the main body. E.g.”The lab handout is contained in Appendix A”.

“For the raw data see Appendix B”, “For a

full derivation of this result see Appendix C”.

Structure
You may be confused by what appears to be a multitude of preferred structures that you have been taught
over the years, but if you analyse them they all look the same, perhaps with different names. Here is a
proposed structure with several alternative headings (not necessarily exhaustive) for the same key sections.
Everything from your lab report to your final thesis (and even a PhD thesis or journal paper) will follow much
the same structure, but on different scales. For a lab report these sections may be brief, but must still be
present. Each section is there to answer a key question.

1. Abstract / Summary / Executive summary / Introduction/ Aim

What?... The hypothesis, how you tested it, and the key outcomes. Be specific about outcomes.
(Sometimes these may be divided into more than one section, but they will generally be brief. Note that
some terms, such as “Abstract”, have very specific meanings – if you use these then learn how to use
them properly.)
2. Theory / Background / Literature review
Why?...
3. Method / Procedure (DO NOT call this section “Methodology”, that word means “a body of methods
used in a particular branch of study or activity”, i.e. a study of methods generally, not necessarily just the
method you used.)
How?...
4. Results
What did you find?… Objective outcomes – stick strictly to the facts. Results may be both experimental
and/or computational.
5. Discussion
What does it mean?... Interpretation – your opinions on how the hypothesis was or was not supported,
logically argued based on evidence presented in the results
6. Conclusions
The take home message!
7. References / Bibliography
8. Appendices

In technical reports you will find that there is some degree of repetition between sections. It may be helpful
to think of sections 1. and 2. as telling the reader what you are about to tell them. In sections 3., 4. and 5.
you are telling the reader what you want to tell them. Finally, in section 6. you tell the reader what you told
them. While there may be repetition in text, you should generally avoid repetition of data.

Essential guidelines for inclusion of numerical or mathematical information in

word-processed documents.
Please see the following link to familiarise yourselves with the correct conventions for using SI unit symbols.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_units#Writing_unit_symbols_and_the_values_of_quantities

The most common errors include use of incorrect case (e.g. Kpa should be kPa – a common auto correct
problem in MS Word), incorrect use of spaces (units should be separated from numbers by a space,