Lecture 2

Planning your report

• Consider the report as a whole

• Break down the task of writing the report into
various parts.
• How much time do you have to write the report?
• Set yourself deadlines for the various stages.
Clarifying your terms of reference

You must be clear from the start what you are

being asked to do.
Common report Structure
• Two Ways:
1. Write everything together in one big word document.
2. Break your report(one Word document per chapter for long reports)
(Better)

• WHY Second Approach is better?

• It is easier to manage
• Navigation is easier (Scroll through tens of pages rather than
hundreds)
• You can send one section for correction while working on another
• Group work is easier
• Less risk of Word crashing due to the large size of the document +
figures + tables etc.
Collecting information

• What is the information you need ?

• Where do you find it ?

• How much do you need ?

• In what order will you arrange it ?

Draft Plan

Before you start typing your report :

 It will be advantageous to spend some time writing a draft plan and get

ensure that a realistic amount of time is scheduled for all the stages of your

work.

 This draft will also contain the main sections. It is by making brief notes of

the content that will be included in each section that you will develop your

structure and your sub-headings will then evolve.

Draft Plan
 It is important to assign adequate time for writing your report. It is
impossible to write a good report quickly.
 A report that has been written the evening before it is due to be submitted
will inevitably lack structure and contain many typing errors. It is not
possible to obtain a good mark without spending considerable time on
the report.
 It may need to be grammatically correct .
 You may find it helpful to have a large folder available before you start.
 Any ideas you may have, any papers you read or references you may
wish to follow up should all be kept together for possible future use.
Technical report format (Structure of the Report )

 The breakdown of a report into sections helps organize the information

into logical sections.
 There is no “standard” convention dictating the number of sections in
a report.
 The sections used in this course follow a more common breakdown of
a technical writing reporting results of an engineering experiment.
 Appropriate adjustment should be made for other type of reports.
 Regardless of the number of sections, the logical flow of the
information in the report will be similar.
Main headings
 Title page
 Abstract
 Table of Contents
 List of Figures and Tables
 List of Symbols
 Acknowledgements
 Introduction
 Experimental Details
 Results and Discussions
 Conclusions and Recommendations
 References
 Appendices
Title page

• Include the title of project, thesis or experiment: The title should

be as long as is required to accurately describe your work and
inform a potential reader of the content
• Sometimes also need to include your course
• Name of the author
• Affiliation
• Year of publishing
Abstract

• An abstract of a technical report briefly summarizes the report. It should

describe motivations, methods, results, and conclusions, it includes the
purpose of the report, details of what you have done, how you did it.
• Ideally, an abstract is one paragraph long, should not exceed one page long.
• Must be written after accomplishing of all the work, and will be located at
the front of the report.
• Have a words limit, e.g., maximum 500 words, in mind when writing an
abstract.

(its purpose is to enable a potential reader to decide if

they want to read the whole of your report)
Table of Contents
• Only of long reports
• Table of Contents shows the structure of the report; it lists
each section and sub-section in numerical order.
• Major sections of the report must be listed with page
numbers.
• Second and third level headings may also be listed as
appropriated.
Levels of headings

2 First level (Title of the chapter)

2.1 Second level (Title of the sub-section)
2.1.1 Third level (Title of the sub-sub-section)
2.1.1.1 Fourth level (Title of the sub-sub-sub-section)
List of Figures and Tables

• List of Figures contains the listing of all the figures (drawings

and graphs) that appear in the report.
• They are listed in consecutive order that they appear in the report
with figure captions and page number.
• List of Tables is similar to the List of Figures but for all the tables
that appear in the report.
List of Symbols

• This list is optional. It can be used if the report contains

a lot of formulae and symbols.
Acknowledgements

• The author(s) must acknowledge every person or agency

involved in supporting, funding, guiding, advising, and working
on the project that are not part of the authoring team.
• There are two schools of thought on where the
acknowledgements should be placed.
o They may be included after the title page or after the
references.
Introduction
 This section provides an introduction to your work
 The beginning of the introduction should quickly explain the importance of
the experiment being reported and terms of reference (or brief).
 References made to others who have worked in the area.
 This enables you to show that you have read about your subject and are
aware of current work in your particular field.
 The introduction should detail not only the background to your research but
also put into context why your work is useful and the particular problem
that is to be addressed.
 If there is no separate “Technical Background” section in the report, this
section is where the necessary concepts that were applied in order to obtain
the results are explained.
Main Body of the Report
 The main body of your report is likely to contain a literature review,
methodology, results or findings and a discussion.
 Literature review.
 The literature review is a written overview of major writings and other
sources on a selected topic. Sources covered in the review may include
scholarly journal articles, books, government reports, Web sites, etc. The
literature review provides a description, summary and evaluation of each
source.
 Methodology.
o This section explains how you carried out your work. For example it will
detail the particular research methods you used.
Experimental Details

• This is the section where details of the experiments or research

conducted are discussed.
• The descriptions maybe in paragraph form, list form, or a
combination of both.
• The description must contain enough details to enable someone
else to duplicate the experiment.
Results and Discussions
 The Results and Discussion section should be the most substantial part of the
report. This is where the results of the experiment are reported and discussed.
Any significance in the work reported here must be made clear by detailed
discussions.
 This is the section where details of the experiments or research conducted are
discussed, with discussion or analysis, graphs, charts, tables or diagrams may
help your audience to focus on the results you are presenting.
 Discussion : this section discusses the results you have obtained and reported
o Report only the final results.
o Raw data and intermediate results that are not central to the topic of the
report can be placed in the Appendix if needed.
Conclusions and Recommendations
 Conclude what was discussed in the Results and Discussion section.
 Point out what you have achieved. You may also make
recommendations for future work; think of the conclusion as a short
restatement of important points being presented in the report.
 Once conclusions are made, make some recommendations as to the
utilities of those conclusions. Explain how useful the methodology and
the results are.
 It offers answers to questions raised in the beginning.
 Mention restrictions or limits pertaining to the use of the results.
 Suggest what the next step in the study should be to overcome the
limitation or advance the study further (future work).
References
 All published and unpublished sources of information used in preparing the
report are listed.
 Any idea, formula, etc., not originating from the author must be cited.
 A reference section is a required component in any technical report. Failure
to reference prior works maybe interpreted as claiming those works to be
your own.
 They are numbered consecutively according to the order that they appear in
the report.
 Use square bracket to denote a reference. References must be attached to
specific formulae, pages, or passages in the report.
References
 Any work, formulae, or discussion that is a common knowledge in the
field does not need to be referenced. For example, it is a common
knowledge for engineers that F = ma. There is no need to reference
Newton for this. This rule applies to common formulae that can be derived
or are well known by people in the field also.
 References from books, essays, journals, World Wide Web, and personal
communications.
 Anyone who reads your report and wants to see the material you have
cited will have enough information to be able to find it
References
It is important that you give precise details of all the work by other authors
which has been referred to within the report. Details should include:

• Author’s name and initials

• Date of publication
• Title of the book, paper or journal
• Publisher
• Place of publication
• Page numbers
• Details of the journal volume in which the article has appeared.
Examples:
• Single reference: [1].
• Multiple references (out of sequence): [2, 3, 6, 9].
• Multiple references (in sequence): [10–14] or [10]-[14].
• The citation might also contain a page number (e.g. [10, p20] )
Appendices
 Appendix includes secondary or extra information. Tables, flow charts,
intermediate results, maps, statistics are generally included.
 Calculations and equation derivatives used report
 Other supporting information that is not central to the main points to be
made in the report is placed in separate appendices as needed.

 Appendices should not contain any material necessary for

understanding the contributions of the paper.
 Appendices should contain all material that most readers would not be
interested in.
Appendices
• You may have more than one appendix and these may be labeled in an
alphabetic or numeric system (but not a combination of both), for example
Appendix 1, Appendix 2 or Appendix A, Appendix B.

• A title describing the contents of each appendix must also be included. It

must be possible to understand the report without recourse to the
appendices.