Writing Report Techniques

1. Paper Size and Format: The project report must be printed on A4 paper and

students are required to follow these bullet points for printing style:

• 12-point font size text.

• 1.5 space line text.

• Page margins: 30 mm left, 20 mm right, 25 mm top and 25 mm bottom.

2. Report Structure:

The report should be structured in the following main sections:

2.1 Title page

A page showing the project title, date, your name, course and supervisor’s name needs

to be included. The title page must also contain “Higher College of Technology”,

Engineering Department and the student section. Also, it is preferable to write the

semester name in the right end of the front page (Optional).

2. 2 Declaration

Following the title page, there must be a signed declaration by the student that the

report contains only your original work or fully acknowledged work by others.

2.3 Abstract

The report must include an abstract on a separate page, with keywords printed out at

the bottom of the page. The abstract should be a concise description of the objectives

of the work, the methods used, the outcomes and the conclusions reached. The

abstract should be less than 250 words. It should be self-contained and intelligible in

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its own right: it is not an introduction to the report. The better quality papers in IEE

Proceedings or IEEE Transactions provide examples of good abstract writing. Note

the conventional use of the present tense in abstracts to describe what is presented in

the report. This should be the last section you write.

2.4 Acknowledgement

This section is to acknowledge any help you have received in carrying out your
project work.

2.5 List of contents (Tables and Figures)

The report should be paginated and should contain a table of contents indicating

where each section may be found. All main sections and sub-sections should be

numbered using the decimal system (as in this document). Normally, not more than

three levels of numbering should be needed. Modest indentation of sub-sections may

make a report more readable. Pages should be numbered sequentially starting at the

first page of the main report (normally the Introduction). Preliminary pages may be

numbered in a separate sequence in lower case using Roman numerals.

2.6 Introduction

This section should must contain a brief background to the subject of the report and
give the aims of the work. An important objective of the introduction is to point the
reader’s mind in the right direction with a clear understanding of the reasons for
undertaking the project work.

2.7 Style and layout

Note that the assessment scheme places emphasis on good use of technical English,

correct grammar, spelling and punctuation.

A few points are worth making in relation to layout, which should improve report

quality:

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(a) Equations should be placed on a separate line. The significant equations

(especially those referred to elsewhere) should be numbered sequentially in round

brackets on the right-hand side e.g (1).

(b) Each diagram must be numbered sequentially and have a suitable title included

below the diagram. If diagrams are required in landscape mode they must be

orientated so that the reader rotates the report 90 degrees clockwise to read. All

figures, tables, diagrams and graphs should be referenced in the text. e.g.:

Fig.1......,Table.1.............................)

(c) Graphs must be treated as figures in the numbering system. Axes should be

labelled with quantity and units and all data points clearly shown (dots surrounded by

a circle are more visible and easier to plot accurately than crosses). Normally the

independent variable is placed along the ordinate (x-axis). If theoretical and

experimental results are being compared they should occupy the same graph.

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(d) Tables should be numbered in a separate series but should also have a title placed

above. Units should be included in the table headings. In vertical columns of values,

the decimal points should be aligned.

2.8 Project Work

This section (or sections) describes details of the work carried out and the methods of

measurement and analysis of the data obtained.

2.9 Results and Description

This section presents all the major findings, the practical experimental calculations as

well as the graphs to support the results. The section should compare the practical

results with theoretical predictions and account for any discrepancies as well as

discuss how the results obtained match up to the original aims of the project.

2.10 Statement and achievement of technical objectives

A concise paragraph must be included clearly describing the technical objectives

achieved by the project. These should be contrasted with the original project proposal

to highlight the real achievements.

2.11 Conclusion

This should be the last main section of the report. It should discuss the results and

summarise the technical conclusions to be drawn from the work. The conclusions to a

successful project should form a fairly extensive section, including discussions of the

project objectives, the achievements, alternative avenues of investigation and a critical

review of the project.

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2.12 Recommendations for further work

Inevitably there will always be further work, which could have been carried out to

improve a project, to extend the ideas generated or techniques adopted. Far from

detracting from the objectives actually achieved, this demonstrates an ability to think

around the subject, to display an awareness of relevance to other applications, to be

critical about one’s achievement and to stimulate further study.

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2.13 References

A numbered list of all the important references cited in the work should appear at the

end of the report, preferably in the style recommended by IEEE. Some examples of

the exact style and format is given below:

a. Article in Collection

Example:

A.J. Albrecht, "Measuring Application-Development Productivity," Programmer

Productivity Issues for the Eighties, 2nd ed., C. Jones, ed., IEEE CS Press, Los

Alamitos, Calif., 1981, pp. 34-43.

b. Article in a conference proceedings

In general, delete prepositions where the meaning is clear without them. Use the

ordinal symbol (2nd, 14th, 23rd) for annual conferences. If available, include the

conference initializm in parentheses--for example, (ICDE 98)--following the

abbreviated name of the conference.

M. Weiser, "Program Slicing," Proc. 14th Int'l Conf. Data Eng. (ICDE 98), IEEE CS

Press, Los Alamitos, Calif., 1981, pp. 439-449.

c. Article in a journal or magazine

Use lowercase for vol. and no. Page numbers through 9999 do not Require a comma.

I.E. Sutherland, R.F. Sproull, and R.A. Schumaker, "A Characterization Of 10

Hidden-Surface Algorithms," ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 6, No. 1, Mar. 1974, pp.

1-55.

d. Book

W.M. Newman and R.F. Sproull, Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics,

McGraw-Hill, Hightstown, N.J., 1979, p. 402.

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e. CD-ROM

Place the term "CD-ROM" following the publication's title and Preceding the

publisher's name. For example, the format for a book that is available on CD-ROM is

W.M. Newman and R.F. Sproull, Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics, CD-

ROM, McGraw-Hill, Hightstown, N.J., 1979.

f. Dissertation or thesis

B. Fagin, A Parallel Execution Model for Prolog, doctoral dissertation, Dept.

Computer Sciences, Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1987.

M. Nichols, The Graphical Kernel System in Prolog, master's thesis, Dept. Computer

Science and Eng., Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst., Troy, N.Y., 1985.

g. Electronic publication

L.P. Burka, "A Hypertext History of Multiuser Dimensions," MUD History,

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/home/lpb/mud-history.html (current December 2000).

When formatting URLs, use the exact address supplied by the author. For example, if

the author uses the http://, you should include it; if the author does not include the

http://, or a www, and so on, do not add these yourself. Not all addresses start with

http:// (there are other

protocols that are also legitimate, for example, ftp://), and not all addresses need, nor

indeed do all work with, a www; since we are not familiar with the addresses we must

avoid incorrectly "fixing" the author's info. If you recognize something as a URL

without the http://,

the reader probably will, too.

Be sure to include all punctuation exactly as supplied (hyphens andtildes, in

particular, are very common in Web addresses).

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Verify addresses you tag as URLs by copying and pasting them into your

browser and seeing if the string of text that is in your Word doc actually goes

where it should.

If the address must run across more than one line, follow these guidelines:

1. Break only after a forward slash or a "dot" (period).

2. Do not split the double slash.

3. Do not split at hyphens, tildes, and so on, that are part of the address.

4. Do not introduce hyphens to break words (be very careful about this as

Word may try to hyphenate automatically).

5. Separating the extension (for example, the html at the end) is

discouraged.

Some Acceptable Examples

http://

www.web-pac.com/mall/pacific/start.html

http://www.web-pac.

com/mall/pacific/start.html

http://www.web-pac.com/mall/

pacific/start.html

Not acceptable

http:/

/www.web-pac.com/mall/pacific/start.html

http://www.webpac.

com/mall/pacific/start.html

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http://www.web-pac

.com/mall/pacific/start.html

http://www.web-pac.com/mall/pacific/start.html

2.14 Appendices

Appendices may be necessary to contain information which is essential to the report,

but which would impede reading of the main text, such as extensive tables of results,

lengthy mathematical derivations, etc.

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