Aptitudes of Engineers Versus Technical Communicators

Abstract

We all know that certain skills come to us more easily than others. What makes a person a good technical communicator or a good design engineer? Are these characteristics solely dependent upon the amount of practice, or are we born with intrinsic abilities that make us better at different things? Over the years, many tests such measure academic prowess. Unfortunately these tests are limited to only a minute number of traits, and often career decisions are based on these scores. These tests do not take into account the many innate aptitudes genetically passed on. This paper will discuss innate aptitudes, and how they affect success, particularly in the engineering and technical communication fields. Technical communicators possess a certain combination of innate aptitudes that contribute to their success in the engineering field, whereas engineers often lack these, making them poor communicators. Johnson O’Connor began studying these traits in the early 1940’s and has become a maor contributor in the study of aptitudes and their affect on career success. It took many years of research to define individual abilities and design tests to determine if these abilities are present. During the past 50 years, research and testing has continuously validated his early findings. Technical communicators are born with certain traits that affect their performance in both the engineering and technical communication fields. Research has shown that the most prominent aptitudes include structural visualization, ideaphoria, graphoria, analytical reasoning, and inductive reasoning. Engineers and technical communicators possess many of the same aptitudes, but their differences make them better in their respective fields. The higher degree of structural visualization possessed by engineers leads to innovation. Whereas their low level of graphoria makes the translation of their ideas into words very difficult. The lower degree of structural visualization possessed by technical communicators still enables them to visualize, and combining this with their aptitude for graphoria gives them the ability to easily translate this vision into words. This presentation will also discuss how the objective versus subjective personality affects the field of writing chosen. The analysis of these traits explains why technical communicators are successful in the technological and scientific fields, and why engineers are often unsuccessful in the field of technical communications.