Technical English

Lesson 1

INTRODUCTION TO TECHNICAL WRITING

What and Why:

Technical writing is used to report information. Why is this important? As a
scientist/engineer, it is important for you to be able to communicate your work to
others in writing.
In a technical paper, the author remains independent from the subject of the article.
Technical documents usually do not contain the following words:
I, you, we.....
COMMON COMPONENTS OF A TECHNICAL REPORT
o Title Page
o Introduction
o Method & material
o Results
o Discussion
o Conclusion
o References

Punctuation
The most common punctuation marks in English are: capital letters and full stops,
question marks, commas, colons and semi-colons, exclamation marks and quotation
marks.
 Capital letters
These are used:
1. At the beginning of a sentence,
State schools can be classified ….
2. For names of people, places, rivers, etc.
John, London, the Thames,
3. For tittles of people and names of things and places when referring to particular
examples.
a city, but the City of Manchester, Mr. Green, Professor Williams, Miss
Smith, Mrs Brown.
4. For nations and objectives of nationality
England, an Englishman, English, Algeria, Algerian
5. For names of days, months, festivals and historical eras
Monday, January, Christmas, the Middle Ages, Africa
6. or tittles of books, plays, works of art, etc.
Animal Farm, Hamlet, the Mona Lisa
7. For many abbreviations
U.K. United Kingdom
 Full stops (.)
We use capital letters to mark the beginning of a sentence and we use full stops to
mark the end of a sentence:
We went to France last summer. We were really surprised that it was so easy to travel
on the motorways.
Full stops are also used after abbreviations, although this practice is becoming less
common:
Arr. (arrival)
etc. (etcetera)
Dr. (doctor)
Prof. (Professor)
 Commas (,)
We use commas to separate a list of similar words or phrases:
It’s important to write in clear, simple, accurate words.
They were more friendly, more talkative, more open than last time we met them.
We do not normally use a comma before and at the end of a list of single words:
They travelled through Bulgaria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland.
American English does use a comma in lists before and:
We took bread, cheese, and fruit with us.
 Question marks (?) and exclamation marks (!)
We use question marks to make clear that what is said is a question. When we use a
question mark, we do not use a full stop:
Why do they make so many mistakes?
We use exclamation marks to indicate an exclamative clause or expression in informal
writing.
Listen!
When we want to emphasise something in informal writing, we sometimes use more
than one exclamation mark:
Oh no!!! Please don’t ask me to phone her. She’ll talk for hours!!!
 Colons (:) and semi-colons (;)
We use colons to introduce lists:
There are three main reasons for the success of the government: economic, social and
political.
We also use colons to indicate a subtitle or to indicate a subdivision of a topic:
Life in Provence: A Personal View
We often use colons to introduce direct speech:
Then he said: ‘I really cannot help you in any way.’
We commonly use a colon between sentences when the second sentence explains or
justifies the first sentence:
Try to keep your flat clean and tidy: it will sell more easily.
We use semi-colons instead of full stops to separate two main clauses. In such cases,
the clauses are related in meaning but are separated grammatically:
Spanish is spoken throughout South America; in Brazil the main language is
Portuguese.
 Quotation marks (‘…’ or “…”)
Quotation marks in English are ‘…’ or “…”. In direct speech, we enclose what is said
within a pair of single or double quotation marks
She said, “Where can we find a nice Indian restaurant?” (or She said: ‘Where can we
find a nice Indian restaurant?’)
 Dashes ( – ) and other punctuation marks
Our teacher – who often gets cross when we’re late – wasn’t cross at all. No one
could believe it!
Just wanted to thank you for a lovely evening – we really enjoyed it.
Brackets have a similar function to dashes. They often add extra, non-essential
information:
Thriplow (pronounced ‘Triplow’) is a small village in the eastern part of England.
We use brackets around dates and page numbers in academic writing:
Heaton (1978) gives a convincing explanation of how hurricanes are formed (pages
27–32).
 Saying email and internet addresses
When we speak email and web addresses, we say each word separately. To avoid
confusion, we sometimes spell out each letter of a word:
Hannah.reeves@lit.com = Hannah dot reeves at l-i-t dot com
miles_hotel.com/home = miles underscore hotel dot com forward slash home
www.theplace.org = www dot theplace (all one word) dot org
 Symbols and typographic conventions
* asterisk
() parentheses (or round brackets)
[] square brackets (or box brackets)
{} curly brackets
% per cent
& and
’ apostrophe e.g. John’s key
- hyphen e.g. semi-colon
< less than
> greater than
@ at
✓ tick
/ forward slash
\ back slash
INTRODUCTION TO CIVIL ENGINEERING

Civil engineering is one of the oldest and broadest branches of engineering. Civil
engineers are responsible to improve our quality of life.

Civil Engineering Branches:

 Structural Engineering
 Geotechnical Engineering
 Transport Engineering
 Hydraulic (Water Resources) Engineering
 Environmental Engineering

In English, all sentences are in either "active" or "passive" voice:

Active: Werner Heisenberg   formulated the uncertainty principle in 1927.

 
Passive: The uncertainty principle was formulated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927.

There are many, more examples of words that can be both nouns and verbs. Here are
a few that you're probably familiar with:

WORK:
Noun- I have a lot of "work" to do today.
Verb- A person must "work" hard to achieve his or her goal.
HELP:
Noun- It looks like she needs some "help."
Verb- Will you please "help" me?
RAIN:
Noun- We definitely need the "rain."
Verb- When it "rains," it pours.
POLISH:
Noun- There is too much "polish" on that brass.
Verb-They needs to "polish" their essays.
SLEEP:
Noun- I need some "sleep."
Verb-I could "sleep" all ay
HEAT:
Noun- Turn that "heat" off.
Verb- The weather will really "heat" up later in the day.
The following words can be used as both nouns and verbs:
Study – test - trial - experiment
We plan to conduct a study of consumer attitudes.
We are going to study consumer attitudes.
We intend to test the reactions to our new advertising campaign.
We will carry out the tests in order to get feedback on our advertising campaigns.
The trials produced some very interesting resuIts.
We aim to trial our new products over the coming months.
We have evaluated the reliability of the experiments.
It is important to experiment with new processes.
Many words in the field of IT corne from American English. So you may see the
following spellings:
British English American English
programme program
analogue analog

Notice the following verb and noun patterns

Form noun ending Noun
compile compilation
standardize -ation standardization
evaluate evaluation
identify -ication identification
modify modification
assess assessment
develop -ment development
improve improvment
Branches of engineering
The following words/phrases are all followed by 'engineering'
chemical – civil –electrical –electronic – highway – hydraulic – industrial –
mechanical – mining – petroleum production - production - structural
The term civil engineering describes engineering work performed by civilians for
non-military purposes.
Notice the stress in the word families below often changes;
verb noun (process) noun (person) adjective
'analyse an'alysis 'analyst ana'lytical
'innovate inno'vation 'innovator inn'ovative
de'velop de'velopment de'veloper develop'mental
ex'periment experimen'tation ex'perimenter experi'mental
in'vent in'vention in'ventor in'ventive
Exercise1
Match the words that go together and then complete the sentences below.
quality material
finished manager
industrial lines
production process
large-scale levels
assembly control
raw products
productivity manufacturing

1 Improved………………………… has led to higher efficiency in production.

2 The manufacture of paper is an…………………………………………………
3 Crude oil is the basic………………………………. for the plastics industry.
4 Increased …………………have reduced the number of manufacturing workers.
5 The large warehouse is used to store……………………….. waiting for delivery.
6 Large car manufacturers use…………………………………….. in production.
7 The company began in a single room but has now developed into………………..
8 The manufacturing process is the responsibility of the……………………………...
Exercise 2
Match the term with the correct definition.
applied research the study of pure scientific principles
clinical research the study of the parts and their relationship to one another
pilot study changing and improving a product to achieve the best possible result
experimentation looking at how scientific theory can be used in practice
pure basic research looking at the effects of drugs or treatment on patients
product development a new technique or idea
innovation the process of tests and trials to see what happens under different
conditions
analysis small-scale experiment
Exercise 3
Use the word in brackets to form a word which fits in the sentence.
1 The scientists have presented a detailed ……………….of the results. (analyse)
2 They have brought in a food……………………… to help in the research. (analyse)
3 All process materials are tested using highly developed………. techniques. (analyse)
4 The researchers have corne up with an………… idea for the use of recycled plastics.
(innovate)
5 Charles Dyson is the…………. of a vacuum cleaner which works on a new principIe.
(invent)
6 The advent of the ballpoint pen was a wonderful…………………(invent).
7 They employ a large team of software……………….. .(develop)
8 A report has been prepared on the……….. tests that have been carried out.(develop)
9 Increasing numbers of people can now work from home thanks to……………..… in
telecommunications. (develop)
10 These methods of production are still at an………………………. stage.
(experiment)
11 The………………………………… is continuing work on the new drug. (experiment)
12 Many people are against animal………………………………………… . (experiment)
Exercise 4
Complete the following table using the words in the box.
basically(x 2) call, effectively, essentially, imagine, other, picture, refer, simple,
simply.
Function Words / Phrases
1.Simplifying language 1n simple terms/ put……….. / in……….words /……….
2 Simplifying the concept ……………………../……………………/…………………
3 Focusing on technical terms What we…………. / what we……………… to as
4 Illustrating with images if you……………. / if you…………………