The summaryevaluation memo is a key assignment in this course. We.docx

The summary/evaluation memo is a key assignment in this
course. We will use it to strengthen rhetorical skills that you
will apply to the public documents you write, like proposals and
instructions. To complete a summary/evaluation memo, you will
read a document that I give you; you will summarize its content
briefly yet completely in your own words and then evaluate the
ideas by answering a question that I will pose about the
material. In the evaluation portion of the summary/evaluation
memo, you will use personal examples and your knowledge of
history and current events to relate the reading selection to your
own experience.
Summarizing and evaluating are essential to research and
critical thinking. I want you to recognize that they are different
processes that work together in important ways. However, they
are best managed separately so as to avoid incompleteness or
inefficiency. Like stages in the writing process, if you try to do
both at once, you might do both badly.
In some academic settings, students are encouraged to give their
views about a topic or idea and are discouraged from rehashing
background information. The best example is a book report.
Many teachers prefer to hear what students think about the book
and don't want simple plot summaries. What you think is more
important than the touchstone used to get you talking about
what you think.
By contrast, in technical and business situations, you must
summarize data completely and fairly before making any
judgments or recommendations. Readers want to know that the
recommendations you reach are not merely biased opinions. Do
the facts compel a fair-minded reader to reach the same
conclusions? Only by demonstrating that you fully understand
the information you are manipulating can you gain this
persuasive advantage. Summarizing accomplishes this goal.
Summarizing
Summarizing is a step in the "brainstorming" stage of the

writing process where you discover the details and examples
that will help you support or illustrate your argument. Rather
than identifying these details and examples from first-hand
research, technical writers often must extract them from a
written source. Summarizing is crucial to this enterprise.
Summarizing also allows you to view your own work more
objectively when revising. Think of summarizing as a three-part
process: reading, rephrasing, and organizing.
Reading. Read carefully, marking and underlining key passages.
Look for the THESIS of the text you are summarizing. Usually
the thesis will be given early in the text. If you're several
paragraphs into the document and have no idea what it's about,
make sure you haven't missed the thesis. Next, identify the
MAIN POINTS that the author uses to support or illustrate the
thesis, as well as the author's CONCLUSIONS. You can find
these supporting ideas in paragraphs within the document. Try
to generate a mini-summary of each paragraph--condensing the
ideas into as few sentences as necessary--in order to capture the
author's thesis, main points, and conclusions.
Rephrasing. Rephrase or translate the author's ideas into your
own words. Do not quote the author. This is a valuable exercise
that gives you ownership of the idea. Anyone can mimic
behavior. Any writer can repeat word-for-word what someone
else has written. But does that repetition ensure that the copy-
cat actually understands the points being made? By putting the
ideas into your own words, you gain control.
Organizing. It's best to follow the author's organizational
structure. Simply give your translation of the author's ideas in
the order in which they were presented.
The essential goal of summarizing is to condense the reading
selection while preserving content. Summarizing saves your
reader the time it would take to read the original. This is a
valuable saving. No wonder the executive summary that
precedes most important technical reports is so important--it
often is the only part of the report that gets careful attention

from the majority of readers!
Because the point of summarizing is to condense the original
text, something must be omitted. When summarizing, you
should omit the following:
· The author's examples. Summarize the prevailing argument but
do not include examples used to illustrate it. (Note that you will
use personal examples in the evaluation portion of the memo,
but not here. Remember, you're summarizing, not evaluating.)
· Irrelevant details.
· Background or biographical information about the author or
text.
· Jargon. Use terminology that everyone can understand.
· Remarks indicating that you're writing a summary.
· References to the article or author.
· Personal opinion. This point is the most important. Remember
our discussion above. If you introduce judgment into a
discussion of facts before presenting them completely, your
reader may suspect bias. When summarizing, do not make a
judgment about the material. You will save that judgment for
the "evaluation" portion of your summary/evaluation memo.
Evaluating
Evaluating information leads to judgments and
recommendations. Once the material is fully summarized,
complete and efficient evaluation can take place. Again, don't
worry about evaluating information until you're sure you have
all the information available.
This relationship between evaluating and summarizing is crucial
to the judicial system, which provides a good example of the
process of persuasive argumentation. If you have ever served on
a jury, you'll remember a basic instruction: don't make up your
mind about the case until the facts are all in. Then and only then
should you strive to reach a conclusion. Why? If you're too busy
thinking about exhibit A, you might miss an important point
made in exhibit B.
This basic process of argumentation deserves emphasis here.
Persuading someone to follow your recommendations is a three-

step dance. First, you present that facts completely.
Summarizing helps you do this. Second, you make conclusions
based on the facts. Evaluating helps you do this. Third, you
make recommendations based on your conclusions. Often, the
organization of documents reflects this important progression: a
section called "Background" or "History" or even "Summary of
the Data" is followed by a section called "Conclusions" that in
turn is followed by a section called "Recommendations." It's
vital that you do not introduce recommendations before leading
the reader to accept those recommendations as logical next steps
that follow from the conclusions.
Here's an example from a notorious murder trial that took place
in recent years. The police found evidence implicating the
accused when they entered his home shortly after two murders
took place. The defense argued that the evidence could not be
admitted because the police did not have a warrant. In fact, the
gate to the property had been locked, and an officer actually
climbed the fence and jumped over a wall to enter the property.
The officer did so because he noticed blood on the walkway.
The prosecution overcame the objection by carefully crafting a
Summary-Conclusions-Recommendation scenario:
Summary: The officer looked through the fence and saw the
blood. This summary of the facts that any person looking on
would have agreed existed led to a conclusion, an evaluation of
what the facts might mean.
Conclusion: The officer assumed someone inside the property
might be injured.
Recommendation: The officer jumped the fence. After all, the
conclusions he drew based on the facts he summarized led him
logically to recommend taking this action.
Once in, evidence was fair game. Note how another arrangement
of the argument might have failed to persuade the court to admit
that evidence. Arguing that the officer saw blood (summary),
thought the accused must be the murder because of the blood
stains (conclusion), and jumped the fence to arrest the accused
(recommendation) might have led the court to conclude that the

accused's rights had been violated.
Summarizing and evaluating thus are pivotal mental processes
that you will use to craft persuasive arguments. You will get
plenty of practice summarizing and evaluating in this course.
Summary/Evaluation Rubric
The following rubric provides guidelines that describe
performance completing summary/evaluation memos.
The basic goals of the summary portion of your memo follow:
1. Condense the reading selection. (Be brief yet complete; no
major ideas should be missing.)
2. Summarize completely. (Include the author's thesis, main
points, and conclusions.)
3. Paraphrase. (Put the author's ideas into your own words.)
The basic goals of the evaluation portion of your memo follow:
1. Relate the reading to personal experience.
2. Use logical, well-developed examples to explain the response
to the reading.
3. Demonstrate critical thinking.
Remember the CLASS system when reviewing the following
descriptions: C=completeness, L=literacy, A=attitude,
S=strategy, S=style.
THE A SUMMARY EVALUATION MEMO
C: The summary portion of the memo demonstrates superior
understanding of all of the main ideas contained in the reading.
The evaluation portion of the memo relates those ideas to
personal experience with appropriate, meaningful examples.
L: Commits no serious or chronic errors in grammar and usage.
A: Subordinates the reading material to personal experience. Is
not intimidated by the ideas.
S: Follows the assigned guidelines for completing S/E memos.
S: Writes fluently and remains in control; varies sentences to
reveal appreciation for rhythm; demonstrates a rich vocabulary.
THE B SUMMARY EVALUATION MEMO
C: The summary portion of the memo demonstrates a better than

average grasp of all of the main ideas contained in the reading.
The evaluation portion of the memo relates those ideas to
personal experience with appropriate, meaningful examples.
L: Commits no serious or chronic errors in grammar and usage,
though an infrequent mistake may appear.
A: Presents a complete summary and a thoughtful evaluation.
S: Follows the assigned guidelines for completing S/E memos.
S: Varies sentences and vocabulary to achieve an engaging
style.
THE C SUMMARY EVALUATION MEMO
C: The summary portion of the memo demonstrates a clear grasp
of all of the main ideas contained in the reading. The evaluation
portion of the memo relates those ideas to personal experience
but may not develop examples fully.
L: Commits errors in grammar and usage that suggest review of
mechanics is necessary.
A: Attempts a thoughtful evaluation though examples may lack
development.
S: Makes one deviation from assigned guidelines for completing
S/E memos.
S: Resorts to a flat, "official" style that shows little variety of
sentence structure or vocabulary.
THE D SUMMARY EVALUATION MEMO
C: The summary portion of the memo omits or demonstrates a
misunderstanding of one or more of the main ideas contained in
the reading. The evaluation portion of the memo uses illogical
or irrelevant examples or uses no examples to related those
ideas to personal experience.
L: Commits serious, frequent errors in grammar and usage.
A: Gives a terse summary or flippant evaluation.
S: Makes two or more deviations from assigned guidelines for
completing S/E memos.
S: Creates sentence patterns that distract or confuse the reader.

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Engineering Writing/Writing Engineering
Author(s): Dorothy A. Winsor
Source: College Composition and Communication, Vol. 41, No.
1 (Feb., 1990), pp. 58-70
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
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Engineering Writing/Writing Engineering
Dorothy A. Winsor
Knowledge is not found ready-made in nature. Instead,
knowledge is constructed in
the interplay between nature and the symbol systems we use to
structure and interpret
it. (See Bazerman, Shaping Written Knowledge, 291-317, for a
discussion of the way
nature and the statements we make about it limit one another.)
Over the last ten years,
this notion of the construction of knowledge has become
increasingly accepted by
those of us in the humanities and social sciences. We talk,
therefore, of language, and
particularly written language, as a tool for constructing ideas,
of a given field of
knowledge being created by the interaction of its practitioners'
texts, and of

knowledge itself, including scientific knowledge, as rhetorically
shaped. (See, for
instance, Lefevre; Bruffee; Nelson et al.; and Latour, Science in
Action.) We accept
the idea that our knowledge is shaped by our language. But this
view of language and
writing is not necessarily accepted in other parts of our
campuses, as those of us who
teach engineers, for example, can attest. Engineering defines
itself as a field
concerned with the production of useful objects. In keeping
with this concern,
engineers tend not only to see their own knowledge as coming
directly from physical
reality without textual mediation, but also to devalue the texts
engineers themselves
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produce, seeing them as simple write-ups of information found
elsewhere. Scholars
and teachers of technical writing have, to some degree, tended
to share this view.
Several of our most significant studies of engineers' writing, for
instance, examine the
way writing is used to transmit engineering knowledge rather
than to generate it

(Allen; Paradis et al.; Broadhead and Freed). Technical writing
textbooks, too, often
present writing solely as a means to report on what the engineer
already knows.
Mathes and Stevenson's influential Designing Technical
Reports, for instance, enjoins
the engineer to shift out of a technical mode and into a report
writing mode when
getting ready to write (3-8). Writing is viewed as part of an
engineer's job but not as
part of engineering, which presumably happens in some
separate, prior realm (cf.
AnDorothy A. Winsor is an assistant professor of
Communication at GMI Engineering
& Management Institute. She has published articles in Written
Communication and
IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. An earlier
version of this article
was delivered at the 1988 Penn State Conference on Rhetoric
and Composition. 58
College Composition and Communication, Vol. 41, No. 1,
February 1990
derson 3-6; Houp and Pearsall 8-9; Lannon 8). Insofar, however,
as engineering is
knowledge about objects and how to build them rather than the
actual building itself,
it is necessarily a symbol-bound field. That is, even this field,
which seems so tied to
physical reality, is necessarily accomplished through language.
While our theory says,
then, that engineering, like all knowledge, is filtered through
language, studies have
not yet shown how engineers' writing would look when
contemporary views about the
textual shaping of knowledge are applied. This paper is an
attempt to fill that gap. The

basis for this paper is (1) a file of engineering documents, (2)
comments made on
those documents by a mechanical engineer who had participated
in the engineering
activity they described, and (3) the engineer's own activity as he
wrote a technical
paper he later presented at a professional conference. The
engineer, whom I will call
John Phillips, had a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering. Phillips
had about fifteen years
of work experience and was a middle-level manager in the
Research and
Development department of a large manufacturing company. He
had the file of
documents because he was using them to write a paper to be
presented at the national
convention of the Society of Automotive Engineers. His paper
described his research
group's efforts to lower an engine's emissions in order to meet
new standards issued
by the Environmental Protection Agency. Phillips anticipated
that other researchers
would find the information useful in working toward lowering
their own engines'
emissions, although his results would have to be adapted by
them to suit their own
engines' different configurations. Examination of the texts
Phillips used and the one
he produced suggests the way engineers write both their
knowledge and themselves.
Writing Engineering Knowledge Textual mediation of
knowledge is difficult for
engineers to accept because they see themselves as working
directly on physical
objects. Examination of the documents Phillips was using,
however, showed that most

of the reports he had were based on written material more or
less distant from lab
results and that lab results themselves were writing. In the lab,
engineers use
instruments, which are materializations of previous knowledge,
to translate physical
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objects into written data which can then be manipulated and
studied. Some lab
instruments, such as a spectrograph or computer, actually write
directly on a piece of
paper. Others, such as a temperature gauge, translate physical
phenomena (such as
heat) into a useful written form (such as numbers). As Karin D.
Knorr says, In the
laboratory, the "texts" are provided by constantly accumulated
combinations of
measurement traces (graphs, figures, printouts, diagrams, tables,
etc.). (352)
These "texts" are then interpreted in order to become
engineering knowledge. Numerous
researchers have established the degree to which data fail to
speak for themselves and
are instead the subject of interpretation (see, for example,
Knorr; Law and Williams;

Latour, Science in Action). For the most part, this interpretation
too is carried out in writing.
This reliance on writing has been shown to be present in the
work of scientists. In
Laboratory Life, their study of laboratory scientists, Bruno
Latour and Steve Woolgar
noticed the omnipresence of writing. Latour and Woolgar
concluded that the objective
of lab activity is inscription, the conversion of physical reality
into written documents
ranging from lists of numbers to published papers. Inscription
can be seen as
happening in a chain because, although documents are written
as though they refer
directly to physical reality, they actually refer to and are based
on other documents.
Documents produced later are valued as they are able to
generalize the content of a
larger number of earlier documents. For instance, a lab report
giving pieces of specific
data can be used, along with other such reports, to create a
curve showing a trend. The
curve can then be used to support a theoretical claim in a paper.
Knowledge is thus
constructed through texts, not discovered in the original process
of lab work.
Moreover, the textual construction of knowledge is social in
nature because each
document must convince other people of its validity in order to
be accepted as
knowledge. Only documents that do convince others are used.
Documents that for any
reason cease to be convincing cease being treated as containing
knowledge. Thus, for
instance, twentieth-century scientists do not treat the contents
of astrology texts as

knowledge, although fourteenth century scientists did. In effect,
knowledge may be
defined as that which most people in a discourse community are
convinced of, and
what a discourse community is convinced of is indicated by the
texts it has accepted.
(See Bazerman, "Scientific Writing," for a survey of research in
the social
construction of scientific knowledge. See Dobrin for a
discussion of the relationship
between objectivity and social construction.) The phenomenon
of inscribed knowledge,
which Latour and Woolgar observed among scientists, is also
seen in the engineering
documents studied here. To some degree, this sameness is
surprising because
engineering differs from laboratory science in that it more
immediately aims at
practical application (cf. Miller, "Ethos"; Miller and Selzer). It
is supposed to result in
a physical product (in this case a low-polluting engine) whose
success or failure in the
marketplace is the measure of the engineer's work, as an
influential, frequently-cited
paper is of the scientist's. For the technologist, writing is a
means to the end of
producing an object. Knowledge is built for this end, rather than
valued for itself. The
engine, rather than a document, is "final publication" for the
engineer. There is, therefore, a
temptation to see engineering writing in the way engineers do,
as incidental to the
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project at hand. Examination of Phillips' work, however, reveals
that, while for him
writing is not the final product, it is an essential means by
which that product is
created because it is the essential means by which engineering
knowledge is created.
Thus, when Phillips sat down to write his paper, he did not
begin by looking at the
engine. For one thing, as a subject for a conference paper, the
engine both existed too
publicly and did not exist at all. It existed too publicly in that it
was being produced,
and other engine researchers could buy one and look at it
directly, so they did not
need the paper to know about the engine. (According to
Phillips, however, it was
unlikely competitors would look at the actual engine. They too
would be most likely
to consult a document-in this case certification reports filed
with EPA-rather than the
object.) The engine discussed in the paper did not exist at all in
that the actual
numbers for fuel economy, pollution, power, etc., reported in
the paper came, not
from engines actually being produced, but from engines set up
in lab test cells. Those
engines had long since been torn down and the cells devoted to
other purposes. So the

paper necessarily drew, not on contemporaneous physical lab
results, but on results
and analysis already written and interpreted in other documents.
In writing his own
paper, Phillips used a file of documents written by other people
in his workplace. The
bulk of the documents he had were, in order of their production,
data sheets, handouts
from oral presentations, and what his company called Progress
Reports and Technical
Reports. Data sheets are computer-produced lists of numbers
generated in a test cell.
They are produced by placing a probe in the engine to measure a
variable (for instance,
nitrous-oxide emissions) and then changing a condition (for
instance, temperature) in
a controlled way. The computer records results at various points
and prints them out
in a list engineers analyze to determine their success or failure
in meeting
government-mandated emission standards. Data sheets were
unique among the
documents Phillips had because they were the only ones
produced by looking directly
at physical reality. Every document subsequent to them was
produced by looking at
least partly at other documents. Thus, the computer was the
only "writer" here not
writing from previous texts. Though the computer writes
directly from observation of
an object, its writing is still socially shaped. First, the computer
and its attached
instruments are materializations of previously agreed-upon ways
of structuring the
world. The temperature scales used, for instance, are human
constructions as is the

language through which the computer functions. Thus, while
nature certainly acts
upon the computer, the reading the computer gets is coded by
the society which built
the computer. Second, the computer's activities are determined
by the research
program of Phillips' company and, in this case, of the larger
society represented by
EPA, which directed that low-pollution engines should be built.
Thus even the
depersonalized writing of the computer is socially shaped.
Phillips had a few
computer-generated data sheets but not many because, as will
become apparent, the
information in the data sheets had usually been transformed into
a more generalized
form in another report. Phillips found these later forms more
meaningful and more
useful. One can distinguish here between a document's authority
and its usefulness.
Data sheets were the most authoritative evidence in that later
documents could not
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contradict them once they had been accepted as accurate. But
data sheets were also

the least useful for Phillips in writing his paper because, despite
their
socially-constructed aspects, they contained the least
interpretation, the least meaning.
Interpretation and meaning were provided in later, supplemental
documents. The most
common later documents were figures from oral presentations.
Phillips had eight sets
of handouts from presentations given by two people who
worked for him. At one
point, he called these handouts, not the engine, "the raw
material" of his paper. In
Phillips' company, most decisions about research are made in
meetings at which
engineers orally present their progress to management (cf.
Paradis et al. 297). Phillips
said progress was reported orally rather than in writing because
meetings took less
time than writing and gave an opportunity for group discussion,
that is group
interpretation, of the data-social construction of facts. As he
said, "People can look at
the data and make different comments than other people might.
Or they'll say 'gee
that's good but that's not so good.'" The oral nature of these
meetings, however, does
not mean that they are free of writing. At the beginning of these
meetings, speakers
pass out handouts. Each page in the handout is a copy of a slide
or transparency the
engineer will show in his or her presentation. That slides or
transparencies are on film
rather than paper does not change their written nature. The
handouts are simply a
more conventional version of that writing, provided so that each
participant can have

a record of agreed-upon knowledge. Those present at the
meeting use their handouts
to make notes on, thus modifying the speaker's text to reflect
and solidify the
agreement reached orally at the meeting. Thus Phillips had
made pencilled additions
to the various sets of handouts. In one set, for instance, he
bracketed two curves on
one page and indicated that the difference between them was
20%, as those at the
meeting analyzed how much progress they had made. On
another page, he
supplemented a graph showing what would happen to one
pollutant under a given
condition with numbers showing what would happen to a second
pollutant not
originally shown, as those at the meeting discussed how
conditions that would help
reduce the first pollutant might increase the second. In addition
to reflecting group
interpretation, these handouts were more useful to Phillips than
data sheets because of
their graphic form. Usually the first sheet of the handout gives
the title and perhaps an
outline of the presentation, and then all the others are graphs of
some sort. These
graphs are sometimes hand-plotted from data sheets or more
often plotted directly by
the computer using the same data it uses to create data sheets.
The graphs are thus a
more generalized version of the data sheets. They are also more
selective, since the
speaker doesn't present all the data but only those which are, as
Phillips said,
"relevant." The graphs' generalized, selective nature thus makes
them more

interpretive than the data sheets. Charles Bazerman has noted
the degree to which
graphs are an interpretive form: Graphs, in addition to
displaying data, show trends
and allow comparison with other data and with theoretical
predictions displayed on
the same or neighboring graphs. Thus, in contrast to tables, in
graphs, the display of
data [is} more purposeful, interpretive, intellectually complex,
and intertwined with
the theoretical argument of the paper. ("Modern Evolution" 180)
The interpretive
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nature of the graphs from the oral presentations was part of
what made them useful to
Phillips. The importance of these handouts to Phillips' writing is
shown in his listing
as co-author the subordinate who made six of the sets of
handouts and gave those six
presentations. Phillips had decided on his own to write the
conference paper and had
prepared a draft before a co-worker suggested that Phillips'
subordinate should be
listed as co-author. Phillips agreed and added the subordinate's
name to his own on

the draft. The subordinate's name actually appeared on the draft
for several weeks
before anyone told him he was a coauthor. His involvement in
the putting of words on
paper came before Phillips wrote the conference paper, but
Phillips saw it as vital, as
is shown by his response when I asked if his subordinate had
done any of the writing:
No. I gave him a copy after I finished drafting and he's
supposed to be editing it. But, of
course . . . when he finished the work on the naturally aspirated
engine, he wrote an internal
R&D memo which is normal, standard procedure. . . . And tthe
subordinate] had, of course,
put on oral presentations throughout . . . so I had . . . oral
presentations that he had done.
The subordinate made only a few minor changes in Phillips'
draft. His "coauthorship"
was thus based on the development work he had done, as
inscribed in the documents
Phillips was using. The other documents Phillips used heavily
were Progress Reports
and Technical Reports, which are both written after a body of
research has been
completed and which document what has happened. Progress
Reports are sent by
research engineers to another of the company's divisions, which
is responsible for
getting the engine onto the market. This other division actually
requests the research
and pays for it. Technical Reports are progress reports which
stay within the R&D
area. They go to technical people who have been involved, their
management, and the
company library. Phillips had several Technical and Progress
Reports, and he used

them because they summarized and interpreted a large amount
of activity. These
reports reflected final, agreed-upon knowledge, and it was in
them, not the engine,
that the knowledge lay for Phillips. Knowledge of Document
Equals Knowledge of Thing
The result of all this is that for Phillips, knowledge of the
engine and knowledge of
documents about the engine were identical. This was evident in
a conversation I had with
him about how he wrote his own paper. His paper was on the
engine's development
and was intended to give information about engine behavior
which researchers had
picked up along the way rather than to describe the final engine
configuration, which,
as I have said, was readily available in the marketplace. He used
the documents I have
mentioned by ordering them chronologically, selecting a
starting point, and then using
the order created to provide content and structure for his paper.
Using the documents, he
said, he could start with the one I had decided was appropriate
and say the first thing we did
was test this . . . and then here are the results. Then I went
through various things that we
tried that were successful and unsuccessful. When I asked him,
Phillips said that by
"going through various things," he meant going through various
handouts. Thus a
document describing a "thing" is substituted for the "thing"
itself. The blurring of the
line between document and thing is also evident in the
conference paper Phillips
finally produced. The first page and a half of the eleven-page
paper describe the

physical configuration of the engine and contain five
photographs of engine parts.
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These photographs and the accompanying sentences seem to
refer directly to physical
reality: "The engine uses a lightweight, liner less block with an
open-face fire deck
(Figure 1)." In the second half of the second page, however, the
figures change from
photos to graphs, and photos never return. Graphs are, of
course, a written trace
several steps further removed from thing than photos are.
Sentences like the following
begin to appear: "This modification of the fuel/cycle curve was
accomplished by
using a thin, rectangular feed port for the plunger for the 8.2L
injector instead of the
normal round hole." Note that this sentence talks about altering
the "curve" on a graph
(that is, writing) and altering the engine as if the two were
equivalent. The next
sentence continues this treatment of engine and writing: "Figure
6 shows that this
unusual feed port increases the fuel/cycle at higher speeds (due
to throttling of fuel

escaping during the feed port closure) and the result is reduced
fuel/cycle slope." Here,
writing (that is, Figure 6, which is a line graph) is evidence for
engine behavior (an increase
in the amount of fuel per cycle) which in turn alters writing
("slope," a characteristic of graph
lines). Writing about the engine and the engine itself are
unclearly differentiated. For
Phillips, at any rate, engineering knowledge was knowledge of
documents at least as
much as knowledge of things. This is not to say that he had no
knowledge of the thing,
only that he had no knowledge that was not inextricably bound
up with writing.
Writing the Engineer Engineers think of themselves as gathering
facts and then acting.
They usually view reports either as a means of presenting facts
to management so that
action can occur or as a way to store facts for future use.
Examination of the
documents Phillips used and produced, however, suggests that,
in his case, they also
have what Clifford Geertz refers to as an "interpretive" function
for the engineers
themselves. As Geertz says cockfighting is for the Balinese, for
Phillips and his
colleagues a report is often "a story they tell themselves about
themselves" (448).
Like the Balinese cockfight, such reports have a free element of
art or ritual or play
about them, supplementing their practical uses. In this case, the
reports are designed
to show the writers' respect for fact-based actions and thus show
that they belong to
the community of engineers. This function of reports is
demonstrated, for instance, in

the form of what Phillips' company calls Technical Reports.
These reports
summarized a body of research which might have happened over
periods as brief as a
month or as long as two years. Phillips thought of them
primarily as a resource for
future researchers. They went to his company's library, where
they were, he said, "the
only permanent record we have of what happened." The reports'
design, however,
does not match this archival purpose. For one thing, Technical
Reports always include
a list of recommendations despite the fact that they are written
after development
work has ceased and decisions have already been made. Many of
the
recommendations made in a Technical Report have actually
already been carried out.
Thus, for example, one recommendation in a report Phillips was
using reads
"Re-evaluate and clarify tip spray angle effects," although tests
to accomplish this
were already being carried out before the report was written and
distributed.
According to Phillips, any recommendation which had not
already been acted upon
was not likely to be. So why include the recommendations at
all? After pondering this
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question, Phillips said he did not know. Their inclusion was
simply customary. A
similar pattern was observable in the Progress Reports sent to
the company division
requesting and budgeting for the research. These reports were
written after work had
been concluded and decisions made. Their recipient had already
been given all the
information contained in them in oral presentations used for
decision making. The
Progress Report's purpose, then, was to "go to [the division) in
a kind of formal way and they
would have it and it would show why we were doing what we
were doing and what the result
was." That the division already had this information was
irrelevant. In other words,
these documents justify decisions already made but are written
as though they are the basis of
the decision and would logically come before it, not after it.
This puzzling inclusion of
recommendations and reasons for already-made decisions
suggests a function for
these documents beyond their practical one. These documents
were not intended to
fool anyone. Most of them would never actually be read by
anyone. What, then, could
be the function of the documents' supplementary elements? One
possible explanation
is that the primary object of such writing is to interpret these
engineers' activities to
match engineering ideals. Engineering decisions are often made
in the middle of

research where conclusions are not clear at all. They are
necessarily based at least
partly on hunches, creative instinct, and tacit knowledge gained
from past experience.
But these factors have no place in engineering ideals, which
stress logic and relying
on facts that will speak for themselves and make decisions
obvious. These writers
seem to be explaining their actions to one another and most
importantly to themselves
so that those actions would square with their ideal notion of
themselves and their
work. They were, in other words, writing themselves as
engineers. Logic as a Plzausible
Story Scientists have previously been described as performing a
similar kind of
selfinterpretation. In an article called "Is It Possible to
Reconstruct the Research
Process?" Bruno Latour discusses the published papers
produced by a group of
scientists working on protein synthesis. Of the scores of
possible protein analogs, the
scientists worked on only a few. The analogs to be worked on
were not chosen totally
randomly, but neither were they chosen as part of a totally
logical research program.
Analog choice, for instance, could come about because a
scientist working elsewhere
had published a paper which made trying one analog easier than
trying another; or
equipment could be available to make one choice more plausible
than another. No
matter how the choice was made, however, published papers
presented the analogs in
logical groups. Although the groups and therefore the logic used
varied from paper to

paper, groups of analogs were always presented as though only
logic had determined
their selection (64). Latour sees what we might call this
"creative accounting" as a
kind of logic. "If logic," he says, was taken out of the laudative
meaning that it has
thad] since Aristotle and was understood as logos or path, then
we could say the
[purpose of the] research process is to build paths, or, to use
another source of
metaphor, to tell plausible stories. (66) Scientists create rather
than describe a logical
world in which they themselves behave logically. 66
In Phillips' account of writing his own paper, the creation of a
logical, engineering self
is evident. Phillips even used terms similar to Latour's. He
repeatedly described
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himself as "telling the story" of the engine's development, and
he knew he sometimes
rearranged the facts for the sake of the "story." When he went
through the handouts
from the oral presentations, for instance, he had to decide what
to include. "In some
cases," he said, there are some anomalies in the data that are

hard to explain and you
have to think how am I going to explain them or how am I going
to avoid showing
them so that we don't have to explain them and so we have a
nice, consistent story to
present. He included one finding that was, he said, a little bit
misleading because the
improvement we made to meet '88 [emission] standards we'll
actually undo for 1991
standards because we've learned it's detrimental to 1991, but we
won't tell people that.
He departed from his original list of items to be covered
because, as he said, sometimes "you
find out you don't have good information on that or the test was
not accurate or quite
confusing so you might say 'I'll skip that subject.'" His
difficulty, Phillips said, was "trying to
figure out how to make a sensible, clear story out of data . . .
and yet Inot} confuse by
showing other results." For Phillips, as for the other writers who
produced the Technical
Reports and so on described above, telling a "sensible, clear
story" was important not only
because it would be easier for the reader to follow, but also
because it would create the writer
and the knowledge community he represented in a desirable
way. Because knowledge
communities have a stake in how those representing them
appear, communities both
aid and limit individual members in creating desirable selves.
They do so through the
forms of writing available (cf. Miller, "Genre"). The standard
formats available in any
discipline control the way a writer can create his or her self.
Thus, for Phillips, the
inclusion of recommendations in a Technical Report is a matter

of custom, and so he
does it. He thus demonstrates his mastery of what Toulmin calls
a discipline's "transmit," its
forms of explanation: [T]he core of the transmit . . . is the
repertory of intellectual techniques,
procedures, skills and methods of representation, which are
employed in "giving
explanations" of events and phenomena within the scope of the
science concerned. (159) For
an engineer to be accepted as an engineer, he or she must write
and speak in the
already-created forms and tongues of engineering. Thus, while
it is possible to say
that engineers create themselves in texts, it is also possible to
say that they are created
by the texts available to them. Conclusion This study is, of
course, extremely limited in
its scope, and further research needs to be done. Phillips is only
one writer in only one
company. There are, moreover, certain aspects of his work
which may make him
more dependent on writing than other engineers would be. First,
he works in a
Research and Development department and thus could be seen
as functioning more
like a scientist, more like a knowledge generator than, say, an
engineer in one of the
plants producing the engine he helped design. Second, his
research is on engine
emissions which are, for the most part, invisible to the naked
eye and thus may
depend more on translation to writing than other research areas.
I suspect, however,
that observations of engineers in the work place will reveal a
large dependence on
writing, particularly if they include observations of writing such

as instrument traces,
data sheets, and log books. Selzer, for instance, observed an
engineer consulting
numerous documents as an inventing technique. These pre-
report documents are
important parts of knowledge generation whose study has been
largely neglected in
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favor of knowledge transmitting reports. In addition, despite the
factors mentioned
above, there are reasons to believe Phillips and his company are
fairly typical in the
way they work with writing. Phillips' communication skills were
rated "Outstanding"
in his most recent evaluation, and thus his writing cannot differ
much from what his
company desires. Moreover, the paper he produced was
accepted by and presented at
the national conference of the Society of Automotive Engineers,
suggesting that his
writing also fits the expectations of his discipline. In addition,
engineers leave
Phillips' company to work elsewhere and come from other
companies to his. Phillips
himself worked at another company for two years before joining

his present employer.
Though different companies do, of course, have different local
practices, people seem
to have little trouble adjusting, suggesting that the practices
described here are
common ones. I used to tell my engineering students that
writing is what engineers do.
By this, I meant simply that they would spend more of their
work time writing than
they probably thought they would. This study suggests that
writing is, indeed, what
engineers do. They inscribe a written representation of physical
reality and then use
more writing to build agreed-upon knowledge and their own
characters as engineers.
In inhabiting a world of language, engineers are not unique.
Indeed, as I said in the
opening of this article, they resemble the rest of us, just as our
theories would predict.
The engineer differs from the rest of us, perhaps, only in
showing greater resistance to
knowing that language mediates experience. For those who
choose to work with
machines, belief in their direct presence is very important
because direct presence can
allow direct mastery of and power over reality. That the mastery
comes through
language raises the distressing thought that it may be "only"
mastery of language.
Exertion of power through language is obviously not limited to
engineers. As I
worked on this paper, I was uncomfortably aware that I, too,
was attempting to exert
power. In particular, I am one of a group of researchers outside
technology and
science who claim that scientists have no special way of

knowing unavailable to the
rest of us. It seems to me that in part we are reacting to the
privileged position our
culture awards science and technology as ways of knowing. It is
therefore likely that
we exaggerate the irrational aspects of science. As a scholar of
writing, it is great fun
to say that engineers are actually writing about other writing, a
field I presumably
know more about than they do. They think their field, their way
of knowing is
superior? Nonsense! Their field isn't even their field; it is mine.
But I also bow to
privileged scientific ideology by posing as knowing empirically
with nothing between
me and what I see. Unmediated knowledge, however, is not
possible for any of us. All
writing, including mine, constructs the world which the writer
can bear to inhabit.
Works Cited
Alien, Thomas J. Managing the Flow of Technology:
Technology Transfer and the
Dissemination of Technological Information in an R&D
Organization. Cambridge:
MIT P, 1977.
Anderson, Paul V. Technical Writing: A Reader-Centered
Approach. San Diego:
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Harcourt, 1987.
Bazerman, Charles. "Modern Evolution of the Experimental
Report in Physics:
Spectroscopic Articles in Physical Review, 1893-1980." Social
Studies of Science 14
(Winter 1984): 163-96. --.
"Scientific Writing as a Social Act: A Review of the
Literature." New Essays in
Technical and Scientific Communication. Ed. Paul Anderson, R.
John Brockmann,
and Carolyn Miller. Farmingdale: Baywood, 1983. 156-84. .
Shaping Written Knowledge. The Genre and Activity of the
Experimental Article in
Science. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1988.
Broadhead, Glenn J, and Richard C. Freed. The Variables of
Composition. Process
and Product in a Business Setting. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
UP, 1986.
Bruffee, Kenneth A. "Social Construction, Language, and the
Authority of
Knowledge." College English 48 (December 1986): 773-90.
Dobrin, David N. "Is Technical Writing Particularly Objective?"
College English 47
(March 1985): 237-51.
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York:
Basic Books, 1973.
Houp, Kenneth W., and Thomas E. Pearsall. Reporting
Technical Information. 6th ed.
New York: Macmillan, 1988.
Knorr, Karin D. "Tinkering Tow!ard Success: Prelude to a
Theory of Scientific

Practice." Theory and Society 8 (April 1979): 347-76. Lannon,
John M. Technical
Writing. 3rd ed. Boston: Little, 1985.
Latour, Bruno. "Is It Possible to Reconstruct the Research
Process?" The Social
Process of Scientific Investigation. Ed. Karin D. Knorr, Roger
Krohn, and Richard
Whitley. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1981. 53-73. ----.
Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers
Through Society.
Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987. Latour, Bruno, and Steve
Woolgar. Lahoratory Life.
Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979.
Law, John, and R. J. Williams. "Putting Facts Together: A
Study of Scientific
Persuasion." College Composition and Communication 41
(February 1990)
Lefevre, Karen B. Invention as a Social Act. Studies in Writing
and Rhetoric.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1987.
Mathes, J. C., and Dwight W. Stevenson. Designing Technical
Reports: Writing for
Audiences in Organizations. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976.
Miller, Carolyn R. "The Ethos of Science and the Ethos of
Technology." CCCC
Convention. Washington, Mar. 1980. --.
"Genre as Social Action." Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (May
1984): 151-67.
Miller, Carolyn R., and Jack Selzer. "Special Topics of
Argument in Engineering
Reports." Writing in Nonacademic Settings. Ed. Lee Odell and
Dixie Goswami. New
York: Guilford, 1985. 309-41.
Nelson, John S., Allan Megill, and Donald N. McCloskey. The
Rhetoric of the
Human Sciences. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1987.

Paradis, James, David Dobrin, and Richard Miller. "Writing at
Exxon ITD: Notes on
the Writing Environment of an R&D Organization." Writing in
Nonacademic Settings.
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Ed. Lee Odell and Dixie Goswami. New York: Guilford, 1985.
281-307.
Selzer, Jack. 'The Composing Processes of an Engineer."
College Composition and
Communication 34 (May 1983): 178-87.
Toulmin, Stephen. Human Understanding: The Collective Use
and Evolution of
Concepts. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972.
Call for Articles
A proposal for a collection of essays, Visuaal Literacy: Images
in Language, Media, & Mind, is being
developed in cooperation with the NCTE Committee on Public
Doublespeak. This book-length
manuscript will examine the nature of images in language, mass
media, and thought.
How can we deal with the images flowing from Madison
Avenue and Washington?

How are images used to hide truth or inflate reality? Does
critical thinking include
visual literacy? What does it mean to be visually literate in
writing and reading? How
are these things best taught? Deadline for essay proposals:
September 1, 1990. For
further information, contact Roy F. Fox, Department of English,
Boise State University,
Boise, ID 83725, or call (208) 385-3426. 70
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Summaries roughly should be 10-15% of the original. Thus, if
you are summarizing a ten page article, your summary should be
one-to-two pages. Your evaluation should be brief yet complete,
using PERSONAL EXAMPLES from your experience at work,
in school, through reading/watching media, and other venues

that inform your insights into why you agree with, disagree
with, or wish to modify in some way the author's main
argument.
Protocol:
1. Follow general principles as covered in your Guidelines for
Summarizing and Evaluating lecture.
2. Follow the template provided in your lecture. That means:
Use those four headings to organize your summary/evaluation.
You are summarizing when you identify the author's THESIS,
MAIN POINTS, and CONCLUSIONS. You switch from
"summary" guidelines at that point and start using "evaluation"
guidelines in the final memo/email heading, EVALUATION.
In short: THESIS/MAIN POINTS/CONCLUSIONS sections of
your memo/email refer to the author's argument, while you are
speaking from your own experience, using first-person voice if
you wish, in the EVALUATION section.
Assignment:
Summarize and evaluate Dorothy A. Winsor's "Engineering
Writing/Writing Engineering."
After summarizing Winsor's thesis, main points, and
conclusions, answer the following "Question for Evaluation":
In studying engineers' perceptions of the amount of writing that
their jobs require, Winsor writes, "This study suggests that
writing is, indeed, what engineers do. They inscribe a written
representation of physical reality and then use more writing to
build agreed-upon knowledge and their own characters as
engineers. In inhabiting a world of language, engineers are not
unique. Indeed, as I said in the opening of this article, they
resemble the rest of us, just as our theories would predict. The
engineer differs from the rest of us, perhaps, only in showing
greater resistance to knowing that language mediates
experience." Do you agree or disagree that engineers "show
greater resistance to knowing that language mediates
experience"? How do you feel about the us/them binary that
Winsor establishes in this piece, or do you think that she is
fairly even handed?

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