Guidelines for Final Report

Guidelines for Writing Projects

In this course, you are being asked to write a formal technical report either individually, or as part of a team. What follows are some guidelines for your writing project, as well as a description of how your project will be graded.

Fundamental Principles.

Be aware of your audience. If you are writing solely for experts in your field, you can assume a lot more background knowledge than if you are writing for high school students. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to assume the reader knows too much. You should never choose the professor as your audience.
Write with a purpose. Decide what you are trying to accomplish with your writing, and make sure that everything you write contributes to this purpose. Here are some examples of writing purposes:

To document our work so that other scientists can understand our methods, critique our work, and use our results.
To persuade the reader that our method is superior to other methods.
To convince a funding agency to give us money.
To teach the reader about a particular subject.
To provide a reference on a subject so that the reader can quickly find the information he/she needs..
To get the teacher to give me a good grade. (Most students who write with this purpose alone will fail).

Write to be understood. Make sure you understand everything you or your team members have written (particularly if you're quoting other sources), and ask yourself if it will make sense to the reader. Make sure you've included all the information the reader will need to understand what you've written. Avoid sentences that are likely to be misunderstood, even if they are arguably "correct" according to some style manual or dictionary.

The Writing Process. Think of a writing project in 3 phases: planning, writing, and revising. You should expect revising to take half of your time. The three phases are not rigidly divided; it is o.k. to go back and forth between phases.

Planning: Decide on your audience and purpose for your report. Brainstorm ideas. Do some exploratory reading. Narrow down the ideas to focus on your purpose. Write a rough outline. Determine what information you need to gather. Divide up responsibilities for gathering information among your team members. Gather the information on notecards. Decide on what graphics you want to include. Write a detailed outline.
Writing: One you have a detailed outline, and completed your notecards, writing the rough draft should go fairly quickly. In essence, you are just taking the information from your notecards and writing it in complete sentences in the order specified in your outline. Don't worry about grammar and style yet. Just get the ideas on paper! Don't get bogged down, write as fast as you can. If you get stuck, go to a another section, and come back later. If you don't like the way something is sounding, keep going anyway, you can fix it later. If you're still stuck, try freewriting.
Revising: The following revising checklist is adapted from David McMurrey's Online Technical Writing Textbook. See his Power- revision techniques for more details.

Check the contents. Did you include everything that needs to be included? Are there key terms that need to be defined? Should you add some examples or figures? Should you add a glossary? Does everything contribute to achieving the purpose of the report? Is the purpose of the document described in the introduction?
Check the structure and organization. Does your rough draft agree with your outline? If not, revise the outline or revise the document so that they are in agreement. Are topics presented at the right level in your outline? (For example, some ideas may be parallel topics, which should be covered at the same level in your outline, or one might be a subtopic of the other). At each level of your outline, do the ideas progress in a sensible order? For example, do ideas flow from general to specific? From problem to solution? From basic to complex? From most important to least important?
Add or enhance overviews and topic sentences. These give the reader a preview of what is to come, and greatly improve readability. Tell the reader what you are going to say, before you say it.
Add (or enhance) the summary.
Include section and subsection headings. These are valuable signposts for the reader.
Add or strengthen transistions. Tell the reader how one idea relates to the next with transition sentences. Transition sentences or phrases often start with transitional words such as for example, morever, subsequently, similarly, on the other hand, therefore, or many others.
Edit for style. Avoid weak verbs. Remove unnecessary words (such as "there is"). Minimize the use of passive voice. Vary sentence length and structure.
Edit for spelling, grammar and punctuation.

General Grading Principles. Your grade on your writing project will be based on the following considerations:

Criteria	Excellent (A)	Good (B)	Fair (C-D)	Unacceptable (F)
Content (50%)	Describes excellent or innovative work, or fulfills an especially challenging or original task. Content is complete, detailed, and very clear, and convincingly supports the purpose. Conclusions are well-supported by the data. Demonstrates a high level of understanding and perspective. Displays a high degree of original, creative and/or critical thinking.	Project fulfills all of the objectives of the assignment. Content is largely complete and generally clear and supports the purpose, but could be improved. Demonstrates a firm grasp of the technical material, but without as much perspective or original thinking as an "A" paper.	Fulfills most of the objectives of the assignment. Content has some gaps and is sometimes unclear. Information may not fully support the purpose. Treatment is general and lacks detail. Demonstrates a reasonable grasp of the technical content but little independent thought. May contain errors in technical content.	Fails to fulfill the basic requirements of the assignment. May be completely off-topic. Content may be significantly incomplete. Information does not support the purpose. Fails to demonstrate understanding of the technical material. May contain significant errors. No evidence of indepent thought.
Audience (5%)	Clearly directed at the appropriate audience. All features are adapted to this audience.	Directed at the intended audience, but some features are not well adapted to this audience.	Some significant deficiencies in how the document is tailored for the intended audience.	Not appropriate for intended audience.
Organization (10%)	Ideas and information are effectively arranged to support the purpose. Reader can easily follow and revisit information. Data and descriptions are clearly separated from interpretations.	Ideas and information are arranged to support purpose but could be improved. Usually reader can follow and revisit information.	Ideas and information are not effectively arranged. Reader has difficulty following and revisiting information.	Writing lacks any semblance of organization. Reader cannot follow.
Visuals (5%)	Visuals clearly support purpose. Placement helps reader to understand content.	Visuals support purpose but could be improved. Placement is usually helpful to reader's understanding.	Visuals sometimes support purpose. Placement may be inappropriate or distracting.	Visuals seem inappropriate and do not help reader to understand content.
Style/Clarity (25%)	Writing is efficient, clear and easy to read. Smooth transitions between topics/ideas. Lot's of help for the reader (overview, topic sentences, transitional sentences, section headings, etc.) Tone is appropriate (formal/professional).	Writing is sometimes wordy, and/or awkward, but is clear and reasonably readable. Some awkward transitions between topics/ideas. Not enough help given to the reader. Tone is still appropriate.	Writing is frequently wordy and/or awkward, and meaning is sometimes not clear. Little help is given to the reader. Tone may be inappropriate.	Writing is very unclear and difficult to read.
Mechanics (5%)	Document is free of spelling/punctuation/grammatical errors.	Document contains a small number of mechanical errors, which distract the reader from the content	Document contains many noticeable errors.	Error rate is high, rendering the document unusable.