Technical Writing

GH152
Lecture 1
What is Technical Writing?
 Technical writing conveys specific information
about a technical subject to a specific
audience for a specific purpose, and is
presented in a way that enables it to be read
quickly.…The words and graphics of technical
writing are meant to be practical: that is, to
communicate a body of factual information
that will help an audience understand a
subject or carry out a task
(The process of writing good
documentation)
What technical Author do?

Explains how to use a product.

Using words mostly

You may need to produce several small reports
during the course of your undergraduate study as
part of group coursework assignments. A larger
report will be required to describe your final year
project.
 Reports vary in their purpose, but all of them will
require a formal structure and careful planning,
presenting the material in a logical manner using
clear and concise language.

 A report is a form of communication and

without the knowledge to produce a good
report you will be hampered in your endeavors
to succeed in your future careers.
 Different Types of Reports
There are many different types of report each of
which has a different format and emphasis.
For instance, there are laboratory reports, which
generally describe an experiment that has been
undertaken.

Under the umbrella term of Technical Reports there

are, for example, primary research reports,
technical-background reports, feasibility
reports, proposals, and business plans.
Regardless of the type of report common sense
should prevail and you need to adapt your writing
to suit your potential audience and the specified
requirements.
Rules
 The reader is the most important person
 Keep the report as short as possible
Identify the Audience and What
They Need

 A key to good writing is understanding the

audience. The document must be directed at
specific readers, and take into account their
level of technical knowledge, the amount of
detail they want, and their level of interest
in the subject.
 Design the document to meet the needs of its
specific readers. In general, assume that the
audience is less familiar with the subject than you
 The shortest report usually wins in attracting
attention and also in being read as opposed
to being forgotten.
 An appendix, then, is a good place for
background information which most readers
will take for granted but which a few need to
be told.
Conditions to write a technical report
• Full knowledge of the subject
• Must read a lot of information prior to your report
• Planning before writing
• Mention all references used in your report
• Be honest
• avoid errors especially in writing Equations
• Be clear and Use the right and precise words and
sentences
• Grammar.
• Organizing and structuring your information
(writing the first draft, checking and re-drafting)
 Planning your report

• Consider the report as a whole

• Break down the task of writing the report into
various parts.
• How much time do you have to write the
report?
• Set yourself deadlines for the various stages.
Clarifying your terms of reference

You must be clear from the start what you

are being asked to do.
 Common report Structure

• Two Ways:
1. Write everything together in one big word document.
2. Break your report(1 Word document per chapter for long reports)
(Better)

• WHY Second Approach is better?

• It is easier to manage
• Navigation is easier (Scroll through tens of pages rather than
hundreds)
• You can send one section for correction while working on another
• Group work is easier
• Less risk of Word crashing due to the large size of the document +
figures + tables etc.
 Collecting information

• What is the information you need ?

• Where do you find it ?
• How much do you need ?
• In what order will you arrange it ?
Draft Plan
Before you start typing your report :
 it will be advantageous to spend some time writing a draft
plan and get ensure that a realistic amount of time is
scheduled for all the stages of your work.
 This draft will also contain the main sections. It is by making
brief notes of the content that will be included in each section
that you will develop your structure and your sub-headings
will then evolve.
 It is important to apportion adequate time for writing your
report. It is impossible to write a good report quickly. A report
that has been written the evening before it is due to be
submitted will inevitably lack structure and contain many
typing errors. It is not possible to obtain a good mark without
spending considerable time on the report.
 It may need to be grammatically correct .
 You may find it helpful to have a large folder available before
you start. Any ideas you may have, any papers you read or
references you may wish to follow up should all be kept
Technical report format (Structure of
the Report )
The breakdown of a report into sections helps
organize the information into logical sections.
There is no “standard” convention dictating the
number of sections in a report.
The sections used in this course follow a more
common breakdown of a technical writing
reporting results of an engineering experiment.
Appropriate adjustment should be made for other
type of reports. Regardless of the number of
sections, the logical flow of the information in the
report will be similar.
Main headings
 Title page
 Abstract
 Table of Contents
 List of Figures and Tables
 List of Symbols
 Acknowledgements
 Introduction
 Experimental Details
 Results and Discussions
 Conclusions and Recommendations
 References
 Appendices
Title page

• Include the title of project, thesis or experiment: The title

should be as long as is required to accurately describe your
work and inform a potential reader of the content
• Sometimes also need to include your course
• Name of the author
• Affiliation
• Year of publishing
Abstract
• An abstract of a technical report briefly
summarizes the report. It should describe
motivations, methods, results, and conclusions, it
includes the purpose of the report, details of
what you have done, how you did it.
• Ideally, an abstract is one paragraph long, should
not exceed one page long.
• Must be written after accomplishing of all the
work, and will be located at the front of the
report.
• Have a words limit, e.g., maximum 500 words, in
mind when writing an abstract.
(its purpose is to enable a potential reader to
decide if they want to read the whole of your
report)
Table of Contents
• Only of long reports
• Table of Contents shows the structure of the
report; it lists each section and sub-section in
numerical order.
• Major sections of the report must be listed with
page numbers.
• Second and third level headings may also be
listed as appropriated.
2 First level (Title of the chapter)
2.1 Second level (Title of the sub-section)
2.1.1 Third level (Title of the sub-sub-section)
2.1.1.1 Fourth level (Title of the sub-sub-sub-section)
List of Figures and Tables
• List of Figures contains the listing of all the
figures (drawings and graphs) that appear in
the report.
• They are listed in consecutive order that they
appear in the report with figure captions and
page number.
• List of Tables is similar to the List of Figures
but for all the tables that appear in the report.
List of Symbols
• This list is optional. It can be used if the report
contains a lot of formulae and symbols.
Acknowledgements
• The author(s) must acknowledge every person or
agency involved in supporting, funding, guiding,
advising, and working on the project that are not
part of the authoring team.
• There are two schools of thought on where the
acknowledgements should be placed. They may be
included after the title page or after the
references.
Introduction
 This section provides an introduction to your work
 The beginning of the introduction should quickly explain the
importance of the experiment being reported and terms of
reference (or brief).
 References made to others who have worked in the area.
 This enables you to show that you have read about your
subject and are aware of current work in your particular
field.
 The introduction should detail not only the background to
your research but also put into context why your work is
useful and the particular problem that is to be addressed.
 If there is no separate “Technical Background” section in
the report, this section is where the necessary concepts
that were applied in order to obtain the results are
explained.
 Main Body of the Report

The main body of your report is likely to contain a

methodology, results or findings and a discussion.
Methodology This section explains how you carried
out your work. For example it will detail the
particular research methods you used
Experimental Details.. Methodology
• This is the section where details of the experiments
or research conducted are discussed.
• The descriptions maybe in paragraph form, list
form, or a combination of both.
• The description must contain enough details to
enable someone else to duplicate the experiment.
Results and Discussions
 The Results and Discussion section should be the most
substantial part of the report. This is where the results of the
experiment are reported and discussed. Any significance in the
work reported here must be made clear by detailed
discussions.
 This is the section where details of the experiments or
research conducted are discussed, with discussion or analysis,
graphs, charts, tables or diagrams may help your audience to
focus on the results you are presenting.
 Discussion : this section discusses the results you have
obtained and reported
 Report only the final results.
 Raw data and intermediate results that are not central to the
topic of the report can be placed in the Appendix if needed.
Conclusions and Recommendations
 Conclude what was discussed in the Results and Discussion
section.
 Point out what you have achieved. You may also make
recommendations for future work; think of the conclusion
as a short restatement of important points being presented
in the report.
 Once conclusions are made, make some recommendations
as to the utilities of those conclusions. Explain how useful
the methodology and the results are.
 It offers answers to questions raised in the beginning.
 Mention restrictions or limits pertaining to the use of the
results.
 Suggest what the next step in the study should be to
overcome the limitation or advance the study further
(future work).
References
 All published and unpublished sources of
information used in preparing the report are listed.
 Any idea, formula, etc., not originating from the
author must be cited.
 A reference section is a required component in any
technical report. Failure to reference prior works
maybe interpreted as claiming those works to be
your own.
 They are numbered consecutively according to the
order that they appear in the report.
 Use square bracket to denote a reference.
References must be attached to specific formulae,
pages, or passages in the report.
References

 Any work, formulae, or discussion that is a

common knowledge in the field does not
need to be referenced. For example, it is a
common knowledge for engineers that
F = ma. There is no need to reference Newton
for this. This rule applies to common formulae
that can be derived or are well known by people
in the field also.
 References from books, essays, journals, World
Wide Web, and personal communications.
 Anyone who reads your report and wants to see
the material you have cited will have enough
information to be able to find it
References
It is important that you give precise details of all
the work by other authors which has been
referred to within the report. Details should
include:
• Author’s name and initials
• Date of publication
• Title of the book, paper or journal
• Publisher
• Place of publication
• Page numbers
• Details of the journal volume in which the article
has appeared.
Examples:
• Single reference: [1].
• Multiple references (out of sequence): [2, 3, 6, 9].
• Multiple references (in sequence): [10–14] or [10]-[14].
• The citation might also contain a page number (e.g.
[10, p20] )
Appendices
 Appendix includes secondary or extra information.
Tables, flow charts, intermediate results, maps,
statistics are generally included.
 Calculations and equation derivatives used report
 Other supporting information that is not central to
the main points to be made in the report is placed
in separate appendices as needed.

 Appendices should not contain any material necessary for

understanding the contributions of the paper.
 Appendices should contain all material that most readers would
not be interested in.
• You may have more than one appendix and these
may be labeled in an alphabetic or numeric system
(but not a combination of both), for example
Appendix 1, Appendix 2 or Appendix A, Appendix B.

• A title describing the contents of each appendix

must also be included. It must be possible to
understand the report without recourse to the
appendices.