Jack Selzer used, built on, took a position on, and added to prior publications all in the first paragraph of “The Composing Processes of an Engineer.” Selzer begins by letting his audience know that there has been an overabundance of research done on the topic of composing processes of writers. Next he mentions the gap he has found in the research on writer’s composing processes that he would like to pursue. Majority of this research has been conducted on students who are still learning and journalists and novelists. He wants to study the composing habits of Kenneth E. Nelson, an engineer. He uses the research that has already been done to compare to his own research so that he can discover the differences between the composing processes of a professional technical writer and the students, journalists, and novelists that have been researched before. Selzer takes a position by saying that the teaching of technical writing has not been impacted due to the fact that professional technical writer’s have not been studied before. He adds research of a professional engineer to the abundance of research that has already been done. He also added ways in which the teaching of technical writing could be improved. For example, he suggests that teachers could teach students how to reuse material and graphics, and he also suggests that technical writing teachers not skip the invention and arranging stage of writing since this stage is very similar to other disciplines of writing.