School of Engineering and Digital Sciences

Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering

GUIDE FOR WRITING REPORTS

Nur-Sultan 2021
 This manual is intended to help you in preparing the laboratory and other technical reports.
Laboratory reports will not only give your instructor an indication of your understanding of the
experimental and other related works carried out, but will also help you develop skills in
technical writing and engineering data presentation. As a future engineer, you will spend a
significant amount of your time communicating your work through submitting written technical
and other type of reports. Therefore, training and practicing in report writing are important parts
of your engineering education providing you with the opportunity to develop or improve the
skills that will be extremely valuable in your future career.

FORMATTING

Recommended spacing between the lines – 1.5, font size – 12, font face - Times New
Roman.

Headings are usually in bold type. Whatever format you choose for the headings, you should
be consistent with its use throughout the report.

When inserting a table or figure in your report, make sure you title and number them
sequentially. Also ensure that you refer them in the report. This will assure that the report is clear
and provides full and effective/relevant information.

LANGUAGE USE

Laboratory reports will be judged not only on their technical content, but also on the clarity
and ease of understanding of the written text, the choice of wording, and grammatical
correctness. It is strongly recommended to read the literature relevant to the laboratory work
prior writing the report to familiarize with the technical terms and their commonly used forms in
the field of research.

Some of things you should follow when writing your report are these:

 Be as concise as possible, as it will make your report easier to read;

 Avoid excessive repetition when possible;
 Write in complete sentences with a subject and verb, and avoid run-on sentences;
  Be consistent with verb tenses: use past tense for events or actions that are complete (e.g.,
laboratory procedures) and present tense for facts that were and are still true (e.g., laboratory
results);
 Do not use personal pronouns (i.e., I, me, we, our, etc.). When writing a technical report,
it is preferred to use third passive voice construction (e.g., “The equipment was set up …”) [1].

PLAGIARISM

Because of space and time constraints, laboratory experiments are usually carried out in
groups of students. As a result, each member of the group will follow the same experimental
procedure and obtain the same set of experimental data. However, it is expected that each
individual student will write his/her own report and submit it as his/her own work.

CONTENT

This leads to the conventional Abstract / Introduction / Theory / Method / Results /

Discussion / Conclusions / References structure of a paper/report. Of course the exact format will
be dependent on the nature of the work being reported, but it is probably not a good idea (and is
not recommended) to deviate too markedly from the following structure:

• Title

• Abstract (6 points)

• Introduction (20 points)

• Theoretical Background (20 points) 2 and more pages

• Method (Experimental) (8 points)

• Results (8 points)

• Discussion (25 points)

• Conclusions (10 points)

 • References (3 points)

• Appendices (where appropriate)

Abstract

The abstract is a concise summary of your laboratory report. It should convey to the reader
the following information: the objective of the work, the methodology employed, key findings
and their significance, and major conclusions drawn. It is good practice to write it last, after the
entire report has been completed. The abstract should be one paragraph of approximately 100 to
200 words long.

Do not use undefined acronyms, undefined symbols or references/citations in the Abstract.

The Abstract should stand alone — it must therefore be understandable without reading the rest
of the report.

Introduction

Here the reader needs to understand why the work was done. What was the context of the
work? What work had been done previously in this area? These are usually listed in the
laboratory manual of the course. However, you should not just repeat what it is written in the
laboratory manual, but rather show your own understanding of why the experiment was carried
out. The use of action verbs such as “investigate”, “determine”, “measure”, or “compare” is an
effective way of achieving this goal.

The Introduction is one of the most important parts of a paper and should be clear and
concise [1].

Theoretical Background

You should present in a concise form the main points of any theory that an experiment is
attempting to verify.
 *If you use a certain apparatus/instrument, you should add information (types, working
concept, components, and schematic diagram) about it. You can make another Equipment
section in the report or include this into the theoretical background.

Method/Experimental

You need to describe the experimental methods/techniques. In describing the method, there
are two aims. Firstly, having read the account, a reader could in principle carry out the same
experiment. Secondly, it must allow the reader to judge whether the conclusions you later reach
are justified. Thus, for an experiment, it should include details of how the measurements were
made, the precautions taken to get reliable results, preliminary checks on the apparatus (model of
instrument is also must be included), discussion of steps taken to overcome systematic errors etc.
[2].

Results

Here you should present your experimental results, the results of relevant calculations and
error analysis. In a report, when deducing numerical results from your data, you should usually
only give the initial expression and the final result.

Remember that you should not be interpreting the results at this point, as this is left for the
“Discussion” section (to be described next).

Discussion

Here you deal with the interpretation of your results and explain what lessons you draw from
them. Important things are likely to have been learnt from the experiment or other work, so you
should explain clearly what firm deductions you can make, and perhaps consider other possible
interpretations of your data. In the Discussion you should consider potential errors and any
shortcomings in the experimental procedure or analysis of the data. You may also wish to
suggest improvements to the work, and quite possibly what further experiments or theoretical
developments you feel might need to be done [1].

Conclusions
 You should wrap things up with the Conclusions section. This should indicate — both
qualitatively and, where appropriate, quantitatively — how far the experiment goes towards
answering the questions posed in the Introduction, summarizing what you have done from the
experiment and if relevant, what you still do not know. If the value of a quantity has been
determined, which is sufficiently well known to appear elsewhere, a comparison should be given
[1].

References

The body of the report should be a more or less self-contained account of the work
undertaken. References are included so as to give the reader an opportunity to find out more
about the background of your work or other ancillary information.

In the reference section the references to journals and books should be given in a standard
form; each reference should contain the following information:

• the name(s) of the author(s),

• the year of publication,

• the title of the article (optional),

• the book title or journal,

• the volume number (if it is a journal),

• the page number of the first page of the article [2].

Typical examples for a journal and a book are as follows:

1. Higgs P., Broken Symmetries and the Masses of Gauge Bosons, Phys. Rev. Lett., 13
(1964) 508
2. Mansfield M., O’Sullivan C., Understanding Physics, 2011, John Wiley & Sons,
Chichester.

References to laboratory manuals and course handouts can be given as follows:

 1. NST IA Physics Practicals, Michaelmas Term, 2011. Laboratory manual: Department of
Physics, University of Cambridge
2. Haniff C.A., 2011. Experimental Methods. Course handout: Department of Physics,
University of Cambridge [2].

Typical example for website is as follows:

1. Dibble B., Milech B., 'Elizabeth Jolley Research Collection',

http://john.curtin.edu.au/jolley/index.html, 2008, (accessed 1 August 2010) [3].  

REFERENCES
1. Guide for Writing Laboratory Reports, 2003. Department of Civil Engineering, University
of Ottawa
2. Keeping Laboratory Notes and Writing Formal Reports, 2014. Cavendish Laboratory:
Department of Physics, University of Cambridge
3. Roberts. R, 2012. New Oxford style manual, 2nd edn, Oxford, Oxford University Press