In Class Discussion: August 21st

Query: Why did Selzer want to study the composing processes of an engineer?

Ostensibly because the sort of writing done during the ordinary daily dealings of an engineer is not typically the sort of writing that one would tag as "professional" writing at all. The occupation of engineer carries with it many years of study and many more years of dedicating the lion's share of one's time and energies to numbers and formulas-- not the nuanced approaches needed to wield adequate professional verbiage. The fact that the two intermingle is an interesting one, and certainly draws one's attention to the variety of writing that can and should be considered "professional" writing.

Query: What did you find interesting/unique/surprising about Selzer's answer to the question: "How do engineers plan, arrange, write, and revise?" Also, how is he able to convince the reader that he is/was on target with his findings?

Perhaps the most surprising of all of Selzer's findings is that Engineers organize their proposals and writing in general in a very different way than those that write in other fields-- journalism or academia in specific-- perhaps as can be expected due to the utter dichotomy in methodology and subject material in which the two operate. Engineer writing tended to focus more on brainstorming and, once things were fleshed out, plowing through the creation of the proposal, sometimes reusing the old documents.

To discover this, he was simply studying all materials possible to analyze for patterns and/or tendencies, as well as simply questioning Nelson directly and observing him directly.