“Editing” guidelines for supervisory engineers

Engineering managers and supervisors who have to edit reports written by other engineers often feel uncomfortable because English is not their area of particular competence. They can ease their editing burden-and, coincidentally, their engineers´ writing task-if they set clear guidelines before writing begins. The most important is identifying the reader. Others are: identifying the purpose; deciding on writing style and method of presentation; and establishing a writing/editing schedule. If managers then approach the editing task prudently, so that rather than arbitrarily changing words themselves they encourage their engineer-writers to make revisions, they will quickly establish good writer/editor rapport. More-they will discover that their editing role is really a training function. Their aim as managers should be to train their engineers to become better report writers who require less and less editorial supervision.