Document Creation
In this section the creation of a document in a word processor will be discussed, for this example Microsoft Word is used. Many of the ways in which this and other technical skills lessons are composed are similar to the methods that should be used for the creation of a written report. In addition many of the skills discussed in the creation of a presentation are also used in the report. A report may have a brief summary and then more details in the written components, as well as appendix(es). References used in the research should be cited in a standard format. In general reports are more technical than the presentation slides.
1. Reports should follow any company guidelines.
2. Reports should contain a cover page, the cover page should have logo(s) title of the report, author, contact information, as well as the creation date. Be careful not to use the automatic date feature because every time the report is viewed the date will change.
3. Reports should include a table of contents, a list of figures and an index.
4. The pages in the report should be numbered.
5. A footer and/or header are optional.
6. Any image, including maps, should have a descriptive caption.
a. Images and tables are added through the insert tab.
b. Graphs are an important functional component
c. Equations and special symbols can be inserted in this process.
7. A good report should have the following parts at a minimum
a. Introduction
b. Data sources
c. Process
d. Analysis
e. Conclusion
8. Footnotes or end notes should include the citing of information including terminology.
9. More detailed examples of calculations are appropriate in a technical report. Yet the creator should not show every calculation, those that are redundant with different numerical values should not be repeated.
10. The final produced report should be created in an Adobe Acrobat format (pdf) for distribution, since this format cannot be directly modified and displays information as the creator designed it.
2. Reports should contain a cover page, the cover page should have logo(s) title of the report, author, contact information, as well as the creation date. Be careful not to use the automatic date feature because every time the report is viewed the date will change.
3. Reports should include a table of contents, a list of figures and an index.
4. The pages in the report should be numbered.
5. A footer and/or header are optional.
6. Any image, including maps, should have a descriptive caption.
a. Images and tables are added through the insert tab.
b. Graphs are an important functional component
c. Equations and special symbols can be inserted in this process.
7. A good report should have the following parts at a minimum
a. Introduction
b. Data sources
c. Process
d. Analysis
e. Conclusion
8. Footnotes or end notes should include the citing of information including terminology.
9. More detailed examples of calculations are appropriate in a technical report. Yet the creator should not show every calculation, those that are redundant with different numerical values should not be repeated.
10. The final produced report should be created in an Adobe Acrobat format (pdf) for distribution, since this format cannot be directly modified and displays information as the creator designed it.
This technical skills lesson is a good example of how a report might be composed and is used as an example for the document creation section. The images in this lesson were inserted using the insert pictures tool in Microsoft Word. Note the title page, table of contents, table of figures and the index. A margin page number was added, as well as a footer which has the name of the author and the technical skills name. No header was used in this document.