Guidelines for Formal Report
ChE 477 (UO Lab)
Larry Baxter & Stan Harding
Brigham Young University
Content and Format
• Letter of Transmittal
• Short letter with summary that is separate from report and is
addressed to your supervisor.
• Front Matter
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Executive Summary
• Summarize objective, methods, results, and conclusions in less
than one page.
• Introduction
• Have a one-sentence statement of objective. Don’t be
embarrassed to say, “The objectives of this investigation are
…”
Content and Format
• Theory
• Develop model that describes what should happen independent
of data (a curve fit is not a model).
• Base model on coursework where possible.
• Apparatus & Procedure
• Minimize replication of available instructions. Focus on issues
not obvious to you at the start or things to avoid.
• Results, Analysis, and Discussion
• Largest single section of report. Focus on interpretation of data
(this is why they pay me the big bucks).
• Include statistical analysis of data.
Content and Format
• Conclusions & Recommendations
• Concise, focused on objective, with no new information in
conclusions.
• References
• Cite all work that is not yours.
• Appendix
• Same as earlier, including suggestions for improving
experiment and partner evaluation.
• Optional
• Nomenclature
Content and Format
• Figures
• All figures should be numbered and have captions at the
bottom.
• Figures should not appear on a page earlier than the page on
which it is first cited.
• Axes should be labeled at bottom (or top) and left (or right), not
in the center.
• Use full range of figure. Don’t leave large blank areas.
• Tables
• All tables should be numbered and have captions at the top.
• Headers and Footers
• Include title of report in header and page number in footer.
Roman page numbering starts with title page (but no number
appears on title page). Arabic numbering starts with summary
(but again the summary page is not numbered).
Dangling Constructions
• Ensure the subject of introductory sentences agrees
with that of the remainder of the sentence.
• Having studied the costs, several questions arise.
• Having studied the costs, we posed the following questions.
• To obtain more precise data, surrogate chemicals were used.
• To obtain more precise data, investigators used surrogate
chemicals.