The submission of the project report marks the end point of the many months you've spent working on your project. The report is worth 60% of the work based project mark so it's crucial to prepare it carefully. The markers must form their assessment based on what you hand in. A project that achieves a great deal could lose marks if the report doesn't do it justice.

Because of the importance of the report it's worth thinking about it early on. Here are some suggestions and links to useful resources.

Start preparing early

Writing a 15,000 word report may seem a daunting task. You might never have had to write such a long assignment before. Starting from scratch with a blank sheet of paper after you've completed all the work for the project can be particularly challenging! It may be difficult to remember exactly what you did and the reasons for your decisions (and even that they represented significant steps in the work). It's very useful to get in to the discipline of writing notes right from the start of your project.

Find a good structure that works for you to help support your note taking. You might use weekly meetings with your supervisor as a motivation to write up and then discuss what you've done that week. You won't be able to construct a good report just by stringing your notes together, but they'll certainly provide a good basis and make the final report much easier to write.

Polish your writing skills

Whether you love writing or hate it (or are somewhere in between) writing a report is a skill that can be improved with a bit of thought and practice. It's also one of those useful transferable skills that employers value. It's worth investing a bit of time in thinking about this.

Make use of feedback

Take every opportunity to get feedback on your project and reflect this in the final report. Your supervisor is the most obvious source of advice and you should work closely with him or her throughout the project to ensure that you agree on the direction of the project and the content and format of the report.

Write a draft report

Writing a draft report in advance of the submission deadline requires you to be well-organised, but there are good reasons for doing this.

From a writing perspective, it is often difficult to know how to unfold the earlier parts of the story until you're clear on the way you want to pull things together at the end. Writing a draft allows you to gain a perspective on the whole thing and to reconsider and improve where you spot problems as you write the next version. It also allows a bit of freedom to sketch in parts reasonably quickly to get the broad canvas without having to agonise too much on exact wordings everywhere. Sometimes, trying to write things in a polished way can stop us from writing anything at all! Getting down in a rough format helps you move on.

Having a draft also allows you to get feedback. Note, this is not a shared document and should not be developed over several iterations of drafting and feedback. You can expect your supervisor to give you feedback on the planned structure of the report and to review a single draft. This can generate some further helpful suggestions - so you'll need to leave time in the process for any alterations suggested.

You should talk to your supervisor on the timings for submitting a draft to receive feedback.

Structure of the final report

To be understandable and to communicate your project effectively the report needs to have a well organised structure. Discuss this with your supervisor. Remember that this is a formal (technical) report and it is appropriate to adopt a formal report style. Here are a few points to consider.

• Think carefully if you are considering a personal, first person approach. Is it really appropriate? While contorted language to avoid the occasional use of a personal pronoun is probably over the top, the report needs to come across as an objective piece of formal writing. Avoid it becoming "what I did on my holidays".
• Try to put yourself in the place of the reader. Are terms sufficiently explained? Are the objectives clearly explained at the start? Is the structure logically coherent? Is there sufficient sign-posting for the reader? Does one section lead to the next in a clear way?
• Avoid making it too dense. Some relevant pictures, charts and screen-shots can help break it up a bit and can be very effective in getting ideas across.
• Don't forget the need for critical engagement both with your own work and when you discuss that of others.

Correct citation

You need to fully acknowledge all sources used. Failure to do so constitutes plagiarism. All projects will be checked using the Turnitin plagiarism detection system. To avoid plagiarism, check that you are clear on correct citation practice. Here are some basic guidelines.

• For all ideas, arguments, reports of other work etc taken from other sources, the original source should be appropriately cited.
• Make sure that direct quotes are enclosed in quote marks and an appropriate citation (with page number) is provided.
• Avoid stringing together large chunks of quotes. It's not plagiarism (if citations are included), but it's poor style and doesn't display the critical engagement which would be shown if you present ideas in your own words, discuss the links between them and challenge them if appropriate.
• No single reference format is mandated, by you should choose a standard format (such as Harvard or Vancouver) and be consistent.
• If you are using a typesetting markup such as LaTeX, you may find automatically generating numerical references to be the easiest solution. If you are using a word processor, Harvard style will relieve you of the hassle of re-numbering references in the text.

Some useful resources

There are many useful resources to help with writing. The following books are available from the library:

• Robert Barrass, ''Scientists Must Write'', E & FN Spon (1982)
• Nicholas J. Higham, "Handbook of writing for the mathematical sciences", SIAM (1998)
• Michael Swan, "Practical English usage", Oxford (1995)
• Richard Pears and Graham Shields, "Cite them right : the essential referencing guide", Palgrave Study Skills (2013)