Contents and Lists

After the Abstract, you should include summary information about the contents of your report. For all reports, this will mean including a Table of Contents. For some reports, it may be appropriate to add some extra summaries about other items in the report, such as figures and tables.

Table of Contents

The Table of Contents is a familiar part of any longer report. They are easy to generate using a Word Processing or Text Formatting tool. We do see examples where some students manually write the table of contents. That is not necessary - use the tools available to you.

The Report Templates include a Table of Contents using the built-in tools for the given template type. For the LaTeX example, the Table of Contents will be regenerated when you re-process the report. For Word and Open Office, you will need to refresh the Table of Contents manually when you have updated the content in your report. Both are easy to do.

Lists

Following the Table of Contents, some reports may include lists of Figures and Tables in the report. These lists are similar to the summary of the section headings, they help a reader to find which page a specific Figure (including images) or Table can be found.

Not all reports need these lists. If they aren’t needed, leave out the lists. The lists are helpful if there are a lot of figures or tables in the report.

The LaTeX template includes a placeholder for generating these lists. The Word and Open Office templates do not include placeholders. If you want to include the lists and you are using Word or Open Office, check the help pages for those tools for details on what is possible.