The MIT Guide to Science and Engineering Communication (2nd ed.)

Books published by MIT Press are being reviewed in this journal so a few words about Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may be in order. MIT near Boston has produced an extraordinary total of 56 Nobel prize prizewinners so far. Such luminaries as William Shockley and Luis Alvarez worked at MIT. Eight of the Nobelists were involved in the creation of MIT's Radiation Laboratory, formed to develop microwave radar early in the last war, following a visit by the Tizard commission from the UK. The commission brought with it a cavity magnetron, developed by Randall and Boot at Birminghzm University. This device, which revolutionised the performance of radar systems, was put into production in the USA within a few weeks.

MIT's prompt publication of the excellent 28 volume Radiation Laboratory Series immediately after the war fully described the wartime achievements of he laboratory and gave rise to the belief that radar was invented in the USA. The Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEE), influenced no doubt by British obsession with secrecy, produced a set of Proceedings covering the British effort. “Marketing” may not be right term to use in connection with this kind of work. However the US effort was properly marketed while the UK work was not.

MIT has recently (October 2002) been engaged in a ”haptics” (touch) transatlantic experiment with University College London via the Internet. Haptics feedback could be used, for example, by a surgeon practising telemedicine.

The authors of the book being reviewed here are James Paradis, a professor at MIT and Muriel Zimmerman, a senior lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The word “communication” in the title of the book refers to written communication. “The most effective scientist or engineer is typically a skilled writer”, say the authors. It covers many aspects of writing including the organisation of documents, page design, literature searching, electronic mail, proposals, progress reports, journal articles, electronic documents and so forth.

Michael Dertouzos, erstwhile director of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, is quoted on page 23 as being “confident that we will soon have an intelligent authoring tool for meetings … Spoken fragments are directed to a speech understanding programme where they are transcribed and indexed as well as summarised”. Presumably this is now happening, having being acomplished faster than it took to prepare and print the book.

The authors provide a chapter about developing graphics, They include numerous illustrations – “effective graphics condenses large amounts of information”. In another chapter, “Design of page and screen”, some good advice is given about styles, typography, and the effective use of white space – a very important consideration – “used consistently it improves readability and provides important information to readers about content”.

Chapter eight covers “searching the literature ”. It offers a concise answer to the question “You have access to an excellent research library, but you have only a few weeks to search literature and summarise how it applies to your project. Where do you begin?”. The chapter includes a table listing major information vendors and their services. It is quite unusual to find much about citation searching in a book of this kind, and exceptional to find an example of what the authors call “snowball searching”. At ISI this type of searching is known as “cycling”. The procedure is to start with a relevant article and consult its references in order to proceed backwards in time. The articles thus found are then looked up to see who is currently citing them, thereby bringing the user forwards in time.

The book abounds with common sense. For instance under “rehearsing your talk” it continues with “look critically at your overheads or slides from a position at the back of the room. No audience has ever been glad to hear a speaker say ‘I know you can't see these slides but what they show is …’. If you feel you have no option but to display a visual that cannot be seen, provide the audience with a photocopy”. This reviewer once refused to give a lecture unless the postage‐stamp size screen provided was replaced with one of a sensible size.

Under the heading “the politics of written communication” the authors provide some excellent advice: “no matter what are the technical merits of a written proposal, it may seem confrontational to management if the writer has neglected to build consensus in advance. It is not always wise to rush an idea into document form. Time can often be better spent discussing ideas and perhaps being prepared to share credit for innovations”.

Common sense and good advice continue in the final chapter entitled “A brief handbook of style and usage”. The authors advise that long sentences should be broken up into manageable units, but they also advise that choppy writing should be made to flow. They talk about emphasising the active, not the passive voice and deplore wordy writing and the ornate usage of words. Don't write “at the present time” use “now”.and replace “the fact is” by “because”. As an example of ornate words, instead of “become cognizant of” use “learn”

Francis Bacon said “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested …”. This is a book of Bacon's third kind.