ABSTRACT
This chapter explains organization guidelines that can have an immediate impact on engineer performance as a writer. It should give engineers confidence that efficient organization can be learned and that the extra work when organizing is a shortcut in disguise. Presenting general statements such as results or conclusions before the specifics such as observations, procedures, or descriptions of equipment has two distinct advantages: this strategy helps to clarify the significance of a message in the writer’s mind and helps to answer the reader’s question about why he should look at this piece of writing. A common mistake is not to distinguish clearly between the levels of generalization and to present results as if they were conclusions, or to present recommendations that are so open-ended that they do not relate well to the organizational context. A writer often deals not only with one generalization derived from specific data or observations, but with several.
