Technical Writing - Formatting the Basic Technical Article Or Report

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At one time or another, most technicians and scientists will have to write a project-related technical report of some kind.
For this task, the basic format is fairly easy to follow, although slight variations of it do exist.
The basic format is explained below.
Basic format
  1. Title
  2. Author(s)
  3. Abstract or Summary
  4. Introduction
  5. Experimental
  6. Results
  7. Discussion
  8. Conclusion
  9. Recommendation
  10. Acknowledgments
  11. References
1.
Title State the purpose of the article or the work accomplished.
2.
Author(s) Use your name alone if you did the technical project and its write-ups yourself.
If the project was a team effort, use your name plus the names of your fellow contributors, assuming you were the lead scientist.
Do not include the names of those you suspect are claiming to have contributed to the project without your knowledge because you do not know for sure that is what they are doing.
Let them speak up for themselves.
Otherwise, the author list will get too long.
Additionally, if you happen to be surrounded by article predators, do not let them crash or control your article at publication time under a possible proliferation of feasible-sounding but invalid reasons.
Let your managers sort out these kinds of issues for you.
Yet, in real life, you might choose to tactfully pretend one or more of your family members, friends, or co-workers are helping you with the project to get along with them better.
 If you do chose to do that, you could be complicating your article, your organization, your career, and your life with substantial amounts of falsification no matter how carefully that effort is carried out, depending on the exact circumstances.
 It will not end there.
3.
Abstract or Summary Write a concise summary of the purpose of your work, and what you did, found, and fixed.
Generally, this section is no more than 100 words.
 But it can be longer than that for the large or highly technical projects.
4.
Introduction State the reason for the project, and why that reason needed to be examined or fixed.
 Mention here any previous work done by others, and how it relates to yours.
Also, present any possible arguments and controversies here.
This section is much lengthier than the abstract or summary.
5.
Experimental Show what you did, and how you did it in detail.
List all the experiments, methods, techniques, materials, and equipment used.
In some cases, show how to contact the manufacturers of these items so others can try to duplicate your work.
6-7.
Results and Discussion Often, these two sections are combined.
However, if the amount of experimental data collected is massive, keep it separate from the discussion section, which, in turn, will explain how the project progressed with any discrepancies and successes that occurred.
8.
Conclusion From the results found, interpret and conclude the outcome of your work.
9.
Recommendation If desired, recommend the acceptance of your work as an improvement or solution to a problem.
Recommendations are not always given in scientific articles.
10.
Acknowledgments Acknowledge the project sponsors, individual or organizational approvals, financial and other support sources, individual or team contributions, and your organization or employer.
Do not attempt to list uninvolved personnel in this section to be overly nice or respectful to those who seem to want it.
You do not know for sure how those people feel or think.
Besides, the acknowledgment section will become too lengthy if you add extra names.
Yet, this section is a good place to pay your respects to those who truly need or deserve it.
11.
References Many scientific articles are not original works.
Rather, they are original improvements to or modifications of earlier works.
Therefore, list any literature sources of the original or previous works that are related to your project here.
It is better to overly reference your article than to omit an important work, only to find out later you are claiming originality in error.
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