[Elecraft] Tech Writing

[Don Wilhelm]

  Al,

I believe the Grade 7 educational level is "standard" for tech writing.
I recall that when I was at IBM evaluating tech documents, that was the 
level they were written for.  It seems as though a technician educated 
in his field is not expected to be able to comprehend the English 
language beyond the 7th grade level.  Doesn't that speak wonders for the 
goals of our education system!!

In my engineering career, I have struggled with engineering graduates 
who could not even form a sentence with proper capitalization and 
punctuation and spacing (two spaces after a period, etc.).

I recall a grumpy old college professor from my engineering curriculum 
who taught a course in what was called "Western Civilization" - which 
was a combination of history, English composition, reading and writing 
skills.  That bold professor had the audacity to state that his course 
was the most important in our engineering studies - we laughed then, but 
it turned out that he was correct.  An engineer who cannot communicate 
effectively through the written word, is just not effective in his task, 
and the rest of the knowledge is for naught.

73,
Don W3FPR

On 6/30/2011 8:56 PM, Al Gulseth wrote:
> Dave,
>
> The reason they told you to write for a Grade 7 educational level was probably
> because they heard about some of the students my dad dealt with when he was a
> junior level radio instructor in the Coast Guard in WWII. From his
> description it sounded like he was teaching a basic "shop" (tool usage) class
> at the time.
>