Issue Trees: A Tool to Aid the Engineering Writer

The observations reported in this chapter are the result of such a naturalistic case study. Both authors were involved in the writing process described in detail in the last sections of the chapter: the first author as teacher and writing coach, the second author as a fledgling technical writer using a tool new to him in this context-issue trees. A powerful way to start prewriting is to determine and explicitly state the gist and goal of the proposed writing. The case study illustrates how issue trees can facilitate the writing process of the novice engineering writer. By building a hierarchical issue tree to illustrate the logical links of the proposed writing task, the engineer can put an overlay of "technology" on the task of writing-an overlay that may "trick" the unwilling writer into writing, and writing well.