Appendix A
Appendix A: Guide to Formal Report Writing
A formal report is an account of an experiment or project. It should be a well
structured account, along the lines of an internal report within an organisation or a
research paper in a journal. Just as the parts of a book (the contents, chapters and
bibliography) organise the material in such a way that the reader finds it easy to
determine quickly what the book is about, so the formal structure of the report enables
the material to be accessible in an effective, efficient way. Generally your target
reader is a fellow student who is at a similar stage on the course rather than an
academic or postgraduate student.
The report should be neatly prepared, preferably using a word processor, although
clearly legible handwriting and carefully drawn diagrams are perfectly acceptable.
However, if work does not meet a minimum standard of preparation then you may be
asked to re-submit the report before marking by the assessor.
Formal reports are an intrinsic and important aspect of your professional training and
the Department puts considerable emphasis on encouraging you to develop proper
reporting skills.
During the academic year you will be required to prepare a number of formal reports
for both hardware and project laboratories. In particular, please note the experiments
that you are required to write up and the submission times, remembering that there is
a 100% penalty for late submission. Poor attendance and inadequate log books are
also penalised.
In order for you to judge the quality of your work, marking is performed on a degree
grade scale. The grading will be returned to you together with comments from the
laboratory staff.
Reports are graded on both their technical merit and their quality of presentation,
therefore it is expected that the report will require a significant time and study
resource during its execution. Reports must be well structured and written in good
English. It is normal engineering practice to write in the third person passive (e.g.
The circuit was constructed; the results are summarised in Table 3.) and to avoid the
use of "I" and "we". The use of colloquial English and "chatty" phraseology should
always be avoided. Also, try to avoid using superlatives such as "excellent", "very",
"so accurate the results were beyond belief" etc. Try to vary sentence construction so
that the material is not boring to read. Always aim for correct grammar; not to do so
leads to misunderstandings, and increases the reader's efforts to make sense of what
you have written. It is important to find a balance between writing short sentences,
which get ideas over effectively and a sequence of single clause sentences which
create a very broken rhythm. Vary it so that a good flow results.
Structure and Content
The most important part, the technical content, will come over when the structure and
style have been sorted out. The process you carry out is one of interpretation. Ideally,
the experiment which was performed was set out in a script structured in a progressive
and efficient way to allow you to carry out the experiments and to develop the ideas
which it was designed to illustrate. Remember that the structure of the experiment is
Appendix A
not necessarily the best for a report. Some modification will probably be necessary.
With the benefit of having gone through the whole experiment, for instance, it may
occur to you that certain parts can be grouped together to achieve a more concise
explanation and so help you to develop your arguments. The technical content should
include accurate (and complete enough for a critical examination of your analysis)
information about the experiments which were set up and results in tabular or
graphical form which can be used as a basis for comparison with theoretical
expectations. Long derivations should not appear in text because they disrupt the
flow of information. Often, derivations can be referenced if they have been done
before; otherwise, if it is necessary to include some substantial analysis of your own,
this is better in an appendix to the main work. It is not necessary to show
intermediate steps in an elementary calculation: it is assumed you have the ability to
do this correctly - but be sure that trust is well placed. If mistakes are apparent in a
report, then the trustworthiness of other information starts rapidly to come under
suspicion!
In practice try to quantify your observations and where appropriate give an estimate of
error and the expected value according to theory; this way your observations become
meaningful.
Normally a report will consist of some or all of the following sections:
Title page:
Title / student name / date / experiment number /
laboratory session
Abstract
See below for example
Contents
list with page numbers of the sections of the
Equipment list
List equipment and codes for future reference
report
List of symbols and abbreviations
1
purpose
Introduction
2
Theoretical section(s)
3
Procedural section(s)
4
Results section(s)
5
Conclusions
Acknowledgements
References
Appendices
setting out the background to the subject and the
of the work
Appendix A
The headings "Theoretical sections / procedural sections / results sections" are not the
headings you will use in practice. In your reports you should choose formal but
descriptive section headings that convey the content of the particular section.
All sections should be numbered using sub-headings as appropriate. For example,
2
The 'current-dumping' amplifier
2.1
Output-stage design
2.2
Derivation of balance condition
The object of a report is to convey information to the reader in a direct and efficient
way. Therefore, structure and careful organisation of ideas is important. The
"Introduction" and "Conclusions" should give a high-level overview to the work,
setting out what is to be done and then commenting on the results of the investigation
and indicating what has been discovered. The Conclusion should therefore link with
the Introduction and be critical of the findings. These two sections should "stand
alone", conveying the important aspects of the report without the necessity to read all
the fine detail (this would be of particular use to a manager who needs to know what
you set out to do and what was concluded but may not have the time to digest the
finer detail of the report as a whole). Also, when further investigations may be
appropriate, these can be detailed in the Conclusions or a separate section discussing
recommendations for further work.
Abstract
At the commencement of your report there should be an Abstract. This is a 50 to 100
word, succinct précis of the report emphasising the key features. The Abstract needs
to be "tightly" written, with no wasted words or phrases. In practice, an Abstract may
be documented in isolation to the report and is available to give concise background
to a work so as to inform the reader as to its basic contents. You are recommended to
examine a range of technical papers to see how Abstracts are written in practice.
However, an example is as follows:
A family of asymmetric crossover filters is investigated that expands the established
all-pass set. A general method of determining complementary crossover filters with
an all-pass composite response is presented together with a method of reflecting the
crossover asymmetry about the crossover region; a number of example filters are
included. CAD techniques are used to verify the basic approach and a simple
application to a satellite/sub-woofer loudspeaker is described where asymmetry in the
crossover frequency response and the resulting overlapping of the high-pass and lowpass responses is shown to improve the effectiveness of filter attenuation. However,
because of asymmetry in the high-pass and low-pass phase responses and the resulting
polar response irregularity in association with non-coincident drive units, the
application regime for these alignments is restricted to low frequency.
References
Appendix A
It is expected that in preparing your report you will use reference material (your
allocated marks will reflect this). This must be properly presented with references
listed near the end of the report and referenced appropriately in the body of the text.
Developing the proper use of reference material cannot be emphasised enough and
you are encouraged to follow good referencing practice for all your technical work,
not just formal reports. Your attention is also drawn to pages 18-21 that include
information relating to cheating. An example format for a reference appearing in the
list of references is as follows:
[Bor93]
Borish J and Angell J B, "An Efficient Algorithm for Measuring the
Impulse
Response Using Pseudo-random Sequences", J. Audio
Eng. Soc., Vol.31, No.7, 1993.
or
[1]
Borish J and Angell J B, "An Efficient Algorithm for Measuring the Impulse
Response Using Pseudo-random Sequences", J. Audio Eng. Soc.,
Vol.31, No.7, 1993.
In the text of the report, when you wish to indicate that information has been derived
from this particular reference or you wish to indicate to the reader that this article
provides additional information, you should include [Bor93] or [1] at the appropriate
place.
Appendix A
Notation
It is expected that you will use correct SI unit notation for all technical documents.
There are correct procedures to be followed and a professional engineer will use these
conventions. To help encourage you in this endeavour, you will be penalised for
incorrect use of notation, so please read Appendix B and observe the conventions.
The report should contain adequate theoretical background. However, where relevant
theory exists in a book or paper then the result(s) can be stated and appropriately
referenced. Alternatively, if you wish to develop and include a particular analysis it
may impede the reading of the report. In this case the additional material should be
presented in an appendix. This way the report remains complete but the reader is not
distracted from the flow of information and ideas; this is particularly relevant if an
analysis is not essential to a proper understanding.
Results
The report should be critical of sources of error, as all physical measurement systems
are subject to error, thus you should make estimates of the likely accuracy of results.
It is recommended that a study of combining multiple errors in numerical evaluations
should be made.
Report length
The report should be a comprehensive account of the topic but not over long. We ask
you to limit formal reports around 3000 to 5000 words (maximum) or 14 pages of text
(appendices can extend this length). To give an adequate account of the work which
occupied many hours in the laboratory is not a trivial task and while it may be more
laborious to write a longer report, excess length is often the result of laziness at the
planning stage. The laboratory assessors are rarely impressed by length; quality is
what counts. Of course, a long report may be excellent throughout but note in the first
place that if the material and organisation of a well proportioned report is of high
quality, it will earn good marks anyway. Remember that success in communication
results from retaining the interest of the reader - who may not have the time to digest
more than a certain volume of material.
In summary, the IET brief on report writing summarises good practice in the form of
ten 'laws' listed below.
1
The reader is the most important person.
2
Keep the report as short as possible.
3
Organise for the convenience of the report user.
4
All references should be correct in all details.
5
The writing should be accurate, concise and unobtrusive.
6
The right diagram with the right labels should be in the right place for the
reader.
7
Summaries give the whole picture, in miniature.
8
Reports should be checked for technical errors, typing errors and
inconsistency.
9
The report should look as good as it is.
10
The reader is the most important person.
If you try to obey them when you write your reports your work will be well-received.