Part III: Chapter 15 Science and Technology Summary

A very old wrong attitude is that engineers cannot write and writers cannot engineer. Put in another way, writers cannot write about technology and science, and technologists and scientists cannot write at all. Zinsser slams the coffin lid shut on this wrong attitude. Everyone can write, and can write about anything, if the approach is correct. The correct approach involves putting one sentence after another, one paragraph after another, in a way that explains the subject clearly, logically, and without assuming too much prior knowledge for the reader.

One of the problems the author sees is that in early education, attempts are made to identify broad learning capacities. An English teacher might tell a student that she or he has no language skills. A science teacher might tell a student that he or...