Technical Report Writing

1. Definition
 Report Writing is generally defined as a formal
or official statement containing facts, recording
findings and presenting the results of a survey ,
and making recommendations.

2. Why do we need Reports?
 Reports are designed to convey and record information
that will be of practical use to the reader. It is organized
into discrete units of specific and highly visible
information.
 Business and industry, as well as universities, often
demand writing technical reports. Engineers, scientists,
and managers usually write research reports to
communicate the results of their research work, field
work, or experiments

3. “ The reader is the most important
person.”
- Joan Van Emden & Jennifer Eastepl(1987)
The selection and the organization of material, style and the
tone of writing report are determined by the reader for whom
the report is intended. The reader could be colleagues,
officials of an organization, Government and department
representatives , CEO’s of a company/ industry or public at
large.

4. Report Format
While formatting a report the following must
be kept in mind:
 Purpose and the type
 The specific topic
 The precise message you wish to deliver
 The suitable length and format.
 The correct vocabulary, style and tone.
 The evidence and data to be presented.

5. Elements of a Technical Report
 Title
 Abstract (Executive Summary)
 Table of Contents
 Introduction
 Theory and Analysis
 Experimental Procedures
 Results and Discussion
 Conclusion(s)
 Acknowledgments
 References
 Appendix

6. Title page
 The effective title should be informative, but
reasonably short
 The title page of the report usually contains four main
parts of the information: -the report title;
- The name of the person,
- Organization, or company for whom this report has
been prepared;
-The name of the author or the institution, which
originated the report.
- Date

7. Table of Contents
 The table of contents section lists the contents
of your report and show how the report is
organized.
 Each section has to be labeled with descriptive
headings and subheadings to explain the
readers what each section is all about.
 A good table of contents makes it easy for the
readers to locate information in your report.

8. Acknowledgment
 Acknowledge the support and guidance
you have received from colleagues,
superiors, inputs of team mates etc if
given and also if any funding received .
 Any internal or external assistance
should be acknowledged.

9. Abstract
 An abstract is an accurate representation of the
contents of a document in an abbreviated form.
The abstract states the report in miniature.
 In fact, it summarizes the whole report and has a
form of the concise paragraph that incorporates
100-200 words .
 Should include the objective, research methods
used in the investigation, results of your research
and recommendations that you give to the
readers.

10. Introduction
 The introduction of a technical report
represents the subject, the purpose, and the
plan of the development of your report.
 Main aim is to introduce your readers to the
problem that you are setting out to solve in the
course of your technical report.
 Include some background information to
acquaint readers with the history and
background of the report.
 Remember that stating the objectives and the
problem of the carried research are the main
functions of this section.

11. Methodology/Body
 Interviews
 Field investigation
 Case studies
 Experiments
 Survey of the available data
 Analysis of data
 Observation/ Discussion

12. Results
 "All the preceding sections of the report lead in
to the results section and all the subsequent
sections will consider what the results section
means."
Results is usually the longest and most
important part of your report, where you have
to report the results of the carried research.
 you have to discuss here what you have
invented, discovered, confirmed through your
research, and to present this information in the
form of calculated values, visual observations,
plots, illustrations, graphs, or tables.

13.  Use tables and figures in this section because
they help to convey the data to the readers
more efficiently.
 Figures and tables help the reader to simplify
and visualize the presented data.
 Remember that the results of your research
should be presented as plainly as possible.

14. Conclusion
 It is a very short section, where you summarize
your findings and generalize their importance.
 Conclusions should be explained in terms of
the preceding results section
 Opinions should be based on the evidence and
data presented in the results section.

15. Recommendations

In this section you have to provide suggestions
based on the results and conclusions of your
work.
 Recommendations could either be
recommendations for action, or
recommendations for further research. Or
both!
 Short term
 Long term.

16. References

The main objective of citing references is to give the
readers an opportunity to follow up your work.
 References show the readers that the materials and
data you have used in your research are credible.
 Don’t forget to include references that you directly
cited in the text.
Appendix/Glossary: List of illustrations,
Abbreviations, questionnaires attached etc

17. Types of Reports
 Reports are generally of two types:
 Formal Reports: which are generally the result of
projects that require many months and large financial
outlay, take hundreds of pages and are usually
prepared for governmental agencies.
 Informal reports: are brief, running to a few
paragraphs and include only the essential elements of a
report ( introduction, body, conclusions and
recommendations) . They are sometimes written in the
format of a letter or a memo( for internal use in an
organization)

18. Technical reports
 Technical reports which can be both formal
and informal depending on the content include:
 Feasibility report : To analyze problems and
predict whether alternatives will be practical
and advisable. Ex: setting up a small scale
industry at a particular place.
 Laboratory report: on the experiment/ test
conducted at a lab, its results and analysis.

19.  Tour report: on the (industrial/business) tour
undertaken by a specialist /marketing group to
another factory or sales area.
 Status report: on the state of things in the
construction /execution etc. Ex: Road, Factory
etc.
 Progress report on the progress of work in a
particular project.

20. A
Report
On
-----title of the topic------
By
RAM
19331A05S0
Submitted in Partial fulfillment of
the requirements of ETC continuous assessment
To
Ms. Sujatha Lokanadham
Subject- in –charge
ETC
20 JULY 2023
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