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A few things to remember while working on your report rough draft:
Don’t forget the essentials (You can use this as a guide to review your fellow student and as a checklist for your own report):
You must have at least 3 visuals (charts, tables, graphs, photos, diagrams). Try to represent your most important data visually and keep in mind what the chapter on ethics has to say about representing your data ethically and without bias. You can use visuals already created or you can create your own, but you must cite them. If you create them use your own name as the source for the visual and cite the data for the source separately.
Don’t forget in-text citations to show where you’re using your sources. Without them you are committing plagiarism. Use author last names and page numbers where you have them and abbreviated article titles or webpages in quotes where you don’t. Example for an article written by Steven Anderson. Put this at the end of the summary or paraphrase or quote from that source: (Anderson 115). Notice how the period goes after the citation. Example for an article with no named author: (“Water Shortages”). Make sure that the way you’re referring to your sources in the report matches up to what you have on the Works Cited or References.
Have all the basic sections listed in the assignment. If you’re not sure what goes where take another look at the assignment and ask me in the open student forum. Also, if it feels like you are repeating yourself a lot in some of the sections that is actually normal. Remember that technical reports have multiple audiences as members of the organization you are writing to. Not everyone will read the whole report. Executives often have multiple reports on their desk and skip straight to the abstract or summary and the conclusion and recommendations after reading the cover letter, aka. letter of transmittal.
Use single space throughout, with double spacing o

nly between headings and paragraphs.
Include a cover/letter page
Include a Works Cited (MLA) or References (APA) correctly formatted. It should be clear where every source on this page is cited within the report. Use those in-text citations noted above in the second bullet.
Include a running header that is your last name with page numbers in the upper right. Use the header/footer insert. Don’t try to do it manually because it won’t go in the right place and it will mess up your format. If you’re using APA instead of MLA use a running header that is an abbreviated form of your title.
It’s a lot to remember so give yourself adequate time to work on putting the details together.
A few other things:
Web-based sources mean sources that ONLY exist online. If you’re accessing your sources through the Internet, but they exist in hard copy format, such as the articles from the databases, then those will still count as hard copy sources.
Remember that the college databases are the best place to find high quality sources from peer-reviewed journals. Peer-reviewed means that other researchers and academics within the same field are reviewing the work of their peers, so you have a pretty good idea that those sources are of excellent quality. Let me know if you’re having difficulty accessing sources in the CCC databases. I can help. Try Academic Search Complete first and if you’re not getting great results try using synonyms for your key words in your research question. Also, try splitting up the key words on different search lines.
The 10 page limit can be tough to stay within. Keep in mind that I don’t count the title page or the table of contents. All other pages count. I allow you to go up to 12, but you will need to provide an explanation if your report goes over 12. A way around this is to include an appendix if there are items that you want to show, but you deem are not essential to the body of the report.