I am an engineer and have written many articles on technical subjects, and I often think back to the 1960s when the top person in our industrial organization thought writing skills of the professional staff needed improvement. We engineers graduated from different colleges and universities and demonstrated a wide range of skills of report writing. He introduced a training program titled Organizing Ideas, developed by Lewis Spence.
Organizing Ideas was based mainly on newspaper style writing, that is, the essence of the story in the first paragraphs, with the following paragraphs providing details and supporting material. I guess our leader wanted us to get to the point.
This program changed how most of our technical reports and even our verbal presentations were constructed, and the change was well received.
Upon retirement, my interest in writing continued, but now I had to find some new topics of interest. So, following my interest in nature and history, I wrote many blog articles on these subjects based in central Texas. Many blog articles to the extent that they became the content of published books. Books were written and self-published with topics like Noteworthy Observations, Nature and History, etc.
I lured my brother into writing and researching history and we published two books: The History of Carl School and the other titled Unstructured Time. All are available on Amazon or from me directly.
Over a period of ten years, a reader can see the change in my writing style and my skill at the craft of writing. Always a reminder to be made; writing is a skill and must be practiced if improvement is needed.
My interest in writing skills led me to look for books on the subject. There are several good books to get started on skills development. One is The Elements of Style by Strunk and White and the other is On Writing Well by William Zinsser. The starting-out writer will find these two books to be the most basic of instruction.
More later
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