Tuesday, 7 June 2011

Writing Technical Reports

writing technical reports_2"writing technical reports"
A question in Technical Writing or Reporting?

Hello

I am writing a technical report in English, I am wondering what the professional way is to arrange topics or chapters.

Should the introduction be in a separate chapter?
What about objectives? Do they have to be together in one single chapter?
I have topics that are less than one page long, can they form their own chapters?
Last thing, When a chapter ends at the middle of the page, can I start the next chapter on the same page? or should it be on the start of next page

Thank you


The most important consideration is consistency. Whether you choose to put page breaks between chapters or not, make sure your choice works out for every chapter. (I.e. make sure you're not gonna end up with a chapter that can only fit its header on the previous page, or something like that.)

As far as what should or should not be a chapter, that depends on the document's overall length. A single-page chapter would be fine in a 20-page report. It would look utterly silly in a 500-page book. (Or, to put it another way, if the other chapters have 3 or 4 pages, then one that's shorter is fine; however, if every chapter is 30 or 40 pages, then a single-pager will look unprofessional.) Similarly, a 500-page book probably needs an initial chapter that is just an introduction, while in a 20-page report, such a chapter would seem needlessly wordy.

Objectives should probably be part of the intro, wherever that ends up.


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writing technical reports
writing technical reports
writing technical reports

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