9.7. Writing Style

The Project Report is a formal document where you describe what was done during the project. This should be written in a formal way. This section describes some ideas about how to acheive that.

Formal writing

In your report try to avoid or minimise the use of the first person. Writing using elements such as ‘I did this…’, ‘I thought this…’ and ‘I developed…’ are not considered appropriate for formal writing.

Sometimes we equate this with using the passive voice, however the requirement is better stated as needing to “write formally”. In particular, the report is much better if written from an objective or impersonal view. Saying that it should be passive isn’t really true because you can have both active and passive voices and still meet the aim of being formal.

The motivation for the “write formally” requirement is that it makes the report more readable. A long report that makes extensive use of the first person becomes more effort to read. The only exceptions to this are the evaluation section and the acknowledgements, which can both make use of the first person.

You may like to read an article about the use of the passive voice. It is a longer article, but you may find it interesting if you have questions about this. The article is at: writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/passive-voice.

Tips

What might this mean for your writing? A few examples follow to help you think about improvements that you could make.

Example 1

Consider the extract: “I decided to use the Scrum methodology with the following adjustments…”,

That could be better as: “It was decided to use the Scrum methodology with the following adjustments…” or “The Scrum methodology was chosen for this project. The following adjustments were made … .”

Example 2

Consider the extract: “I tried AngularJS and Ember but found some problems with the setup. So, I looked at Backbone. I had more probelms with Backbone, so I went back to AngularJS. With more experience, I was able to make good use of AngularJS.”

That could be better as: “Three possible libraries were identified: AngularJS, Ember and Backbone. Whilst there were some difficulties getting started with each of them, the Backbone library proved to be more complex. AngularJS was easier to work with and was selected for this project. With further experience of AngularJS, the work on the UI became more productive.”

Example 3

Conside the extract: “In the requirements document, I wanted to list a lot of detail about the issues. I showed this to my supervisor, but my supervisor recommended that the requirements should be more focused to make them clearer. I thought about that and I agreed with that. I made further changes.”

That could be better as: “The initial version of the requirements document included a lot of detail about each issue. Following feedback from the project supervisor, it was decided that some of the descriptions could be simplifed to make them clearer.”

Tense

The report is describing and discussing the work that you have done. Therefore, it is normal for the work to be discussed in the past tense.

There may be some parts where you use present or future tense, e.g. talking about the current status at the end of the project and possible future work. That is acceptable, but most of the work should be reported in the past tense.

General advice

As a general point, please don’t let the issues described on this page stop you writing. Being consistent in your report is more important. If you aren’t sure how to write about a particular issue in a formal way, keep writing so that you get your ideas into the document. You can always edit the report later.