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Writing reports

Most people find report writing a difficult task.  The purpose of a report is to communicate ideas or information to the reader.

The ability to write a report clearly and in a form that is easy to understand is undoubtedly one of the most important skills an engineer can acquire.  These days it is expected that engineers will be IT literate and competent in word-processing packages, spreadsheets and presentations.  We have outlined some advice below for when you come to writing your final year project report.


"The report must meet the needs of the readers and answer the questions in their minds.

The report must be at the right level for the readers.  Some readers have an in-depth knowledge of the subject; others may be decision-makers without specialised technical knowledge.

The report must have a clear, logical structure - with clear sign-posting to show where ideas are leading.

The report must not make assumptions about the readers' understanding.  All writers need to apply the 'so what' test and need to explain why something is a good idea.

The report must give a good first impression.   Presentation is very important.

All reports must be written in good English - using short sentences and with correct grammar and spelling."

Before your research:

Use structure headings as a plan and note research information under these headings on separate pages.  Write a sentence or thesis statement clarifying the subject and purpose of the report which could be used later.

Writing the draft:

  • Keep your audience in mind
  • If you have planned headings, some sections of the report can be written before your research is completed
  • Leave the checking of spelling, punctuation and grammar to the editing stage

When you are hard pressed, it can be easy to forget the first rule of writing which is to take time for planning and preparation. As with most things, planning is an essential part of writing your report.

A general rule of thumb is to allow up to a third of your available time on an outline, plan or a mind map. It will save hours later and is really helpful if you get writers block.  Take a sheet of paper and make notes of all your thoughts and association with the subject at hand.  This will give you a visual image of everything you need to include and will help you to prioritise the topics so that you emphasise the right issues.  Your result will be a focused and organised report that has a clear structure and is easy to read.

It is a good idea to plan the structure of your report quite early on in the course of your project and where appropriate to write draft versions of certain sections of the project so you can slot them in to the report structure as you complete a task.  By organising yourself in such a way you will help to maximise the amount of time you have available to complete the work and minimise the amount of work you have to do at the end of your project and avoid rushing at the last minute.

Objectives:

  • What do I want to achieve?
  • Who am I writing for?
  • What do they already know?
  • What will be helpful to them?   
  • What do I want them to understand or agree with?

Is the information included necessary and does it support my key points?

It is also worth checking with your course tutor whether there are any university specific guidelines on the way they want you to write a report as this could be quite specific to your course and to the university.

The structure of a typical report is as follows:

  • Title page
  • Abstract
  • Contents Page
  • Introduction
  • Report of work done/methods
  • Results
  • Discussion/Analysis of results
  • Conclusions
  • Recommendations/future work
  • References
  • Bibliography
  • Appendices
  • Acknowledgements

Title Page:

The function of a title page is to win the attention of the reader. If you have a choice on your layout, you can achieve prominence for certain information such as the author's name and title by considering:

  • The position on the page
  • The area allocated to the information
  • The size of the font used
  • Titles, where possible should be short and create an impact by telling the reader exactly the subject of the report.

The Abstract (or Executive Summary):

This is an important part of the document as it allows the reader to understand and see at a glance what the nature of your report is, rather than having to read the whole document.  You should aim to keep this to a maximum of one page and summarise the objectives and achievements of your project.  Try to give hard facts and figures, focus attentions on the conclusions of the report, help the reader remember what is in the report.

The contents list:

This should be a list of the chapter and sections you have covered together with a page index.  The most helpful reports have sections or chapters with succinct but meaningful headings.  This section is best addressed once the document is complete

Introduction:

The introduction should set the scene of the report for example, what is under investigation, why is it important, how have others approached a similar problem; why are their approaches not suitable to this particular case, what are the aims of this investigation?

Project Methodology:

This should contain a detailed description of what methods were used to approach your project. However many sections you include, make sure they are prioritised, have clear headings to help the reader and there is a clear idea contained in every paragraph. Things you should consider documenting are:

  • What equipment and software were used
  • What were the operating conditions
  • What assumptions have been made, if applicable
  • What statistical techniques have been used
  • Can their validity be justified

The approach you should take in this section should be documenting in such a way so that the reader could repeat the experiment if required. For each idea presented, you should establish some rationale or motivation for its undertaking and any assumptions must be justified.

Results:

Any results you present should be complete but manageable, try not to get too swamped down with unnecessary or irrelevant details  - these can be saved for appendices.  Results are there purely to support the argument and should be presented/ summarised in a table or graph.

Discussion and analysis of results:

This is the crux of a report and the part that could help you clinch your degree.  This section should attempt to explain the results in terms of theory and the findings of others and links the original question to the conclusion through the arguments that are made.

  • What are the implications of the data?
  • What conclusions can be drawn?
  • What recommendations for changing future practice can be made?

Conclusions:

“conclusions must conclude, not summarise!”

This can often be the most difficult section to write.  There should be no new arguments or evidence presented here and the conclusion should be specific and directly relate back to the question you were trying to answer at the start of your project.  The conclusion should quite simply be a list of points we know as a result of having done the project that we did not know when we started.

Recommendations:

Recommendations should be clear and little more than checklist with references back to previous sections should the reader require more information.

Recommendations can represent ideas for good practice and also identify further research and development work, which may be required in order to clarify certain issues or move into a new phase of the project.

References:

Most of the work we do builds on the ideas and efforts of others and therefore it is important to give credit where it is due by citing their papers and references.

There are defined conventions for specifying references in reports that make it easy for a reader to locate the reference.

For journal papers and books you could use the Harvard standard (32.7KB) cited at the University of Ulster and for the citation of electronic web sites go to APA online.

Bibliography:

You may wonder what the difference between this and the references section is? Well, whilst the references section details specific texts relevant to the argument or point of interest being made, the bibliography should detail a list of general reading in the subject area of interest.  Bibliographies are normally listed in much the same way as the references.

Appendices:

Any supplementary or detailed information that could interfere with the continuity of the main body of the document should be left for the appendices - therefore allowing the reader to concentrate on the subject manner in hand without distraction.  Appendices should be numbered accordingly for example, Appendix A1, Appendix A2 etc – in order to allow cross-referencing from the text.

Acknowledgements:

If other people’s results or ideas are quoted or used in the text, then they should be referenced by citations.  However any significant help received should be acknowledged in this section: Things that are normally noted include:

  • Useful/ stimulating/ helpful discussions with someone
  • Financial support for the project
  • The loan of equipment
  •  The processing of data by specialist software
  • Acknowledgements are normally restricted to those outside your organisation.

Style for readability:

Top tips:

Avoid long sentences…but…

Remember, the sentence length should be flexible, to allow text to flow

Long, unfamiliar words reduce clarity - Good business English is clear, simple, familiar to readers and definite. Don’t be tempted to use obscure and convoluted grammatical constructions as this could put the reader off.     Avoid unnecessary words

Avoid turning verbs into nouns or names i.e. Nominalisation

Use the active rather than the passive voice

Use the personal construction rather than the impersonal

Finally, remember to always make back-ups of your work as you go along.  You should work in confident expectation that:

  • Your hard disk could fail
  • You could accidentally delete vital information
  • Your computer could be stolen