Any report writing hints or tips?

[Captain_Ludd]

Hi all,

I’m in the process of writing up a report for my dissertation at the moment, now although the project practical itself is going fine whenever I start writing my report I quickly find myself going into very long winded disorganised ramblings.
I’ve rewritten one part about 4 times now and I just cant seem to get into the report writing frame of mind.
Have any of you good people every had to do this sort of thing? And if so could you give any advice or tips?

Thanks.

[Impossipuzzle]

This happened to me a lot when I had to write a dissertation. Try not to obsess over it, your brain turns into a goopy, fatigued sludge! Breaks are important

The advice my supervisor gave me at the time was to write a plan then "barf the whole thing out onto the page/screen". Her thinking was that its easier to edit what you have already written than it is to re-write and I admit I did find this approach kinda useful!

Write a draft/section from start to finish and then let it sit for a day or two. Doesn't matter if its too long or too short. Then go back to it with "fresh eyes" and start editing/deleting. I found it helpful to try and think of it a bit like a detective story (only with fewer murders and more referencing...). You pose a question, provide the background needed to understand the question, describe the work you did to answer it and the data you generated then you relate that data to the question. Can you answer it? Have you opened up any interesting avenues for future investigation? If ,while editing, you notice things that don't relate to either understanding or answering your key question/idea/topic then it is probably safe to send those bits to the chopping block!

It's good that your practical work is going well! At least thats one less thing to worry about

Good luck!

[Captain_Ludd]

Thanks for the advice Impossipuzzle, Im certainly using the "barf" method at the moment the world limit is 10,000 words max over 5 sections and I've already written 6,000 on the first section .
In away I kind of blame the uni for this cos up until this point everything has been exams and practicals no essays or reports so its all kind of new to me, I'm a code jokey not an essayist .

[Catwoman42]

My tutor always gave us the quote (don't know who said it) "If I'd more time I'd make it shorter" I find it much easier to write more and edit down. Poss because as a dyspraxic I tend to repeat myself. Hope this helps.

[Meg]

I've just finished uni and when I was writing my report I'd have regular breaks otherwise you can't concentrate and I'd plan my chapters first in bullet points.

Luv Meg
Xxxx

[Captain_Ludd]

I Spent two days reading through the 35 page report spec and writting up a full frame work for my report (which was about as much fun as wiping your backside with a belt sander btw) so hopefully my project supervisior will OK it and I can start putting my stuff in order... fingers crossed.

[Tim G]

What I did when I was planning essays was to mind map all the aspects I want to inculed in the essay - this should group the aspects together to from a rough plan then use this as a basis to write the report from.

Also if your getting stuck dont hestate to ask others such as class mates, study support, tutors etc for help.

[Willr0490]

When I was in my final year at uni (which is now over a year ago - I finished in May last year), I would try and break each essay into sub sections, with each section headed up by a subheading. This helped my thought processes, as it helped me to organise each topic covered into a relevant part of the essay.