ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some basic aspects of English style needed for technical writing, and provides a short list of rules and suggestions on grammar and style. The first rule is that the paragraph is the unit of exposition; the sentences in a paragraph should all hang together somehow. The next rule is about writing declarative sentence rather than writing sentence fragments. Most of the sentences in a formal engineering document should provide information and therefore should make statements. Another rule is to avoid writing extremely long sentences as they can be hard to read. Similarly run-on sentences need to be avoided. Additionally, the writer needs to make the important ideas prominent grammatically because failing to consider the order of words in a sentence may force the reader to work harder than necessary. Other rules concern preference of active voice over passive voice and the use of correct punctuation and correct capitalization.
