Louise's thoughts

How to write a university project report

All these project exams make me want to write a guide of how to actually write a university project report (oh, hey, one of my colleagues already did that...). Someone should tell these students that you don't end a paragraph with a : and you don't use ;'s like :. Neither do you have one sentence in a paragraph; to make a paragraph you need at least two sentences. And when you reference a paper that you found on the internet, you still need the original journal name, not just the URL to ACM.

All these things really surprise me to see, but I guess that either people are not as concerned with little things like I am (it is called perfectionism, Louise) or perhaps they don't realize how important details are to the understanding of a project report. But as the reader you stumble every time you find little grammar mistakes, no space between sentences (for some reason I find a lot of those) and inconsistencies of how to spell something (is it Blue tooth, blue tooth or Blue-tooth, I don't care as long as you don't use all three different spellings in one sentence). It makes the report difficult to read and thus lower the level of understanding on the part of the reader. And in the case of these project reports, the only readers are often the two people who will grade the student.

So one day, when I get the time, I will write a 'Louise's simple guide to getting a better grade on your project report'. The only problem is that I think there are so many out there already that it will drown between 'how to write a thesis' and 'English Grammar for Beginners'. But who knows, perhaps I will reach the exact people, who will find it useful and in fact will get a better grade? That would really thrill me.