How to Write Your Reports

As engineering students, you end up writing reports, assignments and term papers all of which requires preparation of a document. The preparation system should be able to handle text, figures (graphics) and mathematical equations efficiently. Preferably, the preparation system should be able to decide how to arrange these elements (except if you are really adamant on a particular arrangement) while the user concentrates on the content of the document rather than the formatting.

LaTeX

LaTeX is a document markup language (much like HTML) and a document preparation system for the typesetting program TeX. Its advantage to engineers being that you need to specify what to write and under what 'headings' to write it. Much of "How to typeset" is taken care by the program itself.

Hence, it results in a much well structured document as compared to a WYSIWYG style document preparation system (like Microsoft Word). LaTeX can also inherently handle equation/section labeling, generation of document related lists like table of contents, list of figures, index, citations etc. This also frees up a lot of "processing power" of the user's brain. The disadvantage of the LaTeX environment is that it is not a WSIWYG system. Hence, the user cannot know how the actual document would look until after the compilation. However, there are 'almost WSYIWYG' (actually WYSIWYM) front ends for LaTeX both in Linux and in Windows.

The provision for LaTeX comes bundled with most Linux distributions. However, to use LaTeX on a Windows environment, you would need to install the backend MikTex. It may be noted that if you are competent enough, you would just need the backend and a text editor (like nano in Linux and notepad in Windows) to work successfully with LaTeX. Somewhere down the middle are Emacs for Linux and TexNicCenter for Windows. These text editor programs support files written in LaTeX and offer shortcuts for some basic constructs usually seen in LaTeX documentation. They also cater to syntax error checking. Hence, can be useful even for experienced LaTeX users.

Components of a Report

• A Title (obviously..)
• An abstract, briefly summarizing the contents of the report.
• An introduction, talking about the background needed to truly 'get' the report and stating the novelty of the work in the report (if any).
• The actual work
• Analytical/Simulation/Experimental results which confirm and validate the work stated in the report.
• Conclusion, where you say what you have said in the abstract, just with a little more description but not in so much description as in the introduction.
• References, a list of books, research publications, reports or webpages which may be referred for relevant understanding of the topics discussed in the report.