The Composing Processes of an Engineer - Ron Choi ENG 574

Selzer, Jack. "The Composing Processes of an Engineer." College Composition and Communication, Vol. 34, No. 2, 1983: 178-187.

In this journal article, the author Selzer describes a detailed investigation into the composing process of a single engineer, Kenneth E. Nelson.  Selzer examined Nelson’s workplace writing process, collecting all interim written materials and having Nelson self-record a response to detailed questions regarding the conduct of each of his writing sessions.  Selzer also observed Nelson while writing and interviewed him at length regarding his observations.

Selzer reports that Nelson’s writing process was conventional in certain ways – for example, he partitioned the process into planning/invention, arranging, writing and revision sections.  However, Selzer also found that Nelson placed particular importance on the earlier planning, idea invention and arranging activities to minimize revisions, and effectively used a linear rather than recursive composing process.  The author found that Nelson spent the bulk of his writing time in the invention process based on a needs assessment of his audience.  Meanwhile, Nelson’s arrangement process relied heavily on the re-use of standard formats from previous reports and he generated drafts quickly and smoothly.  Once the initial draft is typed out, he revises it quickly, taking only 5% of the total composition time. 

Although a bit dated, I found this article to be one of the few detailed studies examining how engineers write.  Much of the article had phenomenological validity for me, in that Nelson put more emphasis on planning in order to reduce re-work, spent a lot of time generating the technical content/idea, and re-used his highly structured arrangements.  These seem like very “engineering” choices to me.  However, this study is limited by what also makes it such a detailed analysis – its focus on a single participant.  Selzer’s subject is an experienced engineer and writer, and there is no representation across a larger engineering population.  This study was also conducted in a pre-computer era, where reports were typed – making the reduction of revisions perhaps a bigger priority that it is today.