Final Project – Recommendation Report
Markel, M. (2015). Technical communication (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's.
PAGE 470—PAGES 480-481---PAGE 483
Title Page------ A title page includes at least the title of the report, the name of the writer, and the date of submission. A more complex title page might also include a project number, a list of additional personnel who contributed to the report, and a distribution list. See page 490 in the sample recommenda- tion report for an example of a title page.
Abstract----- An abstract is a brief technical summary of the report, usually no more than 200 words. It addresses readers who are familiar with the techni- cal subject and who need to decide whether they want to read the full report. In an abstract, you can use technical terminology and refer to advanced concepts in the field. Abstracts are sometimes published by abstract services, which are useful resources for researchers.
Abstracts often contain a list of half a dozen or so keywords, which are entered into electronic databases. As the writer, one of your tasks is to think of the various keywords that will lead people to the information in your report.
PAGES 480-481
Table of Contents The table of contents, the most important guide to navigating the report, has two main functions: to help readers find the infor- mation they want and to help them understand the scope and organization of the report.
A table of contents uses the same headings as the report itself. There- fore, to create an effective table of contents, you must first make sure that the headings are clear and that you have provided enough of them. If the table of contents shows no entry for five or six pages, you probably need to partition that section of the report into additional subsections. In fact, some tables of contents have one entry, or even several, for every report page.
The following table of contents, which relies exclusively on generic headings (those that describe an entire class of items), is too general to be useful.
table of contents introduction...............................................................1
Materials ......................................................................3 Methods.......................................................................4 Results........................................................................ 19
Recommendations .............................................. 23
References ............................................................... 26
Appendixes ............................................................. 28
This methods section, which goes from page 4 to page 18, should have subentries to break up the text and to help readers find the information they seek.
For more-informative headings, combine the generic and the specific:
Recommendations: Five Ways to improve information-Retrieval materials used in the calcification study
Results of the commuting-time Analysis
Then build more subheadings into the report itself. For instance, for the “Recommendations” example above, you could create a subheading for each of the five recommendations. Once you have established a clear system of headings within the report, use the same text attributes—capitalization, boldface, italics, and outline style (traditional or decimal)—in the table of contents.
When adding page numbers to your report, remember two points:
• The table of contents page does not contain an entry for itself.
• Front matter is numbered using lowercase Roman numerals (i, ii, and so forth), often centered at the bottom of the page. The title page of a report is not numbered, although it represents page i. The abstract is usually numbered page ii. The table of contents is usually not numbered, although it represents page iii. The body of the report is numbered with Arabic numerals (1, 2, and so on), typically in the upper outside corner of the page.
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List of illustrations ----A list of illustrations is a table of contents for the fig- ures and tables. List the figures first, then the tables. (If the report contains only figures, call it a list of figures. If it contains only tables, call it a list of tables.) You may begin the list of illustrations on the same page as the table of contents, or you may begin the list on a separate page and include it in the table of contents. Figure 18.5 shows a list of illustrations.
LIST OF ILLISTRATIONS
Figure 1.1 U.S. R&D Spending on Biotechnology ..................................... 11
Figure 1.2 ESCA R&D Spending v. Biotech R&D Spending ..................... 14
Figure 2.1 Annual Sales ............................................................................. 16
Figure 3.1 Hypothetical New-Product Decision Tree ................................. 21
Figure 3.2 Annual Sales ............................................................................. 23
Tables
Table 1.1 Industry Costs of the Final Rule (2005 Dollars)........................ 12
Table 1.2 Industry Costs of the Final Rule (2010 Dollars)........................ 12
Table 2.1 Government Costs of the Final Rule (2005 Dollars) ................. 17
Table 2.2 Government Costs of the Final Rule (2010 Dollars) ................. 18
Table 3.1 Applications Not Subject to ESCA ........................................... 23
Table 3.2 Examples of Microbial Applications Under ESCA .................. 26
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS