engineering dynamics ( projects )

Technical Writing: A guide to creating a technical report.

Brian J. Slaboch

Middle Tennessee State University

Department of Engineering Technology, Mechatronics Engineering

Abstract

The purpose of an abstract is to provide the reader with a summary of the important information in the document. The reader should understand the purpose of the document at a high level. The abstract is usually written after the document is completed. The same is true for the title.

Introduction

All technical documents should be formatted using justified formatting. This means that the text should span the entire length of the line. Justified formatting is more professional than what you normally use, which is left formatting. The introduction should provide more substantial background on the project and the purpose for doing the project.

Subheadings

All technical documents should have clear sections and clear subsections. There should always be at least two sections/and or subsections. For instance, if you have subsection 1.1, there must be a subsection 1.2.

New Subheadings

New subheadings may be added in the navigation pane. You can display the navigation pane by going to view, navigation pane. To add a section or subsection, right click the appropriate section or subsection as shown in Fig. 1.

Figure 1: Example of adding a new subheading in a Microsoft Word document.

Figures

Please make sure that all figures are professional and labeled properly. Each figure should have a caption. Additionally, figures should be referenced using the abbreviation “Fig.” followed by the figure number.

Equations

Please make sure that all equations are labeled properly. You can input equations by choosing insert and then selecting equation. An example equation is shown in Eq. 1. Note that equations are abbreviated by “Eq.” followed by the equation number.

(1)

Slaboch 1