CE News Recognizes Importance of Good Communication Skills

CE News Magazine has recognizes the important of good communication skills for civil engineers in their January 2011 issue of the magazine. Here is an excerpt of the Professional Practice column of the magazine, in an article entitled "Change is Good":

Strike one — Civil engineers are taught to be civil engineering professionals, not civil engineering businesspeople. The result: They know a lot about civil engineering and all too little about business in general and the professional service business in particular.

Strike two — Many civil engineers are ineffective communicators. Some, it seems, sense these deficits at an early age and find comfort in math and science, where a lack of expository skills doesn’t matter all that much; numbers do the talking.

Strike three — Many civil engineers have weak interpersonal skills, except when it comes to other civil engineers who want to talk about civil engineering. Regrettably, in the civil engineering business, most of the folks civil engineers deal with are businesspeople, administrators, “finance guys,” contractors (who may be graduate civil engineers but now live in a far different world), government officials, and so on. Those civil engineers who do not fit the stereotype — the gregarious extroverts — have a huge advantage over their less-outgoing brethren because the service business in general and the professional service business in particular are all about people.

Good communication skills obviously include writing well. Numbers can't always do the talking for surveyors and engineers, especially when dealing with members of the public and with clients. Numbers might make sense to us, but they need to be skillfully interpreted for others.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Typography for Laywers

I ran across a link to a web site entitled "Typography for Lawyers". The link was on a technical writing blog.

Here is the introduction found on the typography web site:

Even though the legal profession depends heavily on writing, legal typography is often poor. Some blame lies with the strict typographic constraints that control certain legal documents (e.g. court rules regarding the format of pleadings).
But the rest of the blame lies with lawyers. To be fair, I assume this is for lack of information, not lack of will. This website fills that void. There are numerous guides on typography for generalists but none specifically aimed at lawyers. So as one of the few typographers-turned-attorneys in America—yes, there are others—I figure that if I don’t do it, nobody will.

This made me think we need a typography for surveyors web site. :]

I'll bet surveyors use typography even more than lawyers, and typography plays a key role in the appearance and usability of the maps, parcel geometry descriptions, reports, and other documents we prepare.

I'll be checking this typography web site out more when I get time.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Best Book On Writing

The best book (by far) that I have found on writing is Writing the Easy Way. This book is short, simple, clear, and helped me make definite improvements in my own writing.

Get a copy and keep it at your desk.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Proofreading Your Own Writing

The SitePoint web site has several tips on how to proofread your own writing. This is somethign land surveyors and civil engineers often have to do, especially when they are working late to beat a deadline and no one else is in the office.

I especially like the following tips from the blog post at SitePoint:

(1) Read your document out loud.
(2) Read your document backwards.
(3) Keep a notebook or list of common writing mistakes that you make and check this when proofreading your own work.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Plain Language in the Federal Government

A group of federal government professionals have put together a web site with information on writing plain language documents. Although the material was prepared for other federal government employees, many of the guidelines apply to other types of technical writing. You can download a copy of the Federal Plan Language Guidelines in PDF format from the plainlanguage.gov web site.

The Sunburned Surveyor

Introduction

This blog will serve as a place to collect tips and advice on how to write better documents. The type of documents that can be read by "normal" people that don't come from a technical background. I find that technical people like surveyors (and civil engineers) have a difficult time communicating with written words. Some fail to recognize how important it is. Others know it is important, but struggle with how they can improve their writing.

I hope the information that will be presented on this blog can help technical people, including surveyors and civil engineers, write simple and clear documents.

The Sunburned Surveyor