An Analysis of Jack Selzer's Composing Processes

Why did Selzer want to study the composing processes of an engineer?

What Selzer wanted to do is explore to explore an unchecked, unexplored type of writing. Scholars had studied journalists, authors, and students, but no had ever looked at the people who used technical writing in their every day work life. It was important to understand technical writing, so that students who had prospects in technical fields could properly prepare for their respective fields.

What did you, the reader, find interesting/unique/surprising about his findings?

To me, I thought it was interesting that Selzer found Nelson to take such care and time to prepare his writings. This also the same kind of behavior you would expect an engineer to have with any other project he would take on. Also, once he writes it down, he rarely revises it.
Selzer observes:
"My observations and Nelson's remarkably clean
drafts showed that once Nelson writes a sentence he seldom reconsiders it.
Instead, he pushes forward with confidence so that whole drafts of proposals
and whole chapters of reports can be completed at one sitting."

Class Findings:

Nelson also would also reuse previous documents by incorporation them into new documents.

Nelson spends significant time thinking about his audience's needs, interests, knowledge

Nelson had stylistic rules that he adhered to all the time (short sentence length, topic sentence in every paragraph)

ETHOS- appeal based on credibility
LOGOS- appeal based on logic

MULTIPLE DATA COLLECTION METHODS

Taped Discussion: Nelson responded in detail to questions about his writing sessions, their focus, length conduct.
Face-toface interviews
Collected all of Nelson's documents
Selzer went to Nelson's workplace and observed him

TRIANGULATION - TRIANGULATING DATA