Getting Started With Your Report

Understanding the Sections of Your Report

Title page

Abstract

Table of contents

Introduction

Contents

Beginning an introduction

Introduction example

Body

Recommendations

References

Appendices

General Technical Writing Guidelines

Works Cited

Introduction

Contents

The introduction prepares readers for the discussion that follows by introducing the purpose, scope, and background of the research. The audience for your report largely determines the length of the introduction and the amount of detail included in it. You should include enough detail so that someone knowledgeable in your field can understand the subject and your research.

You should begin your introduction at the top of a new page, preceded on the page only by the report’s full title. The title is followed by the word Introduction, which can be either a center or side heading. Most introductions contain three parts to provide context for the research: purpose, scope, and background information. These parts often overlap one another, and sometimes one of them may be omitted simply because there is no reason for it to be included.

It is very important to consider the purpose of your research and your report in the introduction. If you do not completely understand what the purpose is, there is little chance that the reader will understand your purpose either. The following questions will help you to think about the purpose of your research and your reason for writing a report:

• What did your research discover or prove?
  
• What kind of problem did you work on?
  
• Why did you work on this problem? If the problem was assigned, try to imagine why the instructor assigned this particular problem; what were you supposed learn from working on it?
• Why are you writing this report?
  
• What should the reader know or understand when they are finished reading the report?

Scope refers to the ground covered by the report and will outline the method of investigation used in the project. Considering the scope of your project in the introduction will help readers to understand the parameters of your research and your report. It will also help you to identify limiting factors on your research and acknowledge these early in the report. For example, “if 18 methods for improving packaging are investigated in a project but only 4 are discussed in the report, the scope indicates what factors (such as cost, delivery time, and availability of space) limited the selection” (Blicq and Moretto 165). Scope may also include defining important terms.

These questions will help you to think about the scope of both your research and your report:

• How did you work on the research problem?
  
• Why did you work on the problem the way you did?
  
• Were there other obvious approaches you could have taken to this problem? What were the limitations you faced that prevented your trying other approaches?
  
• What factors contributed to the way you worked on this problem? What factor was most important in deciding how to approach the problem?

Background Information includes facts that the reader must know in order to understand the discussion that follows. These facts may include descriptions of conditions or events that caused the project to be authorized or assigned and details of previous work and reports on the problem or closely related problems. You might also want to review theories that have a bearing on the project and references to other documents although if you need to include a lengthy review of other theories or documents, these should be placed in an appendix.

Ask yourself:

• What facts does the reader need to know in order to understand the discussion that follows?
• Why was the project authorized or assigned?
  
• Who has done previous work on this problem?
  
• What theory or model informed your project?
  
• What facts are already known that support or don’t fit the theory?
  
• What will the reader know about the subject already and what will you need to tell them so they can understand the significance of your work?

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Beginning an introduction

Introductions serve as a place for you to catch your reader’s attention, and they also help to place your project in its context (whether that context is background information or your purpose in writing is up to you). As a result, it is important to consider the approach you will take to begin your introduction. Consider the following examples; they represent two extremes that writers can take in beginning their introductions.

What is the problem with this sentence as an opening to an introduction?

The universe has been expanding from the very moment that it was born.

This sentence is very broad; the writer tries to establish a broad context and relevance for their work but begins with too wide a field of vision, seeming to account for the entire universe since its birth. The introduction should not try to orient the reader with respect to all of human history or the universe, but only the fundamentals of the immediate problem.

One of the ways that the sentence above might be rewritten is:

Recent studies suggest that the universe will continue expanding forever and may pick up speed over time.

The rewritten sentence establishes the report’s context within “recent studies” concerning a specific theory related to universe expansion. This context is much more specific than that of the original sentence.

What is the problem with this sentence as an opening sentence to an introduction?

The Fourier series representation of a period time signal creates a corresponding signal in the “frequency domain” which relates information about energy contained at each frequency of the signal.

The second example takes too narrow of an approach because it plunges into the problem immediately without contextualizing the topic for the reader or giving them important background information. This opening statement assumes a reader who is already very familiar with the topic, an assumption that may or may not be correct. It might take additional information to rewrite this sentence so that it provides enough context for readers to familiarize themselves with the topic.

Consider the rewritten introduction, which introduces the idea in four sentences instead of one:

Today's digital-signal-processing applications are pressing the throughput boundaries of the available DSPs. System designs that use multiple processors to complete their tasks as quickly as possible are commonplace, and a major portion of the signal-processing horsepower is required to transform the data from the time domain to the frequency domain and back again. To best use available processors, it is necessary to generate an efficient algorithm to transform data from the time to the frequency domain. The most common method is the fast Fourier transform (FFT).

A good way to begin an introduction is to think of your audience and consider how you might best orient them to your topic. State the problem as specifically as possible and contextualize the project for them. Consider placing either the purpose of your project or the background information first, then moving on to consider scope after your topic has been introduced.

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Introduction Example

This example of an introduction has been adapted from an article called “Soil Carbon Isotopes Reveal Ancient Grassland Under Forest In Hluhluwe, Kwazulu-Natal,” published in the South African Journal of Science. The introduction clearly addresses background, purpose, and scope.