| List of Figures | p. xi |
| List of Tables | p. xiii |
| Acknowledgments | p. xiv |
| The Engineers | p. 1 |
| Introduction: technological creativity | p. 1 |
| Engineering is essentially a creative profession | p. 1 |
| Why they became engineers | p. 3 |
| Engineers have to write a lot | p. 6 |
| The customer | p. 8 |
| Types of engineer | p. 9 |
| Snap-shot of an engineering work-force | p. 9 |
| Creativity versus restriction | p. 14 |
| Communication skills: engineers' aspirations | p. 19 |
| Final comment on the discourse community and aims of this book | p. 21 |
| Engineering Practices and Procedures | p. 23 |
| Engineering procedures | p. 23 |
| The burden of responsibility | p. 23 |
| Engineering methodologies: the importance of procedures | p. 24 |
| Engineers' attempts to control writing behaviour | p. 27 |
| Writing procedures and guidelines | p. 30 |
| Written, and then often ignored | p. 30 |
| Simplified English | p. 32 |
| Information Technology Security Evaluation Criteria (ITSEC) | p. 35 |
| Customer-imposed writing constraints | p. 36 |
| Collaborative writing practices | p. 39 |
| What do engineers write with other people? | p. 39 |
| Risk-taking and the textual straw man | p. 41 |
| Collaborative writing case study | p. 44 |
| Evaluating the straw man: engineers' opinions | p. 51 |
| Summary | p. 53 |
| The Engineering Product | p. 55 |
| Introduction: setting the scene | p. 55 |
| The product life-cycle | p. 56 |
| Knowledge accrual in engineering design | p. 56 |
| Temporal considerations in product design | p. 60 |
| A textual perspective of the product life-cycle | p. 64 |
| Thresholds and stages in product development | p. 65 |
| Summary | p. 69 |
| Engineering Texts | p. 71 |
| Introduction: engineers' view of texts | p. 71 |
| Formal versus informal | p. 72 |
| Ephemeral versus 'lasting' texts | p. 73 |
| The documents engineers write | p. 75 |
| Engineers don't write anything they don't value | p. 75 |
| The product is the focus | p. 77 |
| The main text types | p. 81 |
| The problem documents | p. 84 |
| Special features of engineers' language | p. 86 |
| Technical description is far from simple | p. 86 |
| Complex simplicity | p. 88 |
| Summary | p. 90 |
| Engineering Specifications and Requirements | p. 92 |
| Introduction: delivering on a promise | p. 92 |
| What are specifications and requirements? | p. 93 |
| Clarifying terms | p. 93 |
| Specifications are the textual bedrock of engineering | p. 95 |
| A glut of guidelines, but a dearth of information | p. 96 |
| The Customer Requirement | p. 98 |
| Cardinal point specifications: customer's wishes and ideas | p. 99 |
| Control of the design process: the need to manage change | p. 103 |
| A recipe for success (or disaster) | p. 103 |
| Categories of specification | p. 109 |
| Hierarchies in requirements | p. 109 |
| A special language: engineers have devised their own rules | p. 111 |
| What engineers don't like about 'English' | p. 111 |
| The special case of modal verbs | p. 113 |
| Monitoring requirements in computer databases | p. 116 |
| A specification document case study | p. 119 |
| Concluding observations | p. 121 |
| The Bid Process and Persuasion | p. 122 |
| The bid process | p. 122 |
| Proposal writing consumes huge financial resources | p. 123 |
| Types of proposal | p. 124 |
| Readers and writers of engineering proposals | p. 126 |
| The writers and bid preparation | p. 128 |
| The Customer Requirement: a catalyst for proposal writing | p. 130 |
| Economic and social impact of winning (or losing) | p. 134 |
| Persuasion | p. 136 |
| Engineers versus marketing colleagues | p. 136 |
| Attempting to pin down the notion 'persuasion' | p. 136 |
| Engineers' ambivalence towards overtly persuasive language | p. 139 |
| Engineers' attempts at restrained persuasion | p. 142 |
| Restrained persuasion: Example 1 | p. 142 |
| Restrained persuasion: Example 2 | p. 145 |
| Restrained persuasion: Example 3 - composing text for a generic proposal | p. 146 |
| Concluding observations | p. 152 |
| The Presentation of Engineering Proposals | p. 153 |
| Introduction: textual cosmetics | p. 153 |
| Physical features: size, formats, and outline structure | p. 154 |
| The textual 'extent' of proposals | p. 154 |
| Significant parts of the proposal | p. 159 |
| An overview of each section | p. 159 |
| Generic outline structure of proposals | p. 160 |
| The front cover: engineers' use of visuals | p. 163 |
| Proprietary page: laying claim to design rights | p. 172 |
| Acronyms unlimited | p. 174 |
| Oral presentations of proposals: a case study | p. 178 |
| Feedback on oral presentation | p. 182 |
| Conclusion | p. 186 |
| Engineering Proposals: Discourse and Information Structure | p. 187 |
| Introduction | p. 187 |
| Proposals persuade | p. 187 |
| 'Selling point' versus 'benefit' | p. 189 |
| Guidance on proposal writing: a historical perspective | p. 189 |
| Up to 1980: the popularity of report writing | p. 190 |
| Post-1980: proposals receive scant attention | p. 193 |
| A hierarchy of discourse functions | p. 196 |
| Macro-level discourse functions | p. 196 |
| Eight key discourse topics | p. 196 |
| Themes | p. 201 |
| Themes according to Ellis (1997) | p. 202 |
| Themes according to Stross (1990) | p. 202 |
| The identification of proposal components (PCs) | p. 206 |
| The search for an analytical framework | p. 206 |
| Towards a more topic-focused description | p. 208 |
| Conclusion: reverse-engineered text | p. 212 |
| Executive Summaries | p. 214 |
| Introduction: what are executive summaries? | p. 214 |
| Purpose of the executive summary | p. 214 |
| Structure, information content, and presentation of executive summaries | p. 218 |
| The summary as a notion | p. 218 |
| A neglected genre | p. 219 |
| Persuasion through selling points: discourse functions | p. 220 |
| Examples of executive summaries | p. 226 |
| Executive summaries and proposals: a structural comparison | p. 231 |
| Patterns of information structure | p. 234 |
| Summary | p. 240 |
| References | p. 241 |
| Index | p. 246 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
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