Identify presentational style. You should also try to set standards at this stage on

192 Chapter 8 n Presenting your project in written form collected including appropriate figures and tables to summarise results with Chapter 5 analysing and discussing these results. Chapter 4 presents the factual results of the study, whereas chapter 5 presents the interpretation of these results. In conclusion, there is no right or wrong way to structure a report into a series of chapters – you should do what is appropriate for your own project. You might want to adopt one of the structures presented here or some combination of these suggestions. It is advisable to consult similar past student projects to your own to get an idea of the structure used. Your supervisor should certainly advise you on an appropriate structure for your report.

8.2.6 Style

The style of writing that you adopt to present your report can be discussed from three points of view. First is the actual presentation style of your report – for example, its layout, font size and so on. This kind of style was discussed earlier. Second is the style of grammar that you use within your report. Quite often good reports can be ruined by poor grammar. The author’s meaning is unclear as ideas and results are hidden within long complex sentences that include excessive words and jargon. The third point of view is overall content structure and this will be discussed further later. A good writing style comes with practice – the more you write the easier it becomes. Reading also helps to improve your own writing skills as you learn elements of good practice and identify interesting ways of discussing and presenting arguments. Having said this, there are some simple rules that anyone can follow to improve their writing style for professional reports. Try to write in the third person – in other words, try to avoid using personal pronouns such as: I, you, we, my and so on – but make sure that you don’t end up producing elaborate, complex sentences just to avoid this. For exam- ple, take the following sentence from a student report: I interviewed seven people to see what they thought of the system. This could easily be reworded to a less ‘chatty’ style and without the ‘I’ to: Seven people were interviewed to determine their thoughts on the system. Your supervisor should be able to advise you on this point and it may be that the nature of your project requires you to use a more personal approach. Keep sentences short and to the point. Avoid making several points within the same sentence. Avoid abbreviations, jargon and slang. Use simple, rather than complex words; the latter is often irritating for the reader, it clouds the meaning of your sentences and is often used to hide your own lack of understanding about the subject which the educated reader will spot. Try to keep your report gender-free – for example, use ‘she’ or ‘they’ rather than ‘he’. It is common practice to present your report in the past tense as the report repre- sents the results of the project which you have completed. Having said this, Day 2006 suggests that the present tense should be used when referring to the work of others just like this sentence does. Referencing material will be discussed in detail later but bear this point in mind. 8.2 Writing and structuring reports 193 Avoid jokes and personal asides. Avoid shortened forms such as ‘isn’t’ instead of ‘is not’ unless you feel that the report will not flow well without these forms. Make sure you know how to use apostrophes – for example, ‘John’s computer’ rather than ‘Johns’ computer’ or ‘Johns computer’. Finally, make sure that you use a spell checker; sloppy spelling puts many reports into a bad light. Chinneck 1999 notes two further tips when writing reports: n Avoid terms like ‘clearly’ or ‘obviously’. You might understand the fact to which you are referring but it may not be clear to the reader. The reader may also feel they are being ‘stupid’ if they don’t see the point clearly or obviously. n Avoid red flags. These are claims that are your personal opinion rather than accepted facts supported by the literature. For example, ‘requirements capture is the longest stage of the software development process’. You should make sure that if you include these kinds of claims you support them with either an appropriate reference or a ‘caveat word’ such as ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’. For example, the previous statement could be reworded as ‘requirements capture is often the longest stage of the software development process’. Moving away from basic grammar, the third style to consider when writing project reports is overall content structure. This was discussed in detail in the previous section but remember, at the top level, your report should be constructed so that it has a: Beginning – the introduction and literature review which set the scene; Middle – the bulk of your report where the main component of your project is dis- cussed; and End – conclusions, summary, recommendations and future work. This kind of structure should also be evident within individual chapters of your report. They too should have an introduction possibly a chapter overview, the main body of the chapter, and an end possibly a chapter summary or conclusions from the chapter.

8.2.7 Word processing

For computing students it almost goes without saying that the best way to produce your report is with a word processor of one kind or another. These packages are far more effective than typewritten or hand-written work alone. Almost all word processors these days come with dictionaries and a thesaurus facility built in. In addition, many are equipped with equation editors that can help you produce neat equations embedded within your text. Alternatively, equation editors are available that can be used to ‘con- struct’ equations before pasting them into your report. The following is an example of an equation that has been pasted into the text this was produced using Microsoft Equation 3.0 which was installed in Microsoft Word. Notice how this equation has been given a reference number 8.1 in this case which you must always include to uniquely identify each equation you incorporate in your report. f N = 8.1 ∑NN − 1 S 2 N − 1