and the natural results show in the writings of technical graduates.” Last, economy of presentation requires writer explain cases concisely to get the reader understand clearly with little effort. Nevertheless, both texts rank accuracy as the most important factor in the technical writing. While the primary text focuses on the readability of the article, the alternative material concentrates on the logic and the structure of the article. While elucidating the four qualities of technical communication, Professor Earle focused on the methods that are used in the real world. He mentioned writing that is not “accurate, complete, logical and economical” as highly likely to be regarded as bad writing. Besides, Professor Earle provides a synopsis as example of what features should be included in the synopsis. Apparently, the use of example would convert boring theory into a much straightforward concept to make reader understand easily. The tone of the author in the primary text is quite inspirational and encouraging. All chapters begin with a hook that enables students to think before accessing the new concept. In the body section, Professor Tebeux and Dragga tried to use a lot of examples to help student understand the concepts. The tone of the author in the The Theory and Practice of Technical Writing is slightly formal and educational. As a Latin teacher, Professor Earle knows the sort of problems that are likely to confuse student, and has attached some common difficulties that student may suffer. Most of the audience reading this book would be students at college or scholars, and they’ will definitely find it informational and theoretical. Compared to the book written by Professor Earle, the primary textbook attaches some interesting cases and examples at the end of every chapter for the reader to practice the concepts explained in that chapter. That is what is lacking in the Earle’s Book. However, the second book also did provide some suggestions on how to apply the ideas talked in the book into the real situations. As a matter of fact, it is the purpose of this book to combine hard thinking with the practice of writing. In order to give a solid content to the work in English composition, Professor Earle includes some chapters such as “Addressing General Readers,” “Addressing Specialists,” and “The Form of the Final Writing.” Since both Tebeux and Dragga are professors teaching business and technical writing in college, their approach is more practical. In fact, the materials and the examples used in the book can be directly used during a lecture. It is unlike the second book which is full of the abstract concepts and which looks more like an academic paper listing of research findings. Exercise Prompt Ethics in writing and research are critical in all academic fields. It is like a responsibility to your discipline as well as to your profession. It requires that one avoids plagiarism or theft of other people’s intellectual property. Additionally, it is grossly unethical to use ambiguous language in presenting important information or manipulate numerical information to suit your predetermined conclusions. In writing, use of misleading illustrations and promotion of prejudice through your writing are considered grossly unethical. Most people consider ethics as a rule to distinguish right from wrong. Actually, Professor Resnik gave a definition that is considerably more appropriate. According to him, “ethics” denotes a code of conduct to promote the “knowledge, truth and avoidance of error” and protect against “fabricating, falsifying, or misrepresenting”. Code of conduct provides some standard that is required by some organization to adhere. One of the most important things in this chapter is to recognize unethical communications. Students are expected to detect plagiarism, ambiguous language, misleading visuals, and distributing misinformation. Plagiarism can occur in many ways. Sometimes, even if you cite the sources, it may still be considered plagiarism. Thus, the text will help us avoid the plagiarism phenomenon in our own writing. Unclear and ambiguous language will be a significant defect in technical writing. Accuracy is ranked as one of the most important quality of technical writing. Additionally, misleading information will cause ambiguity of scope and be interpreted in several ways. In addition, misleading illustration and manipulation of numerical information should also be profited. The core of technical writing is the information provided. If your data and illustrations are fabricated, the whole essay will lose its meaning because science is only based on the facts. After finishing this chapter, you will be able to look up the code of conduct and finish the plagiarism exercise which would be really helpful in writing the expository. Feedback Memo Peer-review forms a crucial process in writing technical papers. While writing, one may fail to detect certain minor mistakes even through thorough proofreading. However, such mistakes would be too obvious for peers reviewing your paper. In light of this, peer-review should always form part of technical writing to safeguard the professional integrity of the paper. During peer review, it was evident that some articles did not pay much attention to comparison between the two books. In other instances, the comparisons were not in-depth and did not portray the rich content of the books. It is likely to discourage the readers from reading further when the writing appears to be lacking in adequate content. Besides, some sections are clearly not well cited, thereby making them appear as though they are plagiarized. In these instances, it is imperative to correct the citations to remove the plagiarism. As for misleading data found in writings, it is extremely difficult to identify them unless they are contrary to the literature. Nevertheless, it important to emphasize that all data needs to be represented without any modification. Read More