Aspects of Technical Writing for Agricultural and Biosystems

Aspects of Technical Writing for

Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Graduates

Subhashree N. Srinivasagan

∗

, Sunoj Shajahan

∗

Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, North Dakota State University, 1221 Albrecht Boulevard, Fargo, ND 58102, USA

Abstract

Writing a good article is both an art and science. For most of the beginners of article writing, the structure and organi-

zation may not be clear and confusing. The skill of writing can be acquired with patience, learning, and practice. The

major goal of this course is to develop effective technical skills and to help the students to become accomplished writers. To

make the students understand the difﬁculties, ways to overcome them, and expectations in article writing, an interview

was arranged among the students and their advisor. Key questions were framed by the students and the responses were

obtained from the advisor. An elaborate discussion was held on speciﬁc issues to capture the details. Various aspects of

technical writing, such as initial struggle as a beginner and the ways to overcome, managing time, organizing ideas, and

overall solution strategies were discussed during the interview and presented and summarized in this assessment.

1. Introduction

This general informative article was based on the disciplinary

report submitted to the course ENGL 751, Spring 2016. The

background of the report is to help the students better un-

derstand the writing expectation and norms in the ﬁeld of

Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, for which an inter-

view was conducted with Dr. Igathinathane Cannayen, As-

sistant Professor, Department of Agricultural and Biosystems

Engineering (ABEN), NDSU. The interview was conducted to

obtain information on the following aspects:

• Practice developing useful interview questions, as well

as conducting interviews

• Understand writing and rhetorical conventions and ex-

pectations in the ﬁeld of ABEN

• Develop an understanding of the discipline from a writ-

ing standpoint

• Practice reporting key information.

In the interview the following questions were asked:

1. What are the struggles that you encountered as a writer

during your initial days?

2. How did you overcome all these struggles mentioned

above?

3. How do you organize your thoughts and ideas while you

start writing?

4. How to avoid framing complex and indirect sen-

tences/how to explain complex ideas?

5. How to do measure the completeness of a section in an

article/article as a whole?

∗

Graduate and doctoral students, respectively, under Dr. Igathinathane

Cannayen, Associate Professor, ABEN, NDSU as their major advisor.

6. What are the ﬁelds from which students of ABEN can

learn from the articles published?

7. How to manage time while writing an article?

8. What are the articles that you consider as the best in

terms of technical content and writing?

9. What do you think are the common mistakes that stu-

dents make while writing an article?

10. How to keep the readers interested?

Responses obtained and the experience of the authors and

other graduate students were synthesized and presented in

this article.

2. Aspects of Technical Writing in ABEN

2.1. Struggles of a writer in 90’s

During earlier days, no formal training was given to the

students who aspired to write an article. There were also

very few resources for obtaining the published articles. Fur-

ther, there was no clear understanding of the structure of

a research article, for students starting on their own. Self-

understanding of the published article was not of much help.

Hence, the student had to struggle his/her way to publish an

article.

Earlier, writers did not give much emphasis on the graph-

ical component of the publication and they relied mostly on

professional drafting services. But nowadays various soft-

ware like R Studio (R Core Team, 2015), SAS (Institute,

1985), MatLab (Guide, 1998) were available to produce

high-quality graphical outputs while doing the data analysis.

Now the authors are expected to produce their own graphical

material.

However, the situation is not the same now, training on

technical writing is offered to students, and they are also pro-

vided access to many published articles online or print forms.

Students are now made aware of many graphical and statis-

tical software required for publishing a good quality article.

Students should consider the graphical elements as impor-

tant, as these offer the readers a quick overview of the re-

sults.

2.2. Ways to overcome the initial struggles of a writer

A good writing skill will develop only with years of experi-

ence. It may be compared to “learning to ride” a bicycle,

which obviously requires a lot of patience. Similarly, learn-

ing to write an article requires a lot of patience and perse-

verance. Students should realize that the article is “theirs”

and they should play the lead role, while the advisor pro-

vides guidance and review. Students committing themselves

to this lead role and “own” the article tend to learn more on

the writing aspect than others rely heavily on other supports.

Writing is a perfect example of “learning by doing.” Students

should be ready to learn from the mistakes and experiences.

Once the student is ready with the article draft, they should

realize that it will undergo several rounds of revisions. The

review comments and mistakes from each revision have to be

“documented” for by the students for their future reference.

This helps the student from not committing the same mis-

takes again. Also in a proactive way, the student can learn

from published articles and understand the basic rules and

way of presentation.

Students should get themselves familiarized with the “ex-

pectations” of the scientiﬁc articles in their ﬁeld of special-

ization. Reading more technical articles and writing more

will help the students to improve their writing skills. For ex-

ample, if there is an equation to be inserted into an article

the student must look into other published articles to under-

stand the basic rule followed to write an equation. A similar

approach can be adopted for ﬁgures, tables, references, and

other elements of a technical writing. Good approaches fol-

lowed in articles of journals of repute can be adopted by the

students as well, while understanding clearly what plagia-

rism is and how to avoid it.

2.3. Organizing thoughts and ideas

Writing of an article should start with a good outline, where

students will demonstrate and capture the essence of the ar-

ticle. Such outlines should be discussed initially with the ad-

visor for directions and approval of the concept. With the

outline serving as the skeleton, the students will have a head

start in developing the article. Organization of ideas and

thoughts starts with deciding on the research need/problem

which the author (article) set out to address.

The standard framework for scientiﬁc paper include sec-

tions, such as introduction, methods, results, discussion

(sometimes these are combined as results and discussion),

suggestions for future research, conclusion, acknowledg-

ments, and references. One of the simple ways is: once

the outline is complete, the writers should ﬁll each sec-

tion with a sketchy points (e.g., bulleted points) that comes

to their mind. These points should be further developed

into cohesive text paragraphs. Tables and ﬁgures (e.g., pic-

tures, graphs, ﬂow charts, diagrams) supporting these points

should be included in the article. Sometimes these graphical

elements, generated from the analyzed results were inserted

ﬁrst along outlined points.

Each section should convey the information clearly and

follow the standard exceptions. For example, in the intro-

duction, the importance of the problem/need should be dis-

cussed. The writer should synthesize and acknowledge the

past reported efforts for solving the same or similar prob-

lems. This will allow the readers to realize what was avail-

able knowledge and appreciate the “research gap” addressed

by the articles.

The writer should also discuss the novelty of the present

study’s approach to solving the problem and the overall sig-

niﬁcance of the work. Usually, the introduction section ends

with a list of clear objectives of the study, which actually serve

as a guide the other sections of the paper, namely methods,

results, and discussion.

Each section should be divided in into subsections and

paragraphs, as appropriate, in such a way that each division

deals with only one overall idea. Paragraphs help to divide

different aspects of the overall idea and they also signal a

“jump” or “transition” of ideas. Every sentence in the para-

graph has to be paid attention to see if it is properly con-

nected. There should be a proper connection between sen-

tences and the paragraphs might start with thesis sentence.

A linear style of writing, that does not make the reader re-

fer back to the material presented earlier. This linear style of

writing will be easy on the readers and, if possible, should be

followed throughout or most parts of the paper. Overall, the

organization should follow the “story-telling” (what happens

next — all sections tied together — sections playing a deﬁnite

role in the story) concept to hold the readers’ attention.

2.4. Writing style and approach

If the writer feels that a sentence is complex, breaking the

sentence into two or three sentences must be done for better

understanding, as the aim of the article is to make it sim-

ple and understandable for the reader. In technical writing,

the motto should be “Not write to impress, but inform.” This

idea again ties with the “expectations” of technical reader-

ship. Sometimes breaking into smaller sentences may not

sound better, but it should be followed if it helps the reader

to understand better. The current trend is to use more di-

rect sentences (active voice), wherever possible then indirect

(passive voice). However, a balanced mixture is acceptable.

Earlier, the articles were “author-centric” where the writer

used convoluted ideas and complex sentences in the article

with no effort to simplify them for the readers. The readers

had to struggle to understand the ideas and concepts; am-

pliﬁed by the technical nature of the material, but the trend

has changed. Now, the author has to write “reader-centric”

article in such a manner that it is easy for the reader to un-

derstand and process the ideas quickly — in a linear fashion.

For the article to be published, it has to be approved by

several established reviewers and the editor. It will only be

published if the majority of the reviewers have accepted the

article, therefore the article has to be understandable and less

objectionable to all the reviewers. Furthermore, if the arti-

cle has to reach to a wide range of audience (e.g., extension

publications, local dispersal of scientiﬁc information) then

the writer should explain the concepts in a much simple lan-

guage.

2.5. General nature of article sections

An article in two-column format should ideally be six to seven

pages, and the reader will always appreciate an article of this

length. The time available to the writer and the suggested

page length in the journal also determines the length of the

article. For example, in the introduction section, the back-

ground need not be elaborate but has to cover the essential

information speciﬁc to the article’s topic.

For the review of the literature that also goes into the in-

troduction, as the availability of the literature corresponding

to a particular topic is a ﬁnite number, the text should also

be succinct. In materials and methods, all the instructions re-

quired to repeat the experiment should be presented so that

if the readers were to repeat the same experiment/research

they should able to do it. This addresses the concept of “re-

search repeatably.” This section should follow the order out-

lined in objectives.

The results and discussion section presents the results that

were described in the methods in the same order. Presented

results should be technically discussed using observation,

previous literature, and statistical analysis. Technical impli-

cations, recommendations, and suggestion for future work

may be outlined.

The conclusions should follow the similar order and be

based on the results. No new information that was not dis-

cussed before should not be included here. The reference sec-

tion has its unique format based on the journal and should be

strictly followed. Automatic software based formatting (e.g.,

BibTeX, EndNote) or manual method may be used following

the instructions are given or latest publications in the journal.

It should also be noted that the sections of the article can

be written in any random sequence based on the available in-

formation. Most often, after preparing the outline (skeleton

of the article), the authors ﬁnd it easy to write the materi-

als and methods section. Also, the hypothesis and objectives

should be clear to the authors.

2.6. Avoiding redundancy

Redundant information should never be presented in the ar-

ticle. For example, a data can either be presented in a table

or graphical form, but not both, and this also goes into tex-

tual material. These constitute redundancy and should be

avoided. An article can be compared to a machine, where

every component (e.g., nuts, bolts, levers) in a machine has

its own purpose, similarly, every word should contribute to

the article and extra words/information should be removed

from the article. The journal space is always considered very

precious, hence should be ﬁlled with only relevant informa-

tion and redundancy should be eliminated.

2.7. Making the article interesting for readers

The article has to be written in the form of a story. The writer

should be well aware of the expectation of the reader. In this

aspect, the article can be compared to a “movie.” A movie

is successful only if it satisﬁes the expectation of the view-

ers. Similarly, the article should satisfy the expectation of

the targeted readership. For example, a reader will usually

have questions/concerns on the signiﬁcance, impact, and ap-

plication of the research. The writer should have addressed

these questions in the introduction and provided answers in

the discussion section. In short, the expectation of the reader

should be met by the writer.

2.8. Managing time while writing an article

An article is an evolving document and highly involved un-

dertaking. Students should understand and accept that writ-

ing an article deserves quality time — a lot of it. However, the

student should ﬁx a target (period) to complete the article,

and such target help to assess the progress.

Students should start writing the article as early as the

commencement of the project, for writing is a continuous

process. They should realize that there is no good time to

start working on a paper, but anytime NOW is the one. When

the student gets an idea/ information regarding their research

that could be added to the article, it should be jotted down

immediately (bullet points should be ﬁne) without worrying

about the format or the semantics, as there are chances that

these points will be forgotten soon enough. During the actual

writing process, the grammar and logical ﬂow of the article

can be looked into at a later stage. Updates to the article and

review can be done at any time, without waiting for the draft

to be ﬁnalized.

2.9. Good example articles for ABEN students

Every year the American Society of Agricultural and Biologi-

cal Engineering (ASABE) awards the best papers (about 5-10

in number out of 1000 papers that has been submitted) in

different specializations. These awarded papers might have

been strong and attractive in areas such as novelty of the

concept, technical content, or presentation. Therefore, such

award-winning papers as well as papers from native speak-

ers of the language from reputed journals may serve students

as good examples for producing good quality papers. Nahar

et al. (2014) is one of the ASABE award-winning articles of

2015.

Agronomy and soil science articles can serve as better ex-

amples to the students as most of these writers are native

speakers of English. The way the writers structure the sen-

tences is something that the student can learn from for better

quality of writing.

3. General Comments

“A good story is not written, it is rewritten.” Hence, soon

after writing the ﬁrst draft, the students should review their

own article many times before submitting it to their advisor.

The students should always ask themselves "Is this my ﬁnal

draft?" The student has to redraft several times until he/she

reaches a stage where they should be convinced that there

is no more scope for improvement from their side. The best

“ﬁnal version” should be forwarded to the advisor for their

comments and review on the paper. A well-written paper,

even though takes a lot of effort and time, gives immense

satisfaction and highly rewarding to the students and helps

them to learn the art of technical writing, and goes a long

way in help shaping their career.

4. Conclusions

Aspects discussed in this article will serve as a guide to help

students understand the do’s and don’ts in writing a technical

article. Some take-home points are presented hereunder and

we feel these suggestions would be of great value for ABEN

graduates for writing a research article.

• Have an outline before starting, which can be populated

with contents later

• Students lead the writing effort and feel the article be-

longs to them

• Writing can only be improved by practice and it takes

time

• Break complex ideas into two to three sentences and ac-

tive voice must be used as much as possible

• Learn from mistakes and document them for future use

• Follow story-telling and linear style of writing

• Avoid redundancy in writing and strive for smooth tran-

sition of ideas

• Graphical elements are equally important as text

• Know the expectations of the readers/reviewers/editor

on each section of the paper

• Start writing earlier and allot time for revision

• Award-winning papers and articles in reputed journals

by native speakers may serve as good examples

• Always ask yourself "Is this my ﬁnal draft?" before sub-

mitting or review

• A well-written paper is highly rewarding and career

boosting.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr. Igathinathane

Cannayen, Associate Professor, ABEN, NDSU for his

valuable time and inputs in the form of an interview,

discussion, and review. Thanks are also due to Dr. Enrico

Sassi, Director, Department of English, NDSU for providing

an opportunity to work on this subject.

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