Improve your reports - Hugh Reekie can help

Improve those Technical Reports
- Hugh Reekie can help!

Ask for help from an experienced Technical Report Writer and Editor

If you are having difficulties writing a Report or Thesis that is acceptable to your Professor, I may able to help. I have considerable experience in Technical Report writing, editing and technical magazine creation. I can assist students who have difficulties in structuring their reports. Usually, the work is carried out in two phases.

Task 1 - The material is submitted to me and (typically within 2 days) I will produce a brief written report, listing what I see as the general problems, and how they can be fixed. This will be accompanied by a brief oral report - and an estimate for further work, if necessary. If the submitted material is less than 5,000 words (perhaps 10 pages), no further work may be required. The descriptive estimate may be submitted to your professor, if required, before there is a further agreement to proceed.

Task 2 - With an approval for an in-depth review, I will go through the submitted material, in detail, and offer suggestions for improvement. Typically, these recommendations can include:

Changes in sentence structure, or use of alternate words or phrases, to make the text easier to read and understand.
A review of the overall structure of the document.
- adding introductory material
- placing details in an Appendix
- restructuring the layout (paragraphs, titles, etc) and
- suggestions for cross-referencing or inter-relating the material - with explanatory paragraphs, &c.
- changes to cited references

It is important to realize that many of the recommended changes will have to be understood by the client, and acted upon. It will not be possible to just to read my suggestions, and then change the report accordingly, to improve it. In this way, there will be an understanding of the problems, and there will be less opportunity for repeat errors. The project is to train rather than to edit the material.

Most of the recommendations will be in the form of notes written in the margins of the submitted material, but a final written summary report will also be issued.

Hugh Reekie has been writing and editing technical information for over 35 years. He has written or supervised the writing of maintenace manuals for Nortel and Telesat Canada. He has edited newsmagazines for the IEEE Ottawa Section, Lac Deschenes Sailing Club, the Ottawa Folk Arts Council, Industry Canada (MSAT News) and the St Andrew's Society of Ottawa; he has also compiled and edited a number of "proceedings" for international conferences - IEEE VNIS 89, IEEE/IEE VNIS 93 and also IMSC conferences for Industry Canada. He has edited books and assisted with student report writing for the University of Ottawa (Prof Kurt Feher), and has assisted in the running of Labs for the Mechanical Engineering Dept, Carleton University (Donald Russell). He retired from the Communications Research Centre, Industry Canada in 1996; he is a member of IEE-UK and PEO, and is a Senior member IEEE.

This web page is URL - http://members.attcanada.ca/~max-com/report.assist.htm - 90% - 09 Dec 2003