Few engineers yearn to become writers, but many engineers write report after report. These reports may be short or long, formal or informal, and be written for managers, clients, regulatory bodies, etc. It can be draining but it doesn't have to be. By learning some tricks of the writer's trade, you can make it easier and faster while making the reports shorter and better.

Written for engineers by a retired engineer, this book is based on a 1-day course on Technical Report Writing that Tony has presented to engineers in both the public and private sectors for over 20 years. It's down-to-earth and will help you with practical ideas including:

• Breaking the task into three phases: planning, writing and editing.
• Avoiding the biggest complaint - readers struggling to understand.
• Sequencing in three layers to make life easier for you and the reader.
• Choosing between the most common format and three others.
• Deciding what to include and what to leave out.
• Improving your writing - the 12 big tips, plus many others.
• Satisfying both technical and non-technical readers.
• Cutting the waffle.
• Editing - including the SI units and their conventions.
• Checking consistency - including 17 points to check.
• Getting the best from the Microsoft grammar checker.
• Using the readability statistics.
• Handling variations between British and US English.

Tony Atherton, a retired Chartered Engineer, has written four other books (published by Kogan Page, Macmillan and San Francisco Press) and about 100 articles. He's worked in both the public and private sectors.