How to Write a Technical Report

LECTURE #13,14,15
Part : 01
Lecture Outline

Covers the following standard technical report sections

• Summary
• Introduction
• Theory
• Method
• Results
• Discussion of Results
• Conclusions

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Introduction (Content)

• Defines the generic features of a technical report.

• Gives the specific requirements for lab reports, design documents and dissertations.

• Presents a methodology for writing a report.

• Describes signposting, captioning, quoting, citing, and referencing.

• Provides references that can be used for further reading.

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Theory
•Why write?

• Theory

• Standard structure

• Variations on a theme

• Background knowledge

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Why write?

Students Must Write

• Technical Reports
• Lab reports
• Group reports
• Presentations
• Blogs and wiki pages
• Web sites
• Technical papers
• Project poster
• Project dissertation

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2. Determine Your Goals

1. Communicating to Persuade

2. Communicating to Instruct

3. Communicating to Inform

4. Communicating to Build Trust

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3. Consider Your Audience

• What you say and how you say it is greatly determined by your audience.

• You must provide different information to multicultural audience.

• You must consider issues of diversity when you communicate.

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Gather Your Data?
• For writing purpose the accurate and concise data is very important. The planning techniques
include.

1. Answering the reporter question

2. Mind mapping

3. Brainstorming

4. Outlining

5. Flow charting
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Theory
• Technical reports have a standard structure.

• Technical reports may not be read “cover to cover”

• Standard sections have evolved to same information to be extracted from document in different
levels of detail.
• (some) Repetition is good.

• Section labelling, figure and table captioning, equations, references and citations.

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Standard Structure of Report.
Summary of the report

• Purpose, approach, main findings in brief (½ – 1 page)

Introduction

• To the presentation rather than the subject.

• Purpose of study
• Methodology
• Results
• Main findings & conclusions
• Introduction to the presentation itself

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Standard Structure of Report.

References
• All the sources used and cited in the body of the report.

Appendices
• Supplementary or more detailed information that supports or expands the report (possibly for
reference).

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How to Write a Technical Report

LECTURE #13,14,15
Part : 02
Front and End Matter
Give further structure and information to the report

Front matter
• Table of Contents
• Table of Figures
• Table of Tables
• Abbreviations

End matter
• Glossary
• Index

Should be automatically generated whenever possible

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Variations on a Theme
•Different reports will have different structures

E.g.
Lab report
Dissertation
Design Document

*Follow your publisher’s or institution’s guidelines for specific cases

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Method
Method of writing a report

•Repetition is good!

How to repeat yourself

Signposting

•Numbering
•Citations and References
•Writing a method

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How to write a report
Start in the middle

• You have done the work so you know what your approach was.

• You have the results so you just have to write them up!

• Ensure that you understand the background, write it up and use it to evaluate the results.

• Gather your references and ensure that they are cited in the background sections and other
sections as appropriate.

• Write the conclusions and the introduction (in that order)

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Repetition is Good
Form of technical report has developed to allow different classes of readers to make use of the
materials in different ways:

• Only summary may be read by a researcher looking for information or a manager seeking an
“executive summary”.

• Only conclusions or introduction may be read by someone interested in the subject but only
wanting to adopt the main findings.

• The whole document may be read by someone wishing to follow-up on the work published.

It is important that each part tells the same story at the appropriate level of detail.
Repetition and signposts help the reader who is not reading the document sequentially.

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Repetition is Good
Form of technical report has developed to allow different classes of readers to make use of the
materials in different ways:

• Only summary may be read by a researcher looking for information or a manager seeking an
“executive summary”.

• Only conclusions or introduction may be read by someone interested in the subject but only
wanting to adopt the main findings.

• The whole document may be read by someone wishing to follow-up on the work published.

It is important that each part tells the same story at the appropriate level of detail.
Repetition and signposts help the reader who is not reading the document sequentially.

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How to Repeat Yourself
• Say what you will say (in brief) in the Summary

• Say what you will say (in more detail) in the introduction

• Say what you have to say (in full in the body) with signposting

• Say what you have said (in the conclusions)

• Emphasize the good bits in an extended abstract or executive summary

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How to Signpost
Open each section with a statement of context:

In the [last section] we ….

In [this section] we now …

•Close each section with a statement of context:

In this [section] we ….
In the [next section] we will …

•Provide cross references

As we saw in [a previous section] …

As we will show in [a later section] …
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Number Sections

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Figure

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Table

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Equation

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Equation

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Citation and Reference

Why cite at all?

•A rich reference list is considered evidence of wider reading.

•Critical appraisal of the references with citations in the body of the report is evidence of your
understanding of the materials and how your work builds on from them.

• Your cited sources provide a frame of reference against which you can evaluate your report’s
contribution to human knowledge

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Citation

Two main styles:

•Numeric
According to Shakespeare [1] winter’s discontent is now made glorious by “this son of York”.

“Now is our winter of discontent made glorious summer by this son of York” [1].

•Symbolic
According to Shakespeare [1597] winter’s discontent is now made glorious by “this son of York”.

“Now is our winter of discontent made glorious summer by this son of York” [Shakespeare,1597].

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Citation
Numeric Style
[1] William Shakespeare, Richard III (Act I, Scene I), Quarto 1, 1597.

+Easy to use if references do not have to be sorted

-Difficult to maintain if references need to be presented as a sorted list.

•Symbolic (Harvard) Style Shakespeare, William 1597. Richard III (Act I, Scene I), Quarto 1.

+Easy to maintain a sorted list of references.

–More verbose when citing.

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Referencing
• Technical Report

References at end of document

Poor support for “End notes” in some word processors

• Different publications often have different styles

• Consider use of a bibliographic database and citing tool to automate citing and formatting of
references.

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Quoting
• Never quote documents without citing sources.

• Copy-and-paste of large amounts of text, even with quotation marks and full attribution is
considered plagiarism.

• If you like what someone had to say on a subject, rewrite it in your own words.

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URLs
With more of the world’s knowledge accessible via the Internet it is unrealistic to ban URLs from
reference lists.
• Do not rely solely on hyperlinks to present URLs

A paper report will not be read on a browser!

Cite them like any other resource

• Cite them as you would a book or article.

• Use as much detail as possible:

[1] William Shakespeare, Richard III. Online at URL:

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=53 (Project Gutenberg., 2002)

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Results

• Results section presents your findings.

• Use tables, figures and equations as appropriate.

• Textual commentary is needed to tie results to method.

• Provide explanation if necessary.

• Usually easiest section to write (if you recorded the results carefully!)

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Discussion of Results
Compare results to expected results

•Account for any differences

Experimental procedure wrong
Accuracy of measurements

•Differences may point to inaccuracies in the theory section and may point to future work.
“This result can be explained by experimental error” is not an explanation!

•Be honest, a result that does not match the theory is itself a useful result!

• If there are questions in the lab script, they should be answered in this section.

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Conclusion
Remind the reader of what you were trying to achieve.

• Outline the theory, method, results and discussion

• Attempt to tie together the theory, results and discussion.

Highlight the places where the theory was correct

Highlight the places where the theory was incorrect
Make suggestions for further work.

• Ensure that the conclusions stands alone because it may be the only part to be read!

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Conclusion

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