Guidelines for Writing a Technical Report

K.L.D.Baladad

Department of Mining, Metallurgical and Materials EngineeringUniversity of the Philippines, Diliman

karlo.baladad@coe.upd.edu.ph

Abstract

This paper discusses the format and some guidelines in writing your technical reports in this laboratory course. Also included in this article is the grading system for each report. Please study each section carefully. As for the abstract format, the text is italicized and has an extra margin of 0.5 inch on each side.

1. Formatting

The technical report is a document that should be written carefully for a scientist or researcher to communicate his/her study to the readers. It generally contains an abstract, an introduction, the methodology, the results obtained and discussion of the results, a list of references and the appendix/appendices. It is optional to include a section for conclusions. Each of these sections will be discussed further in this text as well as in your laboratory manual.

Paper to be used is A4 size bond paper. There will be a 1-inch margin on all sides. Title is 14pt Times New Roman, bold and centered. Authors and affiliations, including email are to be in 10pt and centered. See example above. Add a section break by clicking Insert – Break – Continuous. Then, insert two columns. Each will be 3 inch with a 0.4 inch gutter in between.

Section headers are in 12 pt bold Times New Roman with Arabic numbering. It is to be spaced 12 pt from the preceding line and 6 points from the next. This may be done by going to Format—Paragraph—Indents and Spacing Tab—Spacing.

Main text is in Times New Roman, 10 pt. Justify paragraphs. Paragraphs are indented 0.1 pt in the first line. Paragraphs are to be separated by one line.

When one needs to use acronyms within the text at any point in the technical paper, it is the recommended practice that one spell out the acronym the first time it is used, followed by the acronym to be used subsequently in parentheses. Take the following sentence for example: “A Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) was used to analyze the microstructures of the specimen.” In subsequent references to the same noun, “SEM” may be used directly.

The complete paper is to be, at most, five (5) pages.

1.1. Subsections

This is how subsections will appear. Subsection titles are in 11 pt bold Times New Roman.

1.2. Other Text Formatting Rules

If the start of a section is written 2-3 lines before a new column begins, then a column break must be inserted. If a table is written at the end of a column/page, it should remain intact before or after the column/page by inserting a page break or moving to a more convenient space within that section to prevent breaking of rows.

Pagination will follow the format of “Page X of Y” preceded by the name of the author and the title of the paper as shown below.

1.3. Referencing

Reference to any published material must be appropriately documented. Papers from journals are to be cited as in [1] while books citations are demonstrated in [2]. Internet-based articles must be referred to as in [3] including date of access and URL.

2. Figures, Equations, Tables, References

Figure 1 shows how images, graphs or figures should be captioned. Equations must be numbered and centered. For example, the hypotenuse, h, of a right triangle is

(1)

where a is length of the adjacent side and o the length of the opposite side. It is recommended that Equation Editor 3.0 or other programs for writing equations be used.

Captions for tables will appear above the table, such as in Table 1.

SXN. KLDBaladad. Guidelines for Writing a Technical Report. Page 1 of 2

Figure 1. Example of figure

Table 1. Example of Table

Time (s) x (m) y(m)0.0 0.0 0.10.2 0.2 0.50.4 0.4 1.0

3. Report of Data

The author is expected to be able to relate the data reported to the literature presented in the introduction. Experimental data are not necessarily reported raw in technical reports. These are added as an appendix at the end of the paper. What should be seen in the Results and Discussion section are correlated/manipulated useful data such as graphs, tables, distributions, etc. Sample calculations, if applicable, should also be included in the appendix.

Tables must be presented with bold headers to indicate the parameter as well as the units in parenthesis for the following rows. Axes of the graphs should be properly labeled.

4. Submission

The deadline for submission of technical reports for a laboratory experiment is two weeks after the conclusion of the experiment. These will be accepted our turntin module.

5. Grading

The following point system will be followed for grading technical reports. Some questions that must be answered for each criterion are included.

Table 2. Point System for Technical Report Writing

References

[1] M.Y. Firstpaper, and M.Y. Coauthor. "Title of Paper." Journal of This Paper volume (year) pages.

[2] B.U. Kauthor, and A.N. Otherauthor. Book Mentioned, Chapter 3, Publisher, City, 2000.

[3] A. Uthor. Title of Article. Web Publisher, 2002. Accessed 20 June 2012 through URL http://www.domain.com/article1.htm

I Abstract 15Was the report summarized correctly in the abstract?

Does it contain a portion of the introduction to the problem being investigated?Does it contain important steps/procedures done in the experiment?Does it contain significant observations/results?

Does it contain unnecessary details such as RRL or ideas not presented in the body of the paper?

II Introduction 20Was the problem being investigated clearly stated? Scope and limitations of the study mentioned? Significance of the study shown?Does it present pertinent literature to orient the reader about the topics necessary to understanding the inves-tigation?Were the principles, theories clearly presented?

Does this provide the expected results at end of the in-vestigation?

III Methodology 10Were the procedures stated systematically?Were necessary diagrams included?Were the procedures stated as it was actually per-formed in the experiment?Were the reasons for performing procedures stated? eg. Why is necessary to do this?

IV Results and Discussion 40Were the data presented systematically and clearly?

Were appropriate graphs, figures or tables presented?

Were the results obtained correlated to the principles, relationships, and generalizations presented earlier in the introduction?Does the discussion show whether the results and in-terpretations agree with expected results according to literature?Were errors or unsettled points explained or justified properly?

V Conclusion, References, Format, Grammar 15If there are any conclusions, were these able to sum-marize the results appropriately?Was the proper technical report format followed?

Were appropriate grammar and tense used? Word apt-ness for a technical report?

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