Engineering and autism

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Ok so below is a link to the first draft of an article I am looking to get published in the UK engineering press. My normal articles are of a technical nature on spray nozzles and spray technology as this is what my business does but I thought I'd use my relationship with the engineering press to try and do a bit of good for the cause and raise autism awareness. I'm not sure if many editors will pick it up as its a bit different to their normal content (which is generally quite technical in nature) but as a general interest piece it might well get picked up by some, who knows?

I'd appreciate any feed back on this before I send it out to my PR agent for distribution. I know one thing that people will pickup on is the fact that I am only skimming the surface on explaining autism. Unfortuantely there is no way around this as the max word count that most editors will accept is around 1500 words. I'd love to write a 6000 word disitation but that would not get picked up. So I know I have missed out a lot of the caveats and explanations I'd normally put on when talking about autism. I know not all autistic people have the strengths mentioned and I know that many autistic people won't make good engineers! But with that in mind any feed back would be appreciated.

Draft on word press link
https://autisticbean.wordpress.com/?p=1 ... iew_id=114

Word doc link
http://www.bete.co.uk/docs/default-sour ... x?sfvrsn=2

Wordpress link is dead, but I dl'd the doc.

Great little write up. It covers all the basics well enough that I don't see anything glaringly obviously missing. I can relate to this write up a fair bit as I've been an ASTTBC recognized Industrial Engineering Technologist for the past ~13 years, but have spent all of less than a year directly applying my education to relevant work in the field. I still use it daily no matter what job I'm doing, and at present I could venture down the Industrial Engineering path if I choose to - but it's not really in my career plans at the moment, aside from my own entrepreneurial plans. Knowing my own diagnosis years ago and having an accommodating employer would have helped out a lot.

That said, I can't help but correct some spelling & grammatical errors:

Under "What is Autism?" you have an extra "a" in the first sentence "article but a very briefly"

Under "strengths of the autistic mind" "thin" should be "think" here: "ability to thin differently" and "form" should be "from" here: "problem form a different"

You have a "2" before "thinking in pictures", but no "1" before "strengths of the autistic mind"

"visualise" should be "visualize", "name" should be "named Temple Grandin"

"revolutionised" should be "revolutionized"

It seems "the perfect combination" should be another numbered title, same with "making autism friendly workplaces"

"Quite working places" should read "Quiet.."

under "Team working" I'd break this into two sentences "will be required in these cases" to "will be required. In these cases"

change "Throwing and autistic" to "Throwing an autistic"

grammar; change "work less hours" to "work fewer hours"

change "times to time" to "time to time"

change "a day of to recharge" to "a day off to recharge"

add some commas "patterns though this" to "patterns, though, this"

"get the tasks done quickly and efficiently" - a bit redundant since being efficient is about speed.. perhaps change to "get the tasks done effectively and efficiently" or "get the tasks done quickly and effectively"

change "some help staring" to "some help starting"

change "face a bleak" to "face bleak"

"Taking of my father hat and looking at this objectively as the owner of a company in the engineering sector this is an opportunity to find great new engineers." to "Taking off my father hat and looking at this objectively as the owner of a company in the engineering sector, this is an opportunity to find great new engineers."

"Now at Bete Limited we are not a huge company." to "Now, at Bete Limited, we are not a huge company."


I hope my ~3am input was helpful, as intended, vs. annoying!

Thanks Goldfish. I forgot to warn that I hadn't grammar checked it properly but you have just saved me, or rather my wife, a job. I am utterly useless when it comes to grammar and spelling (I have mild dyslexia) so no matter how hard I try or practice can never seem to learn the rules! Luckily I have a wife who is good at those kind of things and my PR agent will check though anything before its released to the press.

Actually, judging by the Word Doc address, he might be British; and, therefore, the esses, as opposed to zees, would be CORRECT, for him.

Hehehehe. I didn't want to say anything because Goldfish did do me a big favour in correcting my appalling grammar. But you are correct I am British and as such have an aversion to to many Z's in my written language!

As a Canadian w/ many different spellings than Americans, I wondered that as I typed it.. but assumed they were errors along with the rest of them.

If you resided in the United States, I would ask you where does one purchase calibrated nozzles. The company I work for manufacturers military products, and some products require that they receive tests to simulate being power washed. I gave up on trying to do the tests in house when I couldn't find a source of nozzles. And probably because I am lazy too.

Ok so the finished article has been posted to my blog (linked below) and is currently with my companies PR agency to get out to the trade press. I'm really not sure how the various specialist engineering magazines I get my "normal" technical article published in will respond to this autism article as its quite different to the things they normally publish. But perhaps some of the more progressive editors will pick it up. Who knows?

https://autisticbean.wordpress.com/2014 ... of-talent/

Interesting. When I was working as a project engineer with up to 70 direct reports, I would go out of my way to find those who showed what we now know as ASD tendencies and get them on my teams. Once we got past the storming and norming project phases, their performance was awesome! We always came in on sked and at or under budget, with customer bonuses as well. Unfortunately less enlightened managers tended to avoid them. Their loss.

Cheers, Dave

Thanks for the input on this - my article has just been picked up by The Engineer magazine in the uk (link below) hopefully other magazines will pick it up also.

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/opinion/vi ... tsubmitted