The Composing Process of an Engineer

Jack Selzer's article "The Composing Process of an Engineer" details the approach to writing taken by Kenneth E. Nelson, an engineer at Henningson, Durham, and Richardson (HDR). Selzer examined Nelson's documents and notes, interviewed Nelson, and listened to responses to questions recorded by Nelson before and after he created documents. This in-depth examination of Nelson's writing process filled a void in writing process research at the time (1982), as most investigations of the writing process had been conducted regarding student writers rather than developed and professional writers, particularly those in technical fields.

Selzer found that Nelson's process varied greatly from the process observed in the student writers. Nelson spent the vast majority of his time in the invention or arranging phases of the writing process. He invested less than twenty percent in the drafting process and under five percent in the revision process. Also, Selzer found Nelson's writing to be almost entirely linear, in that Nelson completed each step and generally did not loop back on prior stages of writing. This is different from dominant conventions of writing, which describe writing as a recursive process that generally loops back on prior steps (rather than proceeding in a linear fashion), and emphasized revision heavily.

This leads Selzer (and his readers) to conclude that professional and more scientific writers might approach the writing process very differently than the process is usually taught to student writers, and might call for different approach to teaching technical writing. From my experiences with composition, much of this makes sense. For instance, writers with heavy technical backgrounds may have already internalized habits that lend themselves to heavily weighing the processes of invention and arrangement. Greater preparation time (which beginning students almost never give much attention to) would result, as it did in Nelson's case, less need for revision due to greater preparation. Also, writers whose expertise comes from technical fields may have learned to approach processes in a linear way. For instance, architectural projects and scientific experiments often must be carefully planned in advance, and do not allow for a recursive approach, because once the work is in progress, errors may not be reversible after they occur. Because of this, writers with expertise in engineering and similar fields may be used to planning more and revising less.

Overall, Selzer's article lends an interesting perspective to research on how the writing process may be taught, and addresses the facts that technical writing students may need a differently structured writing process than, say, my composition students. However, Nelson represents only one person, and I think that while Selzer's case study is interesting, that it cannot be declared as necessarily representative for all technical writing professionals. His history of expertise, type of writing background, amount of practice, and comfort with writing do not necessarily represent engineers or technical writers as a whole, and one case study certainly doesn't not define such a broad group. However, it was an interesting look at the approach of one technical communicator.