Suggestions when writing your report

Suggestions when writing your report

  • For students who are looking for examples of papers - sFor students who are looking for examples of papers - see the ACM Sigcomm proceedings Links to an external site..
  • For your document, you should be sure to use A4 sized paper rather than US letter.
  • For those using LaTeX, you can improve the look of the document by:

Some common flaws in reports (from other courses)

  • Using the KTH logotype on your report or presentation is not permitted.
  • Incomplete references
  • Missing important citations
  • Statements made without justification or supporting citations
  • Poor (or no) editing
  • Failure to spell check the document
  • Documents which it is clear that no one looked at after formatting - often these have breaks in the middle of sentences, missing phrases, ... .
  • Using figures from others without the copyright owner's permission
  • Lack of page numbers
  • Unreadable text in figures
  • Failure to label elements of figures adequately
  • Use of contractions - you should avoid using contractions in a formal report
  • Use of acronyms or abbreviations without properly introducing them; often failure to use these acroynms and abbreviations consistently through the rest of the paper
  • Redundant text
  • Using too few refences, often the paper looks like simply a cut and paste edit of these references.
  • Single sentence paragraphs
  • Lack of vertical white space between paragraphs, which in some cases makes it hard to understand where new paragraphs begin
  • Lack of a date - every document should have a date, in addition to title and author(s), and most references should have more information - keep in mind that the goal is to enable someone (perhaps even yourself) to find the reference at a later point in time
  • Sections and subsections are not numbered - hiding both the structure of the document and making cross references difficult