How well do you inform?

Handling details well is the hallmark of anyone who communicates well, yet most engineers write reports that are not analytical but catalogical. Catalogical writing tends to handle details serially without implying which ones are more important than others. Analytical writing, however, clearly distinguishes among the details. To be aware of the difference is an important step in creating an informative written report. Engineers can apply four tests to their writing to measure how well they are informing. They can (1) count the prepositional phrases and rewrite them into dependent clauses; (2) see how frequently their sentences are cast in subject-verb-object order and rewrite them for variety; (3) identify and replace abstract nouns with concrete nouns; and (4) recognize passive verbs and replace them with more active and more informative ones.