titlWriting An Assignment In Report Style
There is quite a lot of guidance in textbooks about writing reports but this outline is intended to make clear to you how this applies to an academic assignment rather than a report on a business issue or a research project, and specifically what is expected for this module.
Structure
At the minimum this should include:
Cover page with the title, who the report is for, your matric. number and date.
Contents page which lists main sections to the left of the page and page numbers where these sections start on the right.
Introduction that should make clear what the report is about and how you are organising the material to meet the requirements of the assignment i.e. your general approach.
Main Body of the report
You may need to divide the main body of the report into a number of sections, to make clear where you are moving from one topic to another. There should be a logical progression in the content from one section to another. You are not expected to number paragraphs but you should number sections, and have headings for these.
Conclusions.
These should give an overview, and come to a conclusion related to the question you were asked to answer. They should not just repeat what you have already said earlier in the report. Where you have been asked to make recommendations you might want to put these in a separate section.
References/Bibliography
References should be a list of the authors that you have referenced in the report, listed alphabetical by author. Look at the Napier NULIS website or any text book to see how to lay out references. While referencing journals that you just happen to have accessed electronically (e.g. through one of the electronic databases like Ingenta or Emerald) you can just reference the article as though you had read the paper version. However if it is information from websites you need to give the web address, the title of the website and the date you accessed the information. If you have read other books that have been useful for the assignment but have not referred them in your report then you can list these as well in a Bibliography.

It is extremely important that you do not use chunks of material from textbooks word for word without making it clear that these are not your own words and using referencing to acknowledge your sources. When you string together extracts from text books without discussing these in your own words and acknowledging where the material has been lifted from then, apart from the fact that it is very difficult for me to assess whether you actually understand what you have written, this is a form of plagiarism.
Appendices
These don’t count in the word limit but should only be used for extras – illustrative material or description background or detail, nothing that is key to your arguments. You should have indicated in the report when it would be useful for the reader to have a look at these and why you have included them – what’s the point you are trying to make? Don’t expect the reader to do the work in deciding why it is relevant.
Language
Report style writing is expected to be quite formal and business like so avoid the personal and don’t be too “chatty”. Use of the personal pronoun “I” , use of slang, abbreviations such as “don’t” “shouldn’t” or language more usually used in spoken English style are not appropriate to a formal report. For example, in the intro, instead of writing “In this report I am going to look at employee engagement ………” it’s better expressed as “This report will examine employee engagement…….”.
Module Examination Guidance