Archie Kipp's Rhetoric 1040 Blog

Writing in the Field of Engineering Archie A. Kipp University of Iowa The Role of Writing in Engineering When people think of engineering they generally don’t tend to associate the profession with writing. Most engineers themselves don’t imagine themselves needing to be a proficient writer or having to structure their writing for different purposes. As an undecided major I was curious as to how writing was utilized in a career path that I was considering in Engineering. Vice President of Technology Services at Burns Engineering, David Kipp, volunteered to talk about how writing is present in his daily activities. He claims that “25-30 percent” of his day consists of writing which he never expected when he entered decided to follow the path towards Electrical Engineering. You must express complex research and data through non-academic and academic styles of writing with various styles of structuring and language.  Non-Academi...

For my interview I decided to interview to dad, David Kipp. He's a Vice President of Technology Services at Burns Engineering, so he was perfect to interview as a professional in the field of engineering. He talked about how he writes about 25-30% of his day and that most of his writing is report writing and client communication as a close second. He also discussed how audience effects his writing everyday. Who the writing is intended for and the level of comprehension of the reader affect what how he writes. Most writing, he admitted, he comes into contact with is pretty poor because engineers tend to be more analytical people who aren't very gifted at writing. They make many grammatical mistakes and the writing tends not to flow very well. However, engineers who are able to flow well are very effective at attracting clients. Most writing done in engineering is non-academic but when writing for academic sources it's important to use very persist language because you audie...

Writing in Psychology   Strengths: - Well worded intro that encapsulated routes of Psychology well. - Did a good job incorporating the interview into their paper. - Explained how language changes from academic to non-academic sources. Weaknesses: - No title slide and/or page number, lots of formatting errors. - Not enough sources. - Improper in-text citations for APA. Writing in Economics   Strengths: - Well worded introduction, set up the paper well. - Used in-text-citations correctly and in effective spots. - Good flow of words, generally easy to read. Weaknesses: - Introduced his sources a little too early. - Could've used more sub-headings to organize the paper a little more. - Switches topics daily often which can be difficult to follow at points. Writing in Engineering   Strengths: - Lots of information, clearly spent time analyzing writing in this field. - Correct citations and effective use. - Written in...

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/12/2107/htm This is an academic source written by a credible source who has a PHD from LMU University Munich. The source is highly technical and obviously written for a very specific audience. It delves into how battery storage systems could apply to modern power grids. I could use this source to display how language is specified in academic sources or how the structure of academic writings for engineering is organized. https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/09/12/1907051116 This is a non-academic source designed to inform the public and mostly journalists to then inform the public about a development in the field of engineering. The subject matter is quite confusing, but the report attempts to use language that is easy to read. I could use this source to illustrate how the language used in a non-academic source is intentional to convey research to a broader audience. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Microgrids-%3A-A-Primer-Introduction-Pri...

Similarities of MLA and APA Both citation styles are to be double spaced throughout the paper. The works cited or reference page should be sorted by the Author's last name. In both documentation styles you should list the page number in the top right of the page. Difference of MLA and APA In APA you need to have a title page before starting your paper, in MLA no title page is needed. In MLA you don't use headers, in APA you use headers to help the reader stay organized. A correct citation for APA should be (author's last name, year, page #) and a correct citation for MLA should be (author's last name page #) The reference page in APA is called "References" whereas in MLA it is called a "Works Cited" page. An APA style paper should contain an Abstract where MLA papers do not.