Project Title (use style: paper title)
Subtitle as needed (paper subtitle)
Student Name(s)
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
United States Naval Academy
Advisor(s): Advisor names
Abstract—Briefly Describe your project. This is not the same
thing as an introduction! Briefly describe the problem, your
approach, how you tested your system and the results. Try to
keep the abstract at less than 300 words.
I. INTRODUCTION (HEADING 1)
This is a modified version of the IEEE paper format style.If
you look at the “styles” menu in this document in MS Word,
you will see a number of styles like “Heading 1”, “Caption”
and “Title”—use the appropriate style for the type of text. The
“normal text” such as this should all be justified and in 10 pt
Times New Roman font, and should have a 3/16” indent at the
start of the paragraph. Please do not readjust paper margins.
You do not need to use the same section heading names as I
have in this example (although this is a good start)—discuss
with your mentor what headings make the most sense for your
project. The one exception to this is the Requirements
Validation section-- you need to explicitly describe how your
final result compared to your initial requirements plan.
The introduction should describe the motivation and
background for your project. Here are some sections that it
should contain. Be sure to include references! References
should be numbered in order of appearance in the text and cited
as [#]. In the introduction, you should also address the greater
global and societal context for your project.
Fig. 1. This picture of the happiness that shortly awaits you illustrates
appropriate figure and caption format for IEEE. Note that the label is “Fig.”
and not “Figure”. It is in 8 pt. font and it is left justified.
C. Table Format
Tables are numbered with Roman numerals. Table I
illustrates the proper format for a table in an IEEE publication.
Notice that the table title looks pretty different from a figure
caption. The text in the table is 9 pt. and the table footnote is 8
pt.
TABLE I. TABLES ARE TITLED LIKE THIS
II. DESIGN
Once again, you don’t need to use the same section titles as
are included here, but you should start with an overview of
your design and then break down your design piece by piece,
making use of the sub-headings
A. Design Overview (Heading 2)
Like this. Before going on with content, however, here are
some details on paper format.
B. Figure Format
Designs are often best described via figures, like Fig. 1.
Figures should be on the same page as where they are
referenced in the text (and they are referenced as “Fig. #”). I
recommend that you format the figure as “In Line with Text”—
I’ve found that is the easiest way to control its location.
iCVD sensor
AFP device
Canine*
Size
< 1 mm2
hand-held
large
Response time
seconds
minutes
seconds
Cost
low
high
high
*Yes, I mean a dog. This is from a paper on odor detection. This is also how
you do a footnote for a table.
D. Equation Format
Use MathType or the Microsoft equation editor to format
equations. Number equations consecutively. Equation numbers,
within parentheses, are to position flush right, as in Eq. 1, using
a right tab stop. Italicize Roman symbols for quantities and
variables, but not Greek symbols. Use a long dash rather than a
hyphen for a minus sign. Punctuate equations with commas or
periods when they are part of a sentence, as in
𝐴 = 𝜋𝑟 2 .

Note that the equation is centered using a center tab stop.
Be sure that the symbols in your equation have been defined
before or immediately following the equation. To refer to the
equation in the text, use “Eq. 1” or “Equation 1”, not “(1)”,
especially at the beginning of a sentence: “Equation 1 is . . .”
E. Footnotes
Use footnotes sparingly (or not at all) and place them at the
bottom of the column on the page on which they are
referenced. Use Times 8-point type, single-spaced.
To help your readers, avoid using footnotes altogether and
include necessary peripheral observations in the text (within
parentheses, if you prefer, as in this sentence).
Number footnotes separately from reference numbers, and
in superscripts. Do not put footnotes in the reference list. Use
letters for table footnotes.
F. Some Common Mistakes


The word “data” is plural, not singular.
The subscript for the permeability of vacuum 0, and
other common scientific constants, is zero with
subscript formatting, not a lowercase letter “o”.
 Commas, semi-/colons, periods, question and
exclamation marks are located within quotation marks
only when a complete thought or name is cited, such as
a title or full quotation. When quotation marks are
used, instead of a bold or italic typeface, to highlight a
word or phrase, punctuation should appear outside of
the quotation marks. A parenthetical phrase or
statement at the end of a sentence is punctuated outside
of the closing parenthesis (like this). (A parenthetical
sentence is punctuated within the parentheses.)
 A graph within a graph is an “inset”, not an “insert”.
The word alternatively is preferred to the word
“alternately” (unless you really mean something that
alternates).
 Do not use the word “essentially” to mean
“approximately” or “effectively”.
 In your paper title, if the words “that uses” can
accurately replace the word “using”, capitalize the “u”;
if not, keep using lower-cased.
 Be aware of the different meanings of the homophones
“affect”
and
“effect”,
“complement”
and
“compliment”, “discreet” and “discrete”, “principal”
and “principle”.
 Do not confuse “imply” and “infer”.
 The prefix “non” is not a word; it should be joined to
the word it modifies, usually without a hyphen.
 There is no period after the “et” in the Latin
abbreviation “et al.”.
 The abbreviation “i.e.” means “that is”, and the
abbreviation “e.g.” means “for example”.
An excellent style manual for science writers is given by
Young [1]. Now having described the format, the rest of this is
an example of the sections you should include.
G. Length
There is no length requirement or limit. Your report should
be as long as it needs to be to fully describe your project. The
IEEE format is fairly dense, so you should expect your paper to
be about 5-10 pages. Your group should collectively prepare
one report.
III. PROCEDURE
This section should describe all the nuts and bolts of how
you went about your project. I recommend that you make use
of sub-headings to break out the different stages of your
project. You should include enough detail that somebody with
an equal education could reproduce your work.
IV. RESULTS
Here is where you put the data of how your system
performed. Try to be as quantitative as possible. This is a
great place for figures and graphs.
V. DISCUSSION
Discuss your results. What do they imply? What further
testing or analysis would you do if you had time?
VI. REQUIREMENTS VERIFICATION
This section is required. For this section, go back to the
requirements that you created for your system in your proposal.
Using bullets, list each requirement and then state whether or
not the requirement was met, and if not, why.
 The device should weigh less than 5 kg. This
requirement was met. The final device mass is 3 kg.
 Next requirement. Narrative of how the requirement
was addressed.
VII. CONCLUSION
Summarize your project and what was accomplished.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This is where you thank the people who helped you with
your project—not just your advisors but also the techs who
built your stuff or the prof who loaned you their lab equipment-- you get the picture.
REFERENCES
List and number all bibliographical references in 9-point
Times, single-spaced, at the end of your paper. When
referenced in the text, enclose the citation number in square
brackets, for example: [1]. The sentence punctuation follows
the bracket [2]. Refer simply to the reference number, as in
“[3]”—do not use “Ref. [3]” or “reference [3]”. Do not use
reference citations as nouns of a sentence (e.g., not: “as the
writer explains in [1]”).
Unless there are six authors or more give all authors’ names
and do not use “et al.”. Papers that have not been published,
even if they have been submitted for publication, should be
cited as “unpublished” [4]. Papers that have been accepted for
publication should be cited as “in press” [5]. Capitalize only
the first word in a paper title, except for proper nouns and
element symbols.
[1] M. Young, The Technical Writer's Handbook. Mill Valley, CA:
University Science, 1989
[2] G. Eason, B. Noble, and I. N. Sneddon, “On certain integrals of
Lipschitz-Hankel type involving products of Bessel functions,”
Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. London, vol. A247, pp. 529–551, April
1955.
[3] J. Clerk Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism,
3rd ed., vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon, 1892, pp.68–73.
[4] K. Elissa, “Title of paper if known,” unpublished.
[5] R. Nicole, “Title of paper with only first word capitalized,” J.
Name Stand. Abbrev., in press.
[6] Y. Yorozu, M. Hirano, K. Oka, and Y. Tagawa, “Electron
spectroscopy studies on magneto-optical media and plastic
substrate interface,” IEEE Transl. J. Magn. Japan, vol. 2, pp.
740–741, August 1987 [Digests 9th Annual Conf. Magnetics
Japan, p. 301, 1982].