Compiling the Literature
Review
Format and Style Issues
The Introduction
Create a one- to two-sentence introduction that
serves as a forecasting statement and
answers these questions:


What is this section of the recommendation report?
What will it cover – what issues will it address?
List the subtopics in the order they will appear in the
report.
Sample Forecasting Statement
This review of recently published literature
on teamwork addresses organizational
structure, group dynamics, team
formation, and supervisor issues.
Why Use Headings?

Headings are an important feature of
professional writing: headings
alert readers to upcoming topics and
subtopics,
 help readers find their way around in long
reports and skip what they are not
interested in, and
 break up long stretches of straight text.

Headings
Use headings to mark off the boundaries
of the major sections and subsections of
a report.
 Use the same spacing (vertical and
horizontal location), capitalization,
punctuation, and underlining.
 Make the phrasing of headings parallel.

Parallelism

Parallelism refers to the way that items in
a series are worded.

Use the same style of wording in a series of
items--it makes it easier on the reader.
Widely varied wording is distracting and
potentially confusing to readers.
Strategies for Effective Headings

Make the phrasing of headings selfexplanatory: instead of "Background," make it
more specific, such as “Turnover Statistics at
Store #37."
 Make headings indicate the range of topic
coverage in the section. For example, if the
section covers the design and operation of a
training strategy, the heading “Designing a
Training Strategy" would be incomplete and
misleading.
 Avoid "stacked" headings -- any two
consecutive headings without intervening text.
More Strategies




Avoid pronoun reference to headings. For example, after a thirdlevel heading “Employee Training," don't begin the sentence
following it with something like this: "This is an important
principle....."
When possible, omit articles from the beginning of headings. For
example, "The Major Types of Shoplifting Deterrents" can easily
be changed to "Major Types of Shoplifting Deterrents" or, better
yet, "Shoplifting Deterrents."
Don't use headings as lead-ins to lists or as figure titles.
Avoid "widowed" headings: that's where a heading occurs at the
bottom of a page and the text it introduces start at the top of the
next page.

Keep at least two lines of body text with the heading, or force it to
start the new page.
Fundamental Principle of Heading
Design
Decrease the “noticeability” of headings; the
lower the heading level, the less it stands out.
 Make the top-level heading (called first-level)
the largest, darkest, boldest, most highly
visible heading on the page.
 To achieve this greater or lesser degree of
visibility, use bold, italics, type size, or different
fonts.

Source: http://www.io.com/~hcexres/tcm1603/acchtml/headings.html
Support from the Text

See pages 573 and 578 – 579, which
gives you guidelines for up to five levels
of heading. It also provides examples of
how to format them.

You will probably need no more than three
levels in your recommendation report.
Conclusion

To end the literature review section of
your team’s recommendation report,
briefly present conclusions drawn about
the literature on your topic.

Overall, how would you describe the
literature on your topic?
Sample Conclusion

Overall, the literature on teams presents many
important factors to consider when creating
teams. Most authors agree that training is
essential in areas such as communication and
feedback, mutual accountability, and goal
setting. Supervisors can contribute
experience and guidance to the teams as they
are formed and begin engaging in group
dynamics.
Other Issues to Consider

Help each other make final corrections.
Make sure that
The APA is correct
 There is no overlap among the content of
the sections
 The sections are as balanced as possible
 The style and approach are as consistent as
possible

The References Page
Save your annotated bibliography with a
new name.
 Delete the annotations.
 Delete any sources you did not cite in
your lit review.
 Add any new sources.
 Make sure the in-text citations match up
with the entries on the references page.

Don’t forget….
Save your lit review and your references
page on your team’s Group Space!