Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Here are some items I see often when working with college engineering and science students – part 1.

For the past couple of years, I have been working with engineering and science students at George Mason University on their writing. I found myself spending the vast majority of the time discussing a small set of items. This post and the next post will discuss these common items. This first post discusses what I call the “Big Concepts.” The next post will discuss the “Smaller Concepts.”

Does this thing make sense?

I suppose that this is the biggest concept. It is the one question writers must ask themselves. Since the writer wrote the piece, it is also one of the more difficult questions to answer. Other readers can answer the question easily. Hence, find someone else to read what you write.

Raise your thoughts

The writer should back away from the individual words and try to “focus on the big picture.” (That is a contradiction that I use just to grab attention. Don’t use it yourself.) Try to express:

• one thought per section
• one thought per paragraph
• one thought per sentence.

Write in paragraphs

Write paragraph by paragraph. There should be one thought per paragraph. State those single thoughts in order. Does the flow of thoughts make any sense? If not, rearrange, add, and subtract until they do.

Order of writing

You don’t have to write the sections and paragraphs in order. You can write the last section first, the middle section second, and so on. The first section is often the most difficult to write, so leave it until later after your mind is humming along.