Teaching Technical Writing to Science and Engineering Students

The basic principles and most common pitfalls of technical writing for science and engineering students are summarised. It is pointed out that technical writing is integral to the research process itself; it helps the students to organise their thoughts and even potentially discover new directions for their research. It is suggested that a student can improve their technical writing skills by reading many papers/reports from their field, and it is important that, in doing so, they should try to make the connection between the reported results and conclusions. They should not merely think "the authors conclude this or that", but try to establish the bases for these conclusions.