| This article gives a brief overview of
some of the things that I learned in my technical writing class
about technical writing as an engineer, specifically the proposal. There are a few different variations to a proposal. It can be internal or external, which means you can write it to someone within your organization or to someone who is apart of a different organization. The next varation of the proposal is whether it is solicited or unsolicited. A solicited proposal is when the recipient in some way requested the proposal. They can do this a number of ways: by contacting you or by putting out some sort of ad. Proposal can be written to makes things better, fix a problem, or research a problem. For my class I wrote a research proposal, and I found that you do not want to suggest that you already know the answer to the problem. If you do this, then whats the point of even doing the research. The standard proposal normally begins with a memo to the person or organization which the writer seeks hire. This memo includes a summary of the proposal and attached to this document is the actual document. The document contains the followiing sections: an introduction, background on problem, benefits and feasiblity, method, schedule, qualifications, costs, and a conclusion. The introduction should tell the reader what the proposal is about, why you wrote it, and it someway motivate the reader to be interested in the proposal. The next section in the proposal is the background section. This section should give a detailed desciption of the problem the project wishes to correct, or in the case of a research proposal, what you want to study. The next section is the benefits and feasibility section. In this section, you tell the reader the advantages or benefits of doing the proposed project. The following section describes the method of the proposed project and also describes the finished project. The next part is a schedule of the tasks to be completed with deadlines. After that comes the part where you tell the reader how you are quailified for this project. After you covince the reader that you are qualified you tell him how much it is going to cost, this should be detailed to let the reader know what the money is for. After that conclude things up by bringing the readers focus back to benefits of the proposed work. By reading the Dr. Moody's article The Passive Engineer, I learned the importance of tone in a technical document. I found the article on a website put up by Pro Training Company. They specialize it Technical communication. They say that technical documnents should be written with a passive tone, so the work is not contaminated by personal opinion. Which makes since if you think about it. If you do a bunch of research about something. You want the reader to know that it is research justified, not just your opinion. I hope these tips can be useful to anyone attempting a technical document, and specifically the proposal. To find the resources used go back to the homepage and click on the works cited link. |