FORMATTING AND

PRESENTATION OF A Dr. Win Zaw

19-9-2020

PROJECT REPORT
REPORTS
 Formal structure and tone. Reports tend to be more formal than other sorts of communication and
usually have a more structured format. They avoid niceties of address (i.e. they do not specifically
address the reader in any particular way), and are normally more impersonal with no conversational
content. This is achieved usually by writing in the third person form rather than using the first person.

 Pictorial presentation. The use of pictures, graphs, diagrams etc. makes numerical information easier
to understand. They also feature prominently in modelling methods used throughout the systems
development process.

 Statement of opinion. In most reports, the writer draws conclusions after marshalling, reviewing, and
evaluating both the work carried out and the related work of others.

 'Use' of the report. Whatever the type of report, it will only succeed as a piece of effective writing if
the writer has a clear understanding of the needs of the readers, and puts in the report what is relevant
to those needs.
REPORT CONSIDERATION
The first point tells us that a project report should be written in a fairly formal
manner, preferably using the third person form, and with particular attention
paid to correct grammar and use of English.
An increasing tendency to include pictorial presentations requires that a
writer pay careful attention to the type of diagram used, the information that
it conveys and the effect that it has when inserted into a page of writing.
A project write-up should be considered as both a report on the work carried
out in the project and also as a dissertation that will be read and assessed by
academic examiners.
GENERAL APPEARANCE
Overall appearance that is both pleasing and neat and easy for the reader to follow. You should bear in mind that
you will not achieve extra marks simply because you have used colour rather than black and white or used a
variety of ‘fancy’ fonts.
Follow these guidelines:

 The text that you write in your report should always be in black ink. Avoid the temptation to use coloured
fonts in order to make part of the text stand out.
 
 Colour is of course appropriate for screen captured images such as user interface screens and for diagrams
such as pie charts. Even so, ask yourself whether it is the effect of different colours that you wish the reader
to see or whether the use of different grey-scale shadings and fill effects would be just as informative.

In the case of multimedia products, it may of course be very important to show colour images.

 A project report is a formal document and in order to preserve its scholarly nature, the fonts used should be
kept plain. The use of italics for chapter headings for example should be avoided at all costs, as should the
use of more fancy fonts such as Algerian etc.
PAPER
High-quality paper tends to be thicker and this makes the pages of the report more difficult to turn, and
increases considerably the thickness of the bound report. High-quality paper is often coloured off-white
or beige and this serves only to detract the reader from the content and make the report stand out for the
wrong reasons. For the most part, you should

 Print pages single-sided only.

 Use only A4 white, standard thickness paper. Paper used for everyday photocopying is fine (and
cheap to purchase).

To achieve photo-quality images may require special paper but this requirement should be weighed
against whether it is essential to the report to include this.

In most cases it should not be necessary unless the achievement of high-quality of image reproduction
forms a part of the project, and you need to demonstrate this in your report.
PAGE SET-UP AND LAYOUT
It is important that each page in the report has a consistent 'look and feel' as well as having an appearance that is
consistent with the report being a scholarly document.

 The following settings and rules should be adhered to.

 Each page of a chapter, other than the first page, should have the top, bottom, left and right margins set to 1
inch or 2.5 cm.

 The first page of a chapter should have the top margin set to 1.5 inches or 3.75 cms. The chapter heading will
therefore appear 1.5 inches below the top of the page.

 Do not include any headers or footers on pages. These add nothing to the appearance of the page or the
content therein.

 The page number may be set in the footer as a convenience, but nothing else should be included.

 Do not use footnotes.

PAGINATION
This is the ordered numbering of pages in the report. Every page in the report
should be numbered, including the pages in the Appendices.
Under no circumstances should you write the page number on by hand!
A project report contains various report elements, only some of which constitute
the main body of the report.
Position of page number on page
The page number should be shown at the bottom and centre of each page. Do not
add the word 'page' before the number. For example:
 
Showing a page number as 23 is acceptable
Showing a page number as - 23 - is also acceptable
Showing a page number as page 23 is not acceptable
 TYPE OF NUMBERING TO USE
Arabic numerals should be used for the following:

 All pages in the main body of the report, starting from page one of Chapter One.
 The bibliography.
 Any appendices.
 Any optional report elements included after the appendices.
 
It therefore follows that page '1' is the first page of Chapter One and the last page number occurs on
the very last page of the report.
 
Small Roman numerals are used for pages of the following report elements and any other optional
report elements that come before Chapter One:
 Title page
 Preface
 Abstract
 Table of Contents
 List of tables
 List of figures
 The page number on the title page is not normally shown.
TEXT FORMATTING
Each page in the report has a consistent 'look and feel' as well as having an appearance that is consistent with the
report being a scholarly document, we specify the way in which the text itself should appear on the page. The
following rules should be adhered to:
 Font style. For both technical and scholarly reports, a serif font like Times New Roman should be used. It is
common to contrast the text in headings by using a sans serif font such as Ariel, for all headings and
subheadings.
 Font size. The size of the font should be such that the text is easy to read. A font size of 12-point is
recommended for the main text on a page (10-point is too small and 14-point too large). Headings should also
be 12-point with the exception of the chapter heading which can be put into a larger font (see further on for
more detail on headings). Captions and legends for diagrams should be in 10-point.
 Alignment. Text should be fully justified within each paragraph.
 Line spacing. You are required to use 1.5 line spacing on all pages except for the pages used in the Table of
Contents.
 Text emphasis. One benefit of computerised word processing is the facility to give various effects to a font
such as bold, underline, italic, subscript etc. This benefit is however tempered by the fact that most of us do
not know the rules that dictate when such effects should be properly used. Mechanical typewriters were only
able to offer the use of capital letters or underlining as a means of making text stand out. In contrast, when
word processing you should not use capitals or underlining as a means of emphasising one or more words in
a paragraph. Instead, you should use italics, or in some cases bold. As a rule, it is best to conform to the
following guidelines:
 use italics to emphasise words within a paragraph,
 use bold for making headings stand out.
HEADINGS
Headings used properly, define the structure of a chapter, and likewise, chapter headings define the
structure of the main body of the report. Each heading should be:

 Explicit. The reader must be able to tell from the heading (possibly in the context of other headings)
exactly what the words beneath are about.
 Brief. One word is good; five words are acceptable; more than three-quarters of a line is probably
too long.
A set of headings should be:

 Comprehensive. Make sure that everything is covered.

 Mutually exclusive. It is almost as annoying to the reader to find that a point is under two headings
as under none.
 In a logical sequence. This does not always mean in order of importance. There is unlikely to be
only one logical arrangement and therefore different possible arrangements should be considered.
Make sure that the logic of the sequence fits that of the reader's.
 SELECTING AN APPROPRIATE
FONT
Chapter heading
Default settings for a chapter heading might be:
 Arial bold
 Left alignment
 Large font size e.g. 18-point
Headings within chapters
These should always be in the same font size as the main text and should have the
following attributes:
 Arial bold.
 Left alignment.
SELECTING AN APPROPRIATE
FONT
Headings and the Table of Contents
If we wish to generate automatically a Table of Contents (TOC) for a report, then each heading and
subheading used must be defined with the styles in use with the document.
 Example: Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3 and Heading 4.

According to the document styles, these appear in the document as Arial 14 bold, Arial 12 bold, Times
New Roman 12 bold and Times New Roman 12 bold italic respectively.

You should be aware that although these fonts are used for headings in the main document, each TOC
style has its own set of font styles for displaying each heading. It is advisable to select a TOC style that
closely matches the font styles used in the main document.

Both the format of the tab leader and the font style for each heading displayed in the TOC can be
modified in MS Word.
REFERENCES
The purpose behind referencing other people's work has been explained in a
previous lecture dealing with literature searching.
Much of what you present within your report will have been touched on, discussed,
written about or covered by other authors in the past – particularly for undergraduate
projects [Dawson, 2000].
Thus any arguments that you make within your report and especially within your
literature review should be justified 'by referencing previous research [Saunders et
al. 1997].
In particular material is referenced in reports to avoid plagiarism. In other words you
do not present other people's ideas, thoughts, words, figures, diagrams, results and
so on without referencing them, in order to make their work look as if it is your own.
 CITING
The system that we shall adopt for citing references is the Harvard system (also known as the author-
date system), in which authors are named in the text as required using surname (no initials) followed
by year of publication of the cited work in brackets, as in

This was first suggested by Chen (1972) who defined a set of rules for showing the
relationships between entities.

Alternatively, we could write

A set of rules exist (Chen, 1972) for showing the relationships between entities.

Which form of writing is used depends upon the overall style of writing adopted for the report.
Additionally, and especially where books are cited, it is permissible to give the page number in the
cited work where the particular text referred to begins, as in

This was first suggested by Chen (1972: 56) who defined a set of rules for showing the
relationships between entities.
 LISTING REFERENCES
Always include a List of References after the main body of the report.

Include a Bibliography as well, only if you feel that this would be useful to the reader.
It is also important to check that any reference given is:

 correct in respect to every detail included

 complete in that all essential information is given
 consistent in the way that they are written

How you present references will depend on the referencing system you adopt. In any referencing system, the following
information should be given:

 author or editor
 title of publication
 edition (other than first) if applicable
 place of publication
 date of publication

and in the case of journal articles, additional information concerning:

 
 title of journal
 volume, part or issue number
.

HARVARD SYSTEM FOR

BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES
The following examples show bibliographic references given using the Harvard
system:
Moore, N. (1987) How to do Research, 2nd edition, Library Association, London.
McNeil, R.I. et al. (1983) 'Isomerization of tetra-hydroaromatic groups under coal
liquefaction conditions', Fuel, 62, 401-406
Note the use of italics, bold, commas, abbreviations etc. This can change
according to style, but the above usage presents a fairly standard approach.
We will use italics for the titles of books and for the names of journals but not for
the names of articles within books or journals which instead are placed within
single quotes.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF
SOURCES THAT MIGHT BE
REFERENCED IN A
DISSERTATION
 books
 journals
 conferences
 congresses
 symposiums
 reports
 theses
 government publications
 patents
 standards
 newspaper articles
 motion pictures and videos
 television programmes
 web addresses
WEB SITES FOR INFORMATION
ON HARVARD SYSTEM
1. http://www.gre.ac.uk/directory/library/guides/bibcitns.html

2. http://www.une.edu.au/tlc/styleguide

3. http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/library2/html/harvard_system.html

4. http://www.cant.ac.uk/LIST/organise/cf10.htm

5. http://www.busmgt.ulst.ac.uk/eru/harvard.html
Thank you!