Lee Goeller on Writing
Anyone who spends much time with this web
site will know that I am not really a writer. But, in a busy life
doing many other things, I have had occasion to write a considerable
amount of material, some of which has been published. Further, my
ability to get stuff on paper has been a major aid in most of what I
done the rest of the time, so maybe a few "how-to" thoughts on the
subject will be of interest. The following appeared in the April 12,
1963 Electronic Design. Some years later, I submitted it
again to the IEEE journal on technical writing, but their copy
editor took it apart and changed it so much that I withdrew if from
consideration.
Some Non-standard Thoughts
On Technical Writing
Before I decided to go back to college to learn the engineering
business, I spent some years as a writer of commercials at a number
of small and middle-sized radio stations. Curiously enough, the
training I received in the copy rooms of these radio stations has
become an important part of my stock in trade as an engineer.
Because I learned to put ideas on paper quickly and accurately under
the pressure of deadlines and difficulties, I have never had any
trouble preparing technical reports and even a few magazine
articles.
Since few engineers have had the time or opportunity to learn
copy-writing, my adventures may be of interest. A copy writer learns
a few tricks which never seem to be discussed in articles on
technical writing and, if others can profit by my youthful
experiences, those years will turn out to be doubly rewarding.
The first trick is so basic and obvious that it seems odd to have
to mention it: Learn to touch type. Touch-typing is an advantage to
anybody in any field, and nobody in this mechanized age should get
out of high school without being able to run a typewriter. Many
engineers, however, insist on writing their reports in longhand;
some consider typing beneath their dignity or something for girls.
But let’s face it. Very few people can write a legible hand and,
even if a person prefers to use quill pens in the computer age, look
what happens next. He sends his paper to the steno or typing pool to
be typed. Then, before his boss can look it over, he has to check it
carefully and make corrections. If he had typed the draft himself,
it could have gone to the boss directly. Writing time would have
been saved, time in the typing pool would have been eliminated, and,
finally, that last check of the typist’s copy would have been
unnecessary. Hours and even weeks could have been saved.
Some people advocate dictation as a means for engineers to get
their material down on paper. There are many arguments for dictation
but those against it are formidable. Engineering is a language all
by itself. It contains words that sound like English but aren’t.
Just try to dictate the following sentence some time and see what
you get back: "The flip-flops and AND gates or OR gates are not
working." Or this one: "The jacks are multipled together." In the
first instance, the difference between grammatical and logical
conjunctions is not obvious in any oral presentation. And in the
second, the word "multiplied" is the one that always appears. After
all, that’s the one the gal knows.
So — learn to touch type. It may be painful at first, but it pays
off in a surprisingly short time. Don’t worry about speed. Just
learn to think into your fingers and speed will come.
The next trick that every copy-writer (and almost every
professional writer) must learn is: DON’T rewrite. When the last
page of a five minute radio program is in the typewriter and the
announcer is reading page one on the air, there just isn’t time for
the luxury of going over and over the text, polishing each word. One
learns, and quickly, to get it right the first time. In technical
writing, the minute you think to yourself, "I’ll catch that point on
the next draft," you’re lost. The promise to make the next draft the
good one is like the promise to give up smoking tomorrow. You’ll
never do it. Rewriting is the principal cause of sloppy thinking in
the first place. Get the first draft right, even if you have to
cross out a few words or even lines and try again. The typing pool
will do the finished draft and guarantee a good appearance. In all
probability you’ll have to rewrite a few times to please your boss
or editor, but there’s no need to add injury to insult by writing
the darn thing three or four times beforehand just to clear your
head.
Another trick of the radio copy-writer is somewhat easier to
learn. It is related to the often-heard advice to write naturally,
the way you would say it. Unfortunately, things are not quite that
simple. People seldom think or speak in complete sentences phrased
in flawless grammar. And very few people speak punctuation. The
trick is to learn to write so that someone reading your material
"cold" can’t help but read it without error. Radio announcers seldom
have time to read over all their written material before air time
(or so they say). But a good copy-writer can put words in an
announcer’s mouth in such a way that they seem natural. If he works
at it and knows his announcers, he can write in their particular
speech patterns. They’ll sail right through page after page with no
trouble. The reverse technique, of course, is also possible. But the
trick is to write clear sentences that can be read easily. A short
sentence can be seen more easily than a long one, and an announcer
doesn’t have to chew into clause after clause without ever knowing
how the sentence is going to turn out. Readers of technical writing
often jump the track simply because their written sentences are too
big to pick up. The beginning is confused in the mists of memory
before the end is reached. If you have any doubts about a sentence,
have someone read it aloud to you. If he can read it easily the
first time he sees it, it’s probably all right. Otherwise, watch out
for trouble.
These are the more important things I have carried with me from
the radio stations. They have served me well and faithfully. But
there is one other trick in technical writing that I would never
have learned in a copy room. It was suggested to me by the
instructors in the University of Virginia’s excellent Engineering
English department, and many experiments have emphasized its value.
Prepare all drawings, diagrams and schematics before word one of
the article or report is put on paper. The figures don’t have to be
finished but the layout should correspond to what will ultimately be
used and all components and items of interest should be correctly
labeled. Why? Ask any engineer how his circuit works and the first
thing he will do is reach for a pencil. As he sketches the circuit,
a running commentary will pour out. "You connect the bias resistor —
here — to the base, so. Then, the tuned circuit in the collector—"
his pencil is always a few steps ahead of his words. Indeed, without
"talking paper" or a blackboard, he would be helpless.
Yet the same engineer, writing a report on the same circuit, will
go through the whole thing in words and then draw the diagrams.
Since the components are not labeled and their relative positions
are unknown at the time of writing, confusion is maximized. It is
a wonder anyone can make out anything about the circuit.
There is, of course, more to technical illustration then
component-naming. There are many ways a circuit can be drawn, and
some are incomparably worse than others. It is worth the time it
takes to try out two or three different layouts; spend on your
drawings the time you’d normally use for rewriting and your readers
will thank you.
One further point. Don’t label your drawing Fig.
1 and let it go
at that. Compose a careful caption; tell what the figure or graph is
supposed to represent and why it is important. Don’t make your
readers wade through the text, particularly on re-reading, to find
out if Fig. 1 or Fig. 2 is the one they want.
It is a sad corollary of the above that the average liberal-arts
type of English professor is very nearly useless as a teacher of
technical writing. He is oriented in the wrong direction. He is
concerned with writing — NOT with technical exposition. His training
has prepared him to describe beautiful sunsets, lovely women and
soul-shattering emotions...in words alone. He even has, in all
probability, a trunk full of unpublished poems to prove it. He is so
deeply saturated with the techniques of verbal virtuosity that he
will sometimes actually discourage the use of diagrams and graphs.
To sum up, my experience, such as it is, leads me to recommend
the following to all who will have to do a lot of technical writing:
- First, learn to touch type.
- Second, learn to NOT rewrite.
- Third, before starting a report, prepare all drawings,
graphs, etc.
- Fourth, using the illustrations and their captions as an
outline, write the paper.
- And finally, write the paper right — the first time.
Many writers insist that "good stories are
not written, they are rewritten." My writing guru, Nelson Bond, is a
strong believer in this, and has occasionally chided me for my often
casual text. And I agree that one can always find ways to rearrange
commas or substitute adjectives to make things better. But work is
long and life is short. How good is good enough? Or, to put it
another way, how can one learn enough about writing to even get
started?
I got out of the Air Force in October, 1949,
too late to catch the fall semester at the University of Virginia.
So I took courses at Roanoke College that spring and during the
summer session, going up to UVa in the fall of 1950. In one of my
Roanoke College English classes, I wrote the following "biographical
scene," based on my military adventures. Obviously, I am no Michener
or Mailer, but the project to which I was assigned was no Manhattan
Project, either. But it had its interesting moments, and I got a B
on my paper.
Bomb Drop
A Few Moments In the Life Of Lee Goeller
The staff car stopped, seven inches short or the small, white
shed, its wheels throwing up a cloud of sand. Men in faded coveralls
looked up, then continued with their work.
Alter a short pause, the door opened, and the Major stepped out
of the car. He lit a cigarette with deft mannerisms carefully copied
from the current feature at the post theater, and strode to the
center of activity.
The little white building was just big enough to hold three men.
Three were inside. The Major entered.
A harried Pfc. was talking into a radio. "The camera boys are
fouled up but good, Cap'n," he said. "They came out with
hundred-and-ten volt stuff and all we got is twenty-four."
"How long will it take them to get set up?" the radio enquired.
"’Bout an hour. But four other cameras are ok. Can you afford to
lose this station?
The Major edged past me small sgt. who was loading
light-sensitive paper into a recorder. The Sergeant nodded
laconically to the Major, and continued his work in frantic haste.
The third enlisted man, forced out of the hut, went to a big
thirty-five mm camera set up a few yards away, and began talking to
the disgruntled Master Sergeant in charge of that unhappy
instrument.
"Why can’t those guys ever get anything—" the radio began. There
was a brief pause, suggesting silent profanity on the part of the
Captain.
The Major knew how he must feel. The man was ten thousand feet up
with a fifty-thousand dollar bomb, and a vital recording camera was
out of commission.
"See here, Private," the Major said in as friendly a voice as an
officer can use to an enlisted man, "isn't there anything to be
done?"
"Doin' the best I can. Major," the Pfc. said. Then, into the
radio, "What's the story, sir?"
"We'll drop, anyhow."
"Where are you?"
"Over the mountains, coming in on the final leg."
The small Sergeant checked his recorder and threw a switch. "All
set," he said.
The Pfc. handed him a stop-watch, and prodded some switches on
the control panel. The small Sergeant went outside.
"I say," said the Major (the current feature at the post theater
was about the R.A.F.), "isn’t this place awfully dirty?"
The PFC. didn’t look back this time. "Out here on the desert, the
sand kinda gets in everywhere, sir," he said.
"Five minutes," the radio said thru a burst of static.
"Hey, you guys," the Pfc. shouted to the men at the camera, "let
it go. Pack up and go home."
"OK," the Master Sergeant said, pulling a battered pack of
cigarettes from is pocket.
"Can you see us?" said the radio. The Pfc. stuck his head out the
door and scanned the sky.
"Negative."
We’re turning on the smoke," said the radio.
"There they are," said the small Sergeant.
"We see your smoke," the Pfc. said to the radio.
"Roger. Two minutes."
Other switches clicked.
The PFC. changed from one microphone to another. "Two minutes,"
he said.
"Roger Jigg one," a loudspeaker said.
"Roger Dog four," it said in a different voice. Other voices
rogered.
"One minute," said the radio.
A loud ticking filled the room.
"What's that?" demanded the Major.
"Time standard from Central Control, sir," the Pfc. said, shoving
more switches home.
"What's it for?"
"Each pulse lights a light in the recorder and makes a dot on
the—"
"Thirty seconds," said the radio.
The Pfc. was scanning the sky from the doorway. The small
Sergeant's eyes were aloft, too. The Master Sergeant at the camera
was spitting at a lizard.
"If a light is supposed to light, how can we hear it?" The Major
was not to be put off.
"I just got the wiring finished yesterday and I haven't, got all
the bugs out yet."
The lack of a "sir" annoyed the Major, but the Pfc. seemed so
occupied with his work he decided to put off admonishing him.
"I should think," said the Major, "that noise might prove very
distracting during missile drops."
"It's not as distracting as—"
"Ten, nine, eight, seven—" said the radio. The countdown
continued to "Bombs away "
More action with switches, watches, and cameras. The missile was
falling.
The Pfc. looked at the Sergeant's stop-watch. "Five," he shouted
into the radio. "Ten. Fifteen. Twenty seconds." There was a slight
pause, then, "Impact!"
A plume of dirt and sand rose from the desert floor a half-mile
away.
"Just outside the hundred foot circle, short and to the right,"
the radio snapped.
The loud speaker bawled at the same time.
"Roger," the Pfc. said. "Triangulation verifies you. Have you
anything else for me?"
"Negative. We're going back to base. Able four from Air Force
four one zero three, out."
"Air Force four one zero three from Able four, out," said the
Pfc.
The unsuccessful camera crew was already gone. The Pfc. and the
small Sergeant were winding up their business.
"I really can't see," said the Major, "how you men can work with
that awful clicking noise."
"We can get used to anything, sir," the Pfc. said. He closed the
equipment rack with a bang.
The Major turned to go. "Remember to sweep the place out," he
said over his shoulder.
The small Sergeant made an impolite gesture with his hand, behind
the Major's back. The Pfc. grinned wryly and reached for the broom.
The Major sank down in the comfortable staff car. He was proud of
himself. "After all," he mused, "somebody has to keep an eye on
enlisted men."
In the summer of 2005, a whole spate of
articles appeared in various journals suggesting that reading to
children is helpful in teaching them to read. In "Image vs.
Reality," I presented my thoughts on teaching reading and, important
as reading aloud to children is, reading is the one thing it will
NOT teach. I responded to such material with a letter to the Times
(which the Times ignored), trying to show what reading aloud to
children CAN accomplish.
May 19, 2005
To: letters@NYTimes.com
To the Editor:
It is depressing to learn that our schools not only don't teach
reading, math and science, but they also don't teach writing (Brent
Staples article in the 5/15 Times and 5/18 letters in response). Can
it be that those who master these subjects do so in spite of what
schools don't teach?
I, myself, have had a certain modest success writing for such
arcane journals as Business Communications Review,
Teleconnect, and Telemanagement. This success can't be
attributed to either grammar school or high school, and not even to
the School of Engineering at the University of Virginia. By the time
I got to college, I had somehow mastered whatever it is I can do by
years of work as a copy writer in various small and medium sized
radio stations. I could whip out lab reports, term papers, and irate
letters to the school newspaper as easily as my companions could
complain orally about food at The Commons. I even wrote my master's
thesis over a weekend.
This is all the more amazing because my father, anxious about my
future when I graduated from high school in 1942, arranged for me to
have a huge battery of aptitude tests. Some of these were quite
ingenious, including the one on writing ability. I flunked it flat.
But within two years, I was making my living as a writer. How could
this come about?
For one thing, I learned to touch-type. Not just to copy material
in the typing manual, but to "think into my fingers." I had never
been able to do that with a pencil, and to this day, I cannot read
my own laboriously hand-written notes. They counted words on that
aptitude test, and I was just too slow. The typewriter solved my
problems; not just speed, but legibility. But being able to
touch-type isn't the whole story.
Near as I can tell, I learned to write by being read to by my
father. During the depression, he was out of work a lot, and we
couldn't afford a radio or even a movie. But we could afford 5 cents
a week for the Saturday Evening Post, and maybe one or two
other magazines. And there was always the public library. Dad read
aloud to Mother and me by the hour, and I learned that special
dialect of our language, Written English, by hearing it spoken
clearly, accurately, and in complete sentences. This is an advantage
which few of my friends and associates have ever had. The
Saturday Evening Post may not have been literature, but it was
well written, well edited, and entertaining. I never knew any other
way for words on paper to be arranged, and I was never distracted by
visuals or special effects.
There is a current fad that reading to children will teach them
to read. This seems to me to be unlikely. But if teachers and
parents could find some time, every day, to read kids interesting
stories, the kids just might learn Written English in spite of
extensive course work in grammar and other irrelevancies that make
up most of what passes for instruction in "English" classes.
Lee Goeller
My favorite radio talk-show, conducted by
Marty Moss Coane on WHYY in Philadelphia, often discusses the "finer
things." After a program on poetry on Sept. 16, 2005, I couldn’t
resist sending this along:
Dear Marty:
I know you artists tend to look down on us tech types, but we
have had our moments. To retaliate for your poetry program today,
here is something I wrote 50 year ago in kollitch.
The Mating Call of the Electronic Experimenter
A sort of sonnet
Now there are those who think that love is sad
And others still who say that love is fun
So, darling, lest you think my offer bad
Or (even worse) think me a conquest won
I'll tell you now the simple facts of life
And let you choose the path that you think best:
There's nothing that I need less than a wife
To share my cozy gadget-cluttered nest.
My workbench, strewn with instruments and wires,
The vacuum tubes, rug-cradled without fear,
The books, their knowledge pluckable as lyres
Lead me to thrills upon a new frontier.
But even so, the pleasures of a 'scope
Are few and dull compared with yours (I hope).
Well, maybe you're right. But the head of the Engineering English
dept took it down to show to the Dean of Engineering. And in my Bell
Labs days, I developed a reputation for writing memorial poems for
various friends' honorary luncheons when they left for greener
pastures. I am not a complete nerd.
Lee Goeller
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