9Writing the Technical Report

- Planning the report

- Components of the Report

Thursday 16th September 2010

Planning the Report
Meeting your Audience’s Needs

Ascertain who most likely will constitute your

audience?

• Technical audience ?
• Non-technical, e.g., general public?

Take account of the their limitations/competencies –

what would they reasonably know and understand?

As the technical communicator what information

does your audience require? Aim to provide nothing
more and nothing less.
Pre-Writing

Now that you know who constitutes your

audience and what their information needs are
you should:

• Gather the data

• Organise the data
• Prepare an outline or framework for the report.

Note: there may be formatting and content variations between

reports – what you include and how you format are driven
by what is expected of you.
Components of the Report
Front material
Body
1. Title Page
6. Introduction
2. Abstract
7. Literature Review
3. Table of Contents
8. Method
4. Table of Figures
9. Results
5. List of Symbols/
10. Discussion
Abbreviations
11. Conclusions
End material

12. References

13. Appendices
Title Page

Includes the following information:

• Title of the Report

• Name of the organisation that has

commissioned the report (case specific)

• Author of the report (depends on the purpose)

• Date of the report

NOTE: Formatting of title pages is governed by house styles

Abstract

There are two types of abstracts:

• Descriptive Abstracts

• Informative Abstracts
Abstracts

• Descriptive Abstracts
- describes the main topic and purpose
- overviews content, purpose, methods, scope,
- NEVER provides results, conclusions, and
recommendations

• Informative Abstracts
- summarizes the key facts, conclusions, and
other important information in the body of the
report
Informative Abstracts

• Omit introductory explanation, definitions and other background

information

• Are not an introductions

• Omit citations

• Include key statistical detail- one expects to see numerical data

in an informative abstract

• Omit abstract phrasing.

Rather than - This report found that...

Opt for – Data showed a distinct correlation

between...
Tips for Writing the Abstract

• Read and abstract key info. – consider

specifically, purpose, method, scope, results,
conclusions, and recommendations

• Write a draft. Do not copy key sentences from

your report.

• Revise your draft - correct weaknesses

in organization, delete superfluous
information, add key information originally
left out, eliminate wordiness, correct grammar
and mechanics errors.
Tips for Writing the Abstract

• Make sure that the informative abstract is neither

too brief (less than 10 percent) nor too long (more
than 15 percent) of the overall length of the
report.

• Carefully proofread your final copy

Table of Contents

• Front material - numbered using Roman Numerals

• The Body and End material - numbered using

Arabic Numbers

• Each major section and sub-section should appear

in the table of contents

• Page numbering MUST be accurate.

• Use the “insert Table of Contents” function in Word

to easily insert and update the TOC
Table of Figures

• Lists each and every Figure that appears in your

report

• Use the “caption” tool in word to insert captions at

the bottom of each figure

• Use the “insert Table of Figure” function in Word to

easily insert and update the table of figures.
List of Abbreviations and Symbols

• List each abbreviation and or symbol giving its

full name/ or meaning.

For instance:

MOE – Ministry of Education

UWI – The University of the West Indies

• Order your list alphabetically

Introduction

A transition toward the main body of the

document. It should take an uninformed
reader from a level of zero-knowledge to a
level in which the reader is able to
understand the main body of
the document.
(Holguin-Veras)
Introduction

A comprehensive introduction must have:

• background to the report or the issues that led to

the report - what is the history of this issue?

• justification for the report - why is it important?

• objectives - what are you trying to accomplish?

• scope - what is the focus of your report?

Introduction

A comprehensive introduction must have:

• limitations - what constraints did you face?

• content - what is in the report?

• organization - how the report is organized?

Literature Review

• summarises and evaluates the literature that

you have used in your study

• considers:
• How that literature has contributed to your area
of research?

• What are the strengths and weaknesses of

previous studies?

• How does the literature inform your own

research and understanding of the research
problem?
Methodology

• describes the methodological framework

used in the project, or investigation – what
strategies / methods did you use to arrive at
your data?

• explores the theoretical side of the methods

you have used.
Results

• presents the results obtained – what did you find/

discover?

• integrates, key equations, figures, tables,

diagrams, visual material the helps to support your
findings

• Visual material that is not directly related to your

discussion , but may be useful to the reader should
be referred to in the text but placed in an appendix
– each item is assigned to a separate appendix.
Results

•equations should be set apart from the text, centred,

and numbered using square brackets

The output of the 6th layer is the summation layer and it

is the sum of all the outputs of the 5th layer and it is given
by:
∑w f i i
O6,i = ∑ wi fi = i
, i = 1, 2,3, 4 (13)
∑w i
i
Results
• diagrams should be captioned

Once the grid partitioning option was applied at the beginning

of training, a uniformly partitioned grid was taken as the initial
state as shown in Figure 3-5 below.

Figure 3-5: Input space evenly partitioned into 4 fuzzy rules [13]
Discussion

• Assesses and comments on research results

• Includes:
• Explanation of results

• Comments on unexpected results, offering hypothesis for them

• Comparison to literature - does your research confirm previous

studies? Deviate from them?

• Explanation for how info. can be applied in broader context

• Suggestions for further investigation

Conclusion
Discusses:
x What was learned through research/ what were the most
significant findings

x Weaknesses and shortcomings of study

x Strengths of study

x Possible applications of study - how it can be used?

x Future research paths

x Recommendations
Reference List
• lists sources you have used in your report.
• sources include:
• Books
• Journal, magazine, online, or newspaper articles
• Interviews
• Conference Proceedings
• Lectures
• Drawings, designs, software

• Remember that citing:

• Shows your credibility as a researcher
• Gives proper credit to authors and researchers
• Protects you from accusations of plagiarism
Appendices

• Contains any attachments that are too bulky to be

contained with in the body.

OR

• Contains any material that may be useful to the reader but

not immediately important to arguments that you advance.
References

Holguín-Veras ,José. n.d How to write a good technical

report. PowerPoint Presentation. Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.