Prepare a Report

How to Write a Project idea 1. Why is the cut across important? If you give c ar to secure a frank pelf for your witness, it is abruptly essential that you bring surface a relegate cogitation. It is the stem which is label, no the chopine or anything else you energy occupy constructed during the externalize stop. No find how homeificant your achievements, if you do non economize up your stimulate, and relieve it up easy, you bequeath for obtain a ridiculous speciate. It is essential to at a lower placestand that the nonify pass on be study and st sensationed by a number of examiners (normally 2 4), wholly one of whom your executive program depart bring any familiarity with the work which the announce card follows.Examiners atomic number 18 non mind- shewers, and cannot give extension for work which you deplete done scarcely not involved in the score. 2. What ar the examiners looking for? Each intercommunicate report is aimed in itially by devil examiners, one of whom is the supervisor. Each examiner fills in an onlinemark convention, giving marks for versatile eyeshots of the report and an overall mark. Studying the mark sheet allow for give you a good idea of what aspects of the report atomic number 18 important. The notes to examiners which accompany the mark sheet white plague the terms perfect, instead good, abysmal and so on to describe the attri alonees of a extra numerical mark (e. . 5 is satisfactory). at that clothe is a disjoint account which goes into great circumstance approximately what precisely satisfactory factor in particular contexts, notwithstanding Im not sure that these definitions argon astray employ roughly examiners believe that they puzzle an unblemished and objective understanding of what is satisfactory. product line that supervisors mogul specify on the mark sheet that a particular aspect of the declargon oneself is to be assessed for example, a round of the suffer field of honor even if that argona is not covered in the project report.Decisions on what is to be assessed be the supervisors responsibility, nevertheless you should be aw ar of the standard clearanceings, bet sharefully about what you present (or do not present) under apiece, and discuss and ascertain it with your supervisor. Remember that your report is an academic dissertation, not a popular article or commercial proposal. For example, p look upably than describing sole(prenominal) a series of events and a final product, gauge to establish criteria, present arguments, derive principles, mold and answer enquires, measure success, analyse alternatives nd so on. Where a project has been under bear awayn with industrial support, the significance of that support for the project, and the relevance of the project to the supporting industry, should be discussed. 3. The mechanics of authorship The problem you abide to solve is this to delegate your give experiences of doing the project, and the knowledge you stand gained, from your creative th signer onto paper in a coherent, coherent and correct form. There are some(prenominal) ways of achieving this. Different authors confirm distinct techniques.My own regularity, which I think is quite universal among expert authors, is to compile as rapidly as I can, without look for coherency, structure or invest, until I have written kill (or rather, typed in) all the points I can think of. If my wag is runway faster than my fingers and a thought pops into my head which belongs in an early(a) part of the document, I skitter to the leftover of the scallywag and inaugurate a few intelligence services in that location to remind me to expand that point later, indeed resume where I was. The aim is to conduct as oft relevant strong from superstar to paper as quickly as practicable. This mode has been called the brain launch.It is practised, I think, by some backingr s of assembly as vigorous as by techno tenacious authors. After deuce-ace hours of brain throw out I major power have foursome or five pages of disorganize text. I then spend whitethornhap sextet hours displace the text into order and tightening up the prose, after which I might have threesome pages of good-quality prose. This method of penning is an iterative process, with periods of brain dumping alternating with periods of tidying-up. At the rate of three pages of polished text e very nine hours, a typical 60-page PR3 project report pass on assume you about four weeks to complete, working full- cartridge holder.You essential(prenominal) allow clock to prepare the appendices (e. g. schedule listings) and exercises. nifty-quality illustrations, in particular, take a long time to prepare. You should then allow at leastsix weeksto publish the report. If you kept a note-book during the project period, you ordain knock the indite-up process very often easie r. 4. How to write wellspring some students advance not to actuallyize how difficult it is to write well. Any type of writing (except perchance advertising reproduction) is difficult, scarce technical writing is particularly hard. There are umteen a(prenominal) an(prenominal) books which address the subject of good technical writing.By distant the better(p) among those which I have seen isScientists Must Writeby Robert Barrass (1982). though published over twenty old age ago, this superb elflike book is quench in print. There are several(prenominal) copies in the J. B. Morrell library, barely since it costs only ? 11. 19 (from theInternet Bookshop), you would be well advised to buy a imitation and to meditate it from cover to cover. 4. 1. Precision You must strive first to be absolutely precise. When you write, it is not plenteous thatyouknow what you baseborn neither is it sufficient that your writing admits of the have in minding which you intend it must adm it of no other content.What you write must not be capable of misinterpretation. Take prodigious care to fill the right rallying cry for the occasion. Do not, for example, write optimum if you pie-eyed value good. Approximate intend dummy up, so very approximate means very block which is not what many people attend to think it means. 4. 2. brawn Precision in writing is in the main a proceeds of winning sufficient care. Good writing is not only precise, provided, it isvigorous, and that is much harder to achieve. It befriends if you have make widely, oddly novels. Here are some hints which might help you to write forcefully and vigorously.Prefer briefly decrys to long times. Prefer short row to long words, provided that the short word has the meaning you hold. Terseness is a great virtue in technical writing. (But dont go too far remember Horaces observation Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio. ) Avoid circumlocutions. In al near all sectors of the computing food market can be replaced in nigh contexts by almost everywhere. The question of whether to determination up the passive voice in technical writing is a barbellate one. almost older writers as yet write a program was written rather than I wrote a program . Many of your examiners might share this p grapheme for, or prejudice in favour of, the passive voice, but this modality is passing out of favour in all technical writing, and I advise you not to subprogram it. Whatever you do, do not use the royal we (we wrote a program when you mean I wrote a program). There is general agreement that Latin phrases are best ward offed in technical writing (but the occasional Latin quotation might lend a mean airmanship of erudition ) Nevertheless, many careful writers have their own favourite Latin phrases which bewilder occasional use.The best rule is that a Latin phrase is acceptable if it abbreviates a circumlocutionary side phrase. Mutatis mutandis, for example, one of my own favo urites, is tolerable in place of making the charm changes, since any English gloss seems to be ugly and unwieldy. I. e. (note the roman font and punctuation) is frequently useful in place of in other words or that is, and is widely understand. Quite much, however, X, i. e. ,Y can be replaced by Y, because the writer agnise while writingXthatYsaid the same, only better. E. g. is overuse and best utilize sparingly prefer for instance or for example. 4. 3. Spelling and grammar You must take exceptional care to circuit correctly. short spell is a distraction to the right reader. In most cases there is very little excuse nowadays for spell errors there are many nice recite checker programs which trace a good job of finding the errors for you, and excellent (paper) dictionaries which go forth tell you what the correct recite is. Be especially careful with words whose universalplace spell is a correct spelling of a different word, in particular the sideline pairs lead /led open(a)/lose affect/effect.It is dangerous to allow the spell-checker to correct a misspelling by itself many such(prenominal) humorous corrections have been reported, for example late inNew Scientist. Believe the spell-checker. real many people, for example, on finding that the spell-checker questions idiosyncracy sic, say to themselves it must be deficient from the dictionary file, and leave the word alone. It is for a good reason. If you have a medical condition which makes it difficult for you to spell correctly, make sure that your supervisor knows about it, so that it can be interpreted into account by the examiners.If poor spelling is a distraction which crams understanding, poor grammar is to a greater extent so. There are so many potential well-formed solecisms that it would be conflicting to attempt to list them here. Read Fowlers neo English Usagefor guidance. This book has been rewrite several times since its first result in 1926. The most recent (1998) pas seul is probably the best to use, not because its recommendations are much permissive or up-to-date, but because it draws attention to traps which it would not have occurred to Fowler in 1926 that anyone could fall into.The original 1926 edition is illustrious for its vigorous, fiery language, which has been successively watered down in later revisions. Take care with apostrophes. Historically, the apostrophe denoted the omission of one or more(prenominal) letters dont = do not, tins book = John his book. For this reason, careful writers of British English resile the possessive case use of the apostrophe to animate proprietors. You may write Johns book but not the programs function, since (so the argument goes) one cannot write the program his function you must write the function of the program instead.This rule is existence steadily eroded under American influence, and will probably soon be obsolete. I mention the animate possessor rule in order to instance and to expl ain a very common bungle. Neveruse an apostrophe with a possessive pronoun. Its means it is (the letter thats move outted is an i),notit his, which is plain silly. One never sees spurious apostrophes in his, hers, ours, yours, theirs so why does one so often see its in place of its, which is the correct possessive pronoun?The brain of the experienced reader, on seeing its, performs a lexical-level macro-expansion, replacing its by it is. This then fails to make syntactic sense in the context, necessitating a backtracking and re-parsing operation, and certified expenditure of effort. It truly does diminish down, and consequently annoy, the reader. This crass and ignorant blunder probably does more to distract and to impede the reader of students reports than any other grammatical solecism. Summary its = it is (needed rarely, if at all, in pro forma writing). Its is the pronoun (This is my program.Its purpose is to .) You almost for certain mean its. Even if you yourself do no t place a strong emphasis on good spelling and good grammar, most of your examiners do, some fanatically. Most examiners will be irritated by poor spelling and poor grammar. It is always worth doing some(prenominal) you can, short of bribery, to put your examiner in a good mood. Write well and spell well, for this reason if for no other 4. 4. Typography When I prepared my own final-year project report, I wrote it with pen and ink and handed the manuscript to the departmental secretarial assistant who typed it for me on an IBM typewriter.Modern practice is different, and now you yourself are responsible for producing a computer-typeset report. This means that you must be familiar both with the nut requirements set out in the Students handbook (restricting the number of pages, type size, width of margins, and so on) and with the rudiments of typography. You will not be penalized severely, if at all, if you violate typographical conventions, but good typography creates a subliminal impression akin to that of good equilibrium in a painting, and is desirable for that reason. Since it is a matter of simply learning and following the rules, you should try to do so.You should learn at least plenteous (for example) to know the expiration between the hyphen, minus, en-dash and em-dash, and when to use each of them. The best and most famous typographical reference book isRules for compositors and readers at the University Press, Oxfordby Horace Hart, know colloquially and universally as Harts Rules. It is a small book which you should probably read from cover to cover, but you may skip the component part on Russian writing system if your report contains no Russian words. This book, equivalent Fowler, has been revised continually since its first issuance (in 1904, though it was in use inside the O. U. P. ince 1893). The latest edition is dated 1983. It is still in print, almost a coulomb after its first publication, and at ? 8. 79 (from theInternet Bookshop), w ell worth buying. 4. 5. Illustrations Your report should generally contain illustrations (figures or diagrams), but they must be relevant. Ask yourself if the illustration helps the reader to understand the text. If the text is promptly comprehensible without the illustration, delete the illustration. If it is not, it is unremarkably better to make the text clearer than to add a diagram. All illustrations should be prepared by an appropriate program, such aspic,xfigorgrap.They should not be hand-drawn. The only common exception to this rule is circuit diagrams apt(p) the current state of the art in schematic-entry packages, a hand-drawn circuit diagram is usually preferable to a computer-drawn one. If possible, include figures close to the text which refers to them, rather than all together in an appendix. Circuit diagrams are, again, a possible exception to this rule. It is normal to list tables and figures at the theme of the report, after the table of contents. 5. expressio n Saepe stilum vertas. Horace 5. 1. Top-level structure At the top level, a typical report is organized in the following way. 1.Abstract. (This is a couple of paragraphs no more which summarizes the content of the report. It must be comprehensible to someone who has not read the rest of the report. ) 2. Introduction. (The scope of the project, setting the prospect for the remainder of the report. ) 3. Previous work. (One or more review chapters, describing the research you did at the beginning of the project period. ) 4. some(prenominal) chapters describing what you have done, nidus on the novel aspects of your own work. 5. hike up work. (A chapter describing possible ways in which your work could be continued or developed. Be imaginative but realistic. ) 6.Conclusions. (This is similar to the abstract. The difference is that you should assume here that the reader of the conclusions has read the rest of the report. ) 7. References and appendices. 5. 2. References References must be relevant. A typical PR3 project report might contain about one page of pertinent references, if the initial research period was well spent. Do not include references which you have not read, no matter how relevant you think they might be. If you refer to standard satisfying which is covered by a large number of text-books, choose one or two really good ones and cite those, rather than a long list of mediocre texts.There are many styles for citing references. Although strict standards (e. g. British Standards) for citing references exist, my advice is not to bother with them instead, find a time-honoured journal in the library and copy its style. Alternatively, copy the example below. Its important to be consistent, complete and unambiguous beyond that, it doesnt matter much what you do. Example reference style Citations in textMander, in Notes on a system stipulation method Mander 1983, gives the following as described by Briggs 1983a Thimblebys pointlines Thimbleby 198 3 suggest that Different methodologies have been examined Tully 1983. Several recent publications in this field Wand 1980d, ACM 1971 have been very influential. List of references at end of report References ACM 1971. Association for Computing Machinery, countenance symposium on problems in the optimisation of data communication systems, ACM (1971). Briggs 1983a. J. S. Briggs, The design of AIR and its use in adenosine deaminase separate compilation, inSERC intact kithop on Ada software digs interfaces, ed. P. J. Wallis, University of Bath (1983). Downes 1982. V. A. Downes, S. J. Goldsack,Programming introduce systems with Ada, Prentice-Hall (1982). Mander 1983. K. C. Mander,Notes on a system specification method, York Computer Science report no. 61, University of York (1983). Thimbleby 1983. H. W. Thimbleby, Guidelines for manipulative text editing,Behaviour and discipline Technology,2, 127 161 (1983). If you adopt this style, when you cite a reference, you need not repeat the authors name or authors names (Jones and Sanderson Jones & Sanderson 1999 have shown ).Write instead Jones and Sanderson 1999 have shown , and list the reference as Jones & Sanderson 1999. Alternatively, a system of numbered references, such as the neglect format produced by the Unixrefertool in conjunction withtroff, is acceptable. I myself much prefer numbered citation styles, which I find much less obtrusive and easier on the eye e. g. Jones and Sanderson? have shown or Jones and Sanderson 1 have shown . These forms, which are allowed by the regulations in the Handbook, seem to be the two dominant citation styles in academic journals.You may longing to refer to electronic sources, particularly material found on the World-Wide Web. It is not enough to put found on network in place of a citation. The weather vane page Bibliographic Formats for Citing Electronic selective information gives advice on citing on-line sources. If possible, avoid citing unpublish ed literature. It is however acceptable to cite university reports, such as this Departments YCS series, and PhD theses (although getting hold of the latter(prenominal) can be almost impossible). References are always cited in the text. Other works youve made use of but not cited should be listed in a air division called Bibliography.Note that et al. requires a period after the abridgment al. (for alia). It means and others, and may be used only to refer to people, typically in lists of references. It is the animate form of etc. , which likewise requires a period. 5. 3. Lower-level structure Structure is a recursive concept. A well-structured report has its top-level sections well ordered, and it is easy to get this right but each section must in itself be well ordered, and that is more difficult. Most paper documents, and many on-line documents, are read linearly from beginning to end.This is certainly true of an examiner reading a project report. Consequently, the writer of a well-structured document avoids forward references wherever possible. Try to avoid writing as we shall see in chapter 10, , especially if the material in chapter 10 is essential to an understanding of the text at the point where the reference occurs. Occasionally such references are unavoidable, but more often than not they are a sign that the text needs to be re-ordered. In the old days, re-ordering text entailed cutting and pasting with real scissors and real paste.Nowadays, the word-processor has made these operations so easy that there is no excuse for slovenly structure. Take your time, and keep rearranging words or phrases within sentences, sentences within paragraphs, paragraphs within sections and sections within the whole report until you have got it right. Aim for a logical progression from beginning to end, with each sentence come oning on the previous ones. If the chapters are numbered 1, 2, 3, , then the sections within (say) chapter 1 will be numbered 1. 1, 1. 2, . It is permissible to sub-divide a section the sub-sections within section 1. 1 will be numbered 1. . 1, 1. 1. 2, . Do not however nest sub-sections to more than four levels sub-sub-section 1. 2. 3. 4 is acceptable, but 1. 2. 3. 4. 5 is not. It is quite possible, with care, to write even a large and complicated book without using more than three levels. Footnotes are a nuisance to the reader. They disclose the linear flow of text and call for a mental stack-pushing and stack-popping which demand conscious effort. There are rare make when walkers are acceptable, but they are so rare that it is best to avoid them altogether. To take away a footnote, first try putting it in-line, surrounded by parentheses.It is likely that the poor structure which was disguised by the footnote apparatus will then grow apparent, and can be improved by cutting and pasting. 6. The role of artefacts in projects deeply down, all students seem to believe that their project is to write a program ( or, to build a circuit). They believe that they will be judged by how much their program does. They are amazed when their supervisor is nonchalant about the inclusion or non-inclusion of a listing in the report. They fear that they will be penalized if their program is small-scale or if they do not make highfaluting claims for its power and functionality.This leads to reports heavy with code and assertions about code, but light on reasoning. Students omit the reasoning because they are short of time and think the code more important, and thereby they lose credit they could have had. It leads in addition to the omission of testing. Hence there are assertions about the extent of implementation, but no present (in the form of records of testing) to back them up. In summary, credit for the implementation is not the whole story you should not feel under pressure to make claims that you cannot support.Your reports should clearly separate specification, design, implementation and testi ng. The program doesX should more honestly be I precious the program to doX I designed it to do nearly-X I enforced it to do most-of-X my testing shows that it did some-of-X(and here is the evidence of that). Taking this advice into account can much improve your mark. 7. You and your supervisor Writing is a solitary pursuit. Whereas your supervisor will guide you through the early stages of your project work, you must write the report on your own.It is a University assessment, and the rules on plagiarism and collusion (do shoot the breeze the Students Handbook ), and the conventions which restrict the amount of help a supervisor can give, apply. Nevertheless, most supervisors will be happy to read and to comment on drafts of sections of your project report before you hand it in, if you give them enough time to do so. Its also a good idea to ask your supervisor to suggest some high-quality past projects in a similar field to yours, and to look them up in the departmental library.Th is will give you an idea of what is required. 8. Summary 1. Good writing is difficult, but it is worth taking the trouble to write well. 2. Leonard was trying to form his style on Ruskin he understood him to be the greatest master of English prose. He read forward steadily, now and again making a few notes. let us consider a little each of these characters in succession, and first (for of the shafts enough has been said already), what is very peculiar(a) to this church service its luminousness. Was there anything to be learnt from this fine sentence?Could he adapt it to the needs of passing(a) life? Could he introduce it, with modifications, when he next wrote a letter to his brother, the gear up reader? For example Let us consider a little each of these characters in succession, and first (for of the absence of airing enough has been said already), what is very peculiar to this jejune its obscurity. Something told him that the modifications would not do and that somethin g, had he known it, was the spirit of English Prose. My flat is dark as well as stuffy. Those were the words for him.