Page 41 - Mini-Module 11
P. 41

1.   Title Page
                                Depending on the nature of the report, you may or may not decide to
                                have a tide page.


                           2.   Table of Contents
                                It is useful to include a Table of Contents in a report, as it helps the
                                reader  to  locate  the  section  they  want  immediately.  It  can  be  quite
                                frustrating  searching  through  the  entire  document  to  look  for  a
                                particular subsection when it could easily be listed by its page number
                                on the contents page.


                           3.   Appendices
                                For some report writers, these are very useful waste disposal dumping
                                grounds. If they cannot think of what to do with some information they
                                have acquired, they put it in the appendix. This is not the best use for
                                this  section.  An  appendix  is  meant  for  useful  information  which
                                supports the main text. The keen reader will probably want to refer to
                                it.
                                The reason it is not in the main part of the report is that it is not central
                                (in  its  full  form)  and  that  it  possibly  takes  some  time  to  assimilate.
                                Tables, charts and other documents sometimes have information which
                                is  very  important  and  which  should  be  included  in  the  body  of  the
                                report. The best way of dealing with this is to put it in summary form
                                and then put it in the main text. You may, for example, have a table
                                with lots of figures and it would take several minutes to decipher it. In
                                this case, try to prepare a summary table. It may look something like
                                the one in Figure 9.


                           4.   References
                                This is not a common feature of most reports, although it is possible
                                you have drawn on information sources such as journal articles, books
                                and magazines. If you have, you must provide the references.


                          Figure 9:  Summary Table


                               Student referrals to counseling centre:

                                              Lower           Middle           Upper
                                              School          School           School
                               January              6               14                0
                               February             3                5                0
                               March                11               2               10





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