University of Waterloo

Faculty of Engineering

Your Descriptive and Concise Title with Major Words Capitalized Containing 50 Characters or Less (Including Spaces)

Name of Your Employer

Address of your Employer

Prepared By

Your Name

ID 00000000

2A Department of Systems Design Engineering

August 10, 2014.

Letter of submittal

In the case of second, third and fourth work reports, the report must be accompanied

by a letter of submittal addressed to the Department Chair. Check that all names are

spelled correctly. Use either your employer’s letterhead, with their permission, or use

your home address on plain paper.

Your letter must contain the following information:

Report title Report number (your first, second, and so on) Name of your employer Academic term completed prior to this work term Name(s) of your supervisor(s) Department(s) in which you worked Main activity of the employer and department Purpose of the report Full acknowledgment and explanation of any assistance you received in preparing

the report or its contents Statement of endorsement (in the form and words shown below) Statement of Confidentiality (if required by your employer) Your name, ID number, and signature

The statement of endorsement shall read:

“I have prepared this report, “[title],” as my [term] Work Report for the [Company Department] at [company name]. This report is the [first, second, third, fourth] of three that I must submit as part of my degree requirements, and it has not received any previous academic credit. This report was entirely written by me and has not received any previous academic credit at this or any other institution.”

With the exception of the statement of endorsement, do not slavishly follow the example at the Co-operative Education & Career Services web site. Compose your own letter, be original, be creative.

Follow the format here: http://www.cecs.uwaterloo.ca/manual/work_reports/9-9.php#Letter_of_Submittal

Abstract100-200 word summary of your report that can completely stand alone. No references,

equations, acronyms, or other crazy stuff Can be descriptive (what the report contains

without stating results or conclusions) or Informative (contains results/conclusions and a

brief overview of problem, purpose, scope, and method. Write this at the end.

ii

Contents

Abstract

Contents

List of Tables

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

1 Introduction

2 This is a Chapter Header

2.1 This is a section header

This is a sub-section

3 Conclusions and Recommendations

4 Summary

References

Appendix A Glossary

Appendix B Other Stuff

iii

List of TablesTable 1: This is a caption. It goes above the table...........................................................................

NOTE: Technically this should be:

1 This is a caption ………………………………….. 2

But I could not make word do that automatically. If you can do this magic, let me know.

Prof MacGregor says with respect to this “Slight modifications are acceptable provided

that they are consistent.” So I plan to leave it like this.

iv

List of FiguresFigure 1 – An aggressive cow.........................................................................................................

NOTE: Technically this should be:

1 An aggressive cow ………………………………… 3

But I could not make word do that automatically. If you can do this magic, let me know.

Prof MacGregor says with respect to this “Slight modifications are acceptable provided

that they are consistent.” So I plan to leave it like this.

v

AcknowledgementsGot somebody you love? Use this optional section to thank them. If somebody gave you money, you have to tell us.

vi

1

IntroductionI made this template because I love you all so much. To get the most out of this template,

make sure you use the “Styles” pane and apply the appropriate styles I made. The style

guide has a full blank page between each chapter, however MacGregor says this is not

necessary. Chapter heading simply need to start on a new page. I have added extra page

breaks to always do a new page for each heading. The style guide has a lot of spacing

above chapter headings, however, Prof. MacGregor says this is “not critical” so I have

chosen to omit it.

1

2

This is a Chapter HeaderMake sure you capitalize all major words in the chapter header. Chapters start on a new

page. Also don’t forget the carriage return after the number (shift + enter), I could not

add that manually because word is stupid and thinks carriage return are unknown

characters in custom multi-level lists. If you figure out how to add the automatic carriage

return, please let me know.

2.1 This is a section header

Only capitalize the first word and any proper nouns. Only use section headers if you have

two or more section in a chapter.

This is a sub-section

Again, only capitalize the first word and any proper nouns. Only use sub-section headers

if you have two or more section in a chapter.

This is a sub-sub-section heading

Again, only capitalize the first word and any proper nouns. Only use sub-section headers

if you have two or more section in a chapter.

Paragraphs are weird, the second paragraph is supposed to be indented, but the first is

not. To make this work, I created a style “Second Paragraph” that you will automatically

be switched to following your first paragraph. This gets you your automatic indentation –

just be careful with copy and paste issues.

Bonus tip: do not forget that contractions are verboten.

Table 1 is an empty table and should appear immediately after I reference it.

Table 1: This is a caption. It goes above the table

2

Now I’ll make a footnote1. Foot notes should be for supplemental information, not

citations.

This is a figure. Figure 1 should appear as close as possible to where I referenced it.

Figure 1: An aggressive cow. Figure captions go below the figure.

Make sure you label figures well with keywords that match the text. Label with sans

sarif fonts, and use the same font and size throughout the document. Figures should be

kept to a minimum.

You can also include lists. The guide does not include an example, but I imagine its

like this:

1 Item 1

2 Item 2

3 …

You may choose to do ordinal or author citations in your report [1]. I chose to use

ordinal. Word can automatically do the citations for you, just make sure to set it to IEEE

style for best results (the references section doesn’t exactly match the style guide, but

after 30 minutes of staring at an insane mess of XML, I give up trying to fix it). With

respect to citations, Pro MacGregor says “IEEE or APA formats are acceptable. Again, it

is more important that the formatting be consistent throughout the document to make it

easier for the reader to follow the referencing style.”

1 DO NOT USE THESE FOR CITATIONS.

3

3

Conclusions and RecommendationsWhat goals you met and how you met them. Extrapolate from your results to their

consequences. Describe what you would do differently next time. NO NEW RESULTS

SHOULD APPEAR HERE.

4

4

SummarySummarize the report in 1-2 pages. For design reports where you build and tested

something, describe how well it performed.

5

References

[1] G. R. Heppler, "Systems Design Techinical Report Style Manual," 2009.

6

Appendix A

GlossaryList and define all acronyms used in your report. Note that this does not excuse you from

defining this inline when you first introduce a new term, it just gives the reader a central

place to look everything up.

7

Appendix B

Other StuffDo your appendix stuff here. Make sure to use the special “Appendix” style for headings.

Supporting material that would be distracting to the reader goes here.

8