Articulate conclusions and make recommendations. Quite clearly, your conclu-

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