While most engineers spend years mastering the technical principles behind their work, far fewer have the same training in how to communicate their ideas clearly and effectively.
And yet that’s exactly how most engineers spend most of their time.
“Many engineers leave university with the idea that their jobs will be mostly technical and/or calculation-based,” says one Oil & Gas sector engineer. “It’s not. The vast majority of your time (say ~70% of it) will be communicating information in one form or another.”
And this is true across engineering domains. Another engineer, this one in software, says that his team spends “roughly 50-70% of the time writing” and explains that writing is how they ensure “alignment between people, teams, and also with the business.”
In fact, for many engineers, writing is the hardest part of the job because engineering writing is fundamentally different from any other kind, and their academic-oriented writing courses do not always prepare them for real-world writing scenarios.
What Distinguishes Engineering Writing
To start, the bar for good writing is higher for engineers than it sometimes is for other professionals. Engineers need to be able to hit the trifecta of good writing:
- Grammatical correctness (the baseline)
- Technical knowledge, accuracy, and specificity
- Reader understandability for a wide range of audiences
This trifecta of writing excellence matters because:
- A writer who only hits 1 and 3 might be technically wrong.
- A writer who only hits 2 and 3 will produce a document riddled with poor grammar, undermining credibility.
- A writer who only hits 1 and 2 will leave readers confused, uncertain, and unpersuaded.
The last point is particularly important. At heart, writing in engineering is about clearly and successfully communicating information to others. How can you do that if your intended reader doesn’t or can’t understand what you’re writing?
And engineers routinely write for multiple reader types:
- Peers who share a technical knowledge base but expect a high standard of precision and may challenge sloppy reasoning.
- Cross-disciplinary stakeholders such as architects, scientists, or project managers, who understand some but not all of the subject matter.
- Non-technical stakeholders, including executives, regulators, clients, and/or the public.
In turn, each group requires different:
- Levels of background explanation.
- Assumptions about shared vocabulary.
- Tolerances for ambiguity or abstraction.
In practice, this means that one day, you’re preparing a design specification for a fellow engineer who knows exactly what a coefficient of thermal expansion is. Next, you’re drafting a proposal for a client whose focus is project budgets, not physics. And then there are straightforward exchanges with customers or members of the public who don’t know anything about your field. You cannot write to each of these reader groups in the same way and expect them all to understand, much less appreciate, what you’ve produced.
Engineering Writing Is About Results, Not Wordsmithing
Imagine you’ve drafted a maintenance manual for a new piece of equipment. If the language is sloppy, your organization’s credibility takes a hit. If the specifications are imprecise, technicians in the field could make costly or even dangerous errors. And if the instructions aren’t accessible to the people who need them, whether that’s an operator with minimal technical training or a new engineer stepping into a project midstream, your efforts fail, no matter how smart the solution you designed.
Or perhaps you’re preparing a proposal for a new project, and your document needs to achieve buy-in. But unlike a marketing pitch, your proposal must ground every assertion in verifiable data and clear logic. If it sounds too promotional, it can lose credibility with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. If it leans too heavily on dense jargon, you risk alienating or even just confusing decision-makers who ultimately control the funding.
In other words, engineers don’t have the luxury of choosing between being persuasive and being precise. They must be both because their writing isn’t about “sounding good.” It’s about ensuring every engineering document hits its objective, and that effort can be more complex than in almost any other professional context.
The Power of Engineering Writing Workshops
Here’s where engineering writing workshops become so valuable. A good engineering writing workshop reframes achieving the trifecta of writing excellence as an extension of the engineer’s natural problem-solving mindset. After all, engineers are trained to work within constraints, to design processes that produce reliable results, and to iterate until they arrive at the most effective solution. Clear writing, it turns out, is no different.
That’s why dedicated engineering-specific writing workshops are so effective. Participants in a dedicated workshop learn to approach their documents the way they would a technical challenge.
- They start by defining the goal: What decision should this document drive? What action should it enable?
- Next, they identify the intended reader(s) and map out what that reader knows (and doesn’t know) so they can fill gaps without condescending or overcomplicating.
- Then comes structure. Engineers are shown how to sequence information logically so that each section builds on the last, leading the reader toward the intended outcome.
Real-time coaching and feedback are another hallmark of effective engineering workshops. Participants aren’t just given a set of rules and sent on their way. Instead, they’re guided through hands-on exercises that mimic real-world scenarios (drafting a procedure manual, editing a design rationale, or developing a project proposal) so they can apply what they learn immediately.
Better Engineering Writing Means Better Engineers
Over time, this process does more than improve writing mechanics. Teams spend less time clarifying intentions and more time moving projects forward. Proposals gain traction because they combine credibility with clarity. Clearer technical documents reduce support requests and complaints.
Altogether, the impact can be transformative, and engineers themselves begin to see that clear writing is not a talent bestowed on a lucky few but a skill that can be practiced, refined, and mastered like any other professional competency.
At its best, engineering writing is as much about enabling progress as it is about transferring information. When an engineer can communicate clearly, they elevate the quality of the work itself. The truth is, no matter how brilliant an idea, it only matters if it can be understood and acted upon. That’s why investing in writing skills is ultimately an investment in engineering excellence.
If you’re ready to take your team’s writing capabilities to the next level, we’re here to help. Our team of experts will assess your team’s situation, diagnose their writing challenges, and prescribe the perfect engineering-specific course to help you achieve your goals. Contact Hurley Write for a no-obligation consultation about your team’s writing needs today.
