I finished my report and handed it in on Thursday of last week, but it wasn’t a report. I had written it how I would write an assignment and so the context in which it was written was all wrong. I was told the content was fine which is good! I just have to re-write so it is a report, which is extremely difficult.
The only way I know how to write and present facts is as an assignment so I am finding it really hard to change the context of the original into a report format.
I have absolutely no idea how to write a report because I have never written one before!
Any hints and tips would be much appreciated =)
Once again, the web comes to the rescue!
Loughborough has a handy guide to writing reports. They approach it more from an academic standpoint than a technical one, but it does differentiate them nicely from essays.
There’s also a handy guide to technical report writing from Sussex which I sometimes refer to, concentrating more on style.
The general gist is that you’re trying to break down the facts you’ve found so that people can use it to build arguments and opinions (whereas an essay is breaking down your arguments and opinions into the facts you’ve found to back them up).