Chad Bonar

Textual Analysis

English 250

February 22, 2014

            The textual analysis I am doing is on a paper about part of the history of ASCE. ASCE stands for American Society of Civil Engineers it is one of the biggest groups for Civil Engineering and has a lot of cool history that you would not have thought of. To begin with the article explains who wrote it and what he did for a living. Allen Bud Beene was the Chair for the Texas Section of ASCE History(Beene). I think that the way they started with an explanation of what the article is about was pretty good in the case that they could keep their audiences attention.

            Once they finished explaining who it was made for and why they made the article they very sampling began by explaining the life of William John Smith who later changed his name to John William Smith. The way they started the article was simple so that the audience knew what was going on but it wasn’t really an attention grabber like most people want. I feel like, other than the begging which they could have added an interesting statement about John, that the rest of the format was good and that they ordered the paragraphs very well so that they went from topic to topic. All though it is a slow moving article in the end it has a lot of meaning for what he did, he was one of the main men who helped win the Alamo, and so the ASCE wanted to get his story out since he was also a Civil Engineer. I thought the way the author sets up for the main story they are trying to get off isn't that good because it makes you wonder if there is really going to be a big piece of history within the article.

            The style of the article is good but I think if they added more interesting statements about the history it would get the audience’s attention faster. The audience of the ASCE article was fellow Civil Engineers or anybody who is interested in History. That’s why I am writing about this article, because I am trying to inform people on the history and writing style of Civil Engineers. I think the reason that there isn’t much of an attention grabber is because Engineers usually are straight to the point, it is just how we are taught to write when going through schooling for Engineering. That’s why I was excited to write about the textual analysis for Civil Engineering because I don’t want to be straight forward with all of my writing I like being kind of mysterious with my writing and reading over articles written by Engineers is helping me think of how I could do a mix of the two styles of writing. I think all Engineering should try to do this with their writing because this article is a prime example of a bland piece of writing.

            The author was trying to get the history of a Civil Engineer across to the audience and to do this they told his life story. They had a lot of straight forward facts about him which is good for an article but there wasn’t anything to grab the attention of the audience. This could be a bad thing because if they don’t get the attention from the audience than the audience won’t read the whole article and then there will be no one to tell the history of this man. So over all I think this article was good but I really wish they would have thrown some interesting facts and/or statements about Mr. Smith. That way I would have been intrigued to read the article and not just push through so I could see what it was about which I am glad I did because it was very interesting.

Beene, Allen M. "Bud" "Civil Engineering History." ASCE (American Society of 

             Civil Engineering) Library. Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering 

             Education and Practice, Apr. 2001. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.