Introduction. Format DOCUMENT GUIDELINES. Table of Contents

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1 DOCUMENT GUIDELINES Table of Contents Introduction... 1 Format... 1 Sections... 1 Pages... 1 Lengths of Document Bodies (by document type)... 2 Page Numbering... 2 Submitting... 2 Section Details... 2 Cover Page (1 page)... 2 Executive Summary (max. 1 page)... 3 Table of Contents (Usually 1 page)... 3 Body... 3 References... 3 Appendices... 4 General Notes... 4 References, abbreviations, tables, figures and appendices from APS111/APS112:... 5 Introduction Unless otherwise indicated in the guidelines for a specific document, the written documentation will conform to the instructions found in this guideline. Failure to conform may result in penalties, particularly where this indicates non-professionalism (including lack of foresight). Format Marks will be lost if documents do not follow the following instructions. Sections Details on each section are found later. o Cover page (1 page) o Executive Summary (1 page) o Table of Contents (1 page) o Body o References o Appendices Note, that the electronic copy must be submitted as a single PDF file Pages o 8½ x 11 paper size Updated June

2 o 0.75 margin minimum for binding and at top, 0.5 margin at bottom and other side. o 12 point font. This can be reduced for some tables and other structures to improve appearance provided clarity is not lost. (Remember, not all of us have young eyes!!) o 1.5 line spacing for body text. Single line spacing can be used for tables and lists. Lengths of Document Bodies (by document type) The lengths of the document body are: Document Target Maximum Proposal Draft A na na Proposal Draft B na na Proposal Final 7 10 Individual Progress Report 2 4 (not including individual task reports) Final Report These lengths do NOT include figures, diagrams or pictures. Number of pages will not be very closely monitored, but the information in the body must be complete, justified and concise. Pages exceeding the maximum length may be ignored. Page Numbering o Pages in the Body, the References and the Appendices will have page numbers o The other sections (Evaluation forms, Cover page, Executive Summary and Table of Contents) should not have page numbers o The first page of the body will be Page 1. Submitting A hardcopy and electronic copy of the document in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) must be submitted. The due date and location for submitting the hardcopy, and the method of submitting a document electronically are found under separate entries in the menu. The electronic version must be submitted as a single PDF file. Section Details The following sections provide details on each section of the document. Cover Page (1 page) Must include: Name of the report (ex: Progress Report for ECE496) Updated June

3 Project title Project number Supervisor name Administrator name and/or section number Names of student(s) submitting the report Date of submission of the report Executive Summary (max. 1 page) This section summarizes the overall document, and should include the important highlights from the document. It should be concise, professional and must stand alone. It is NOT an introduction, it is a summary. It is NOT an index or table of contents, it is a summary. The target audience for this section is a person who can appreciate the technology, but is not well-versed in the details or in the project itself and who wants to read one page to understand an overview of the project. The one page limit is a hard limit; you might well use less than a page. In order to stand alone, the Executive Summary should not make any reference to other parts of the document. NO: "A preliminary budget is included in the report." YES: "The estimated total budget for this project is $300." The Executive Summary should not have a page number or have a numbered title. Table of Contents (Usually 1 page) List all the sections (Do not include the Table of Contents, Executive Summary or cover pages in this listing!) and their corresponding page numbers, including sub-sections when appropriate. Body The body is document-specific. Details on what information should go into the body are given in the descriptions for the individual documents. You should adjust the content and the formatting of the content to suit your project. References Good references are an important part of documenting your work, and must be included for any quoted or essentially-copied material. Use original sources such as books, journals, and standards publications wherever possible. Minimize your use of web Updated June

4 references, which are generally unreliable. References should be listed in the order they appear in the text, in IEEE form. See the APS111 notes at the end of this document. Appendices Some documents will ask for specific information in appendices. You may also use appendices for all material that is supportive to the main body of the report and that you feel a portion of your readership may find useful to be convinced of your positions, but that is background, that is too bulky for the body of the report, or which is not your own work. The appendix material must be referenced in the main body of the report, and not just tacked-on. Examples of relevant materials are: manufacturers' data sheets, a lengthy computer program or part thereof, subject consent forms, primary data (when it is too voluminous), "dead ends" that you nevertheless think are important for the record. By putting material into an appendix you may improve the flow of thought in the main body of the report. Note, that irrelevant appendices detract from a report. See the APS111 notes at the end of this document. General Notes 1. You should not overstate your points. Remember, this is not a marketing piece, it is an engineering document. Claims and support for those claims should be the basis of your document. Unsupported statements, particularly those claiming universal or general knowledge or opinion, should be avoided. Examples of bad statements (assuming there is no reference involved): Software engineers want. For years people have needed. This interface is easy to use. Note that you can have comparisons where the claim is obvious to even people not involved with the technologies. For example A car is faster than a horse on most roads. 2. Avoid clichés often seen in the popular press, such as This cutting edge design 3. Use acronyms sparingly. Some are in common use (FPGA, GUI, etc) and need not be defined. Others are less common, and must be spelled out the first time used. A report full of custom-made abbreviations and acronyms not only is hard to read, it also comes across as the work of dilettantes. Your own acronyms should be employed only when they are used more than once per page on average, and should be redefined once per chapter. (In some cases a glossary will exempt you from the redefinition, but remember the object is clarity.) 4. If you have a large number of acronyms and application-specific vocabulary, strongly consider using a glossary, and draw the reader s attention to the glossary at first opportunity. 5. Watch the formatting. These are professional documents, so the formatting should be clear, neat but not overpowering. Updated June

5 References, abbreviations, tables, figures and appendices from APS111/APS112: The following details information about references, abbreviations, tables, figures and appendices (as revised Winter 2012) References It is an academic offence to represent the ideas of others as your own. In every report or specification document you write you must acknowledge all sources of information. If your information sources are not correctly identified both with citations within the text and in a reference list at the end of the document then this is plagiarism and you will receive appropriate sanctions (See the University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering Calendar). To ensure that you are properly identifying your sources, you must follow two steps. 1) In the body of your report, wherever you have used another person s ideas or words in any form from anyone other than yourself (or a member of your design team for team written assignments), you must identify the source with an internal citation. This is a number in a square bracket [1] right next to the information taken from an outside source, whether that information is quoted directly or paraphrased. If you are using another person s exact words then you must surround the words in quotation marks. 2) You must also have, at the end of the report, a section entitled References, in which you must include a list of all sources, referenced correctly according to a standard reference system. For this course, we will be using the IEEE citation system. While it is used by many engineering disciplines, it is not used by all. Other frequently used systems are Council of Science Editors [CSE], also known as Council of Biology Editors [CBE], and American Psychological Association [APA]. A standard must be used exactly as it is defined by a standards organization. If you are unsure how to reference something, research the proper way. Do not make up your own system. Incorrect references are always questionable and may lead to charges of plagiarism. In your report, sources are referenced consecutively, no matter the alphabetical order of their authors or titles that is, [1] is the first, followed by [2]. If a source is used repeatedly, it is always identified by the number it was given when it first appeared in the report. That means the numbers may go from [2] to [3] to [1], if [1] was previously cited in the report. However, the next new source would follow the last number; in the case of this example, it would be [4]. It is not necessary to name the authors or titles of sources. It is perfectly acceptable to write, In [5], a concern was expressed about the performance of o-rings at temperatures lower than 10 C. However, you may never begin a sentence with a number in square brackets. In the Reference section at the end of your report, you must list all sources cited in the text. These are cited in the order they appear in the report, NOT in alphabetical order. Each entry is preceded by the number with which it is identified in the report. References are listed in a simply numbered list, without being organized by type; that organization and those subheadings (e.g. Book, single author ) are only given below, in the Sample Reference section here, for YOUR instruction. Such subheadings DO NOT belong in YOUR Reference List. This course has two requirements which are different than the IEEE citation standard. First, when using information derived from personal interview or unpublished material, you must give the interviewee s name, date of interview and address or phone number. Secondly, when Updated June

6 referencing an online source, you must note the date you accessed it. For examples of these reference list entries, see Sample References (below). The following citations given are for commonly used sources. They are taken from the Proceedings Template for the 2005 International Conference of the Professional Communication Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. Sample References Book, single author (this heading, as well as the others in italics, is only to identify the kind of reference being described. DO NOT USE this kind of heading in your Reference section.): [1] M. S. MacNealy, Strategies for Empirical Research in Writing. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, Article or chapter in a book, multiple authors: [2] J. W. DuBois, S. Schuetze-Coburn, S. Cumming, and D. Paolino, Outline of discourse transcription, in Talking Data: Transcription and Coding in Discourse Research. J. A. Edwards and M. D. Lampert, Eds. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993, pp Journal article, single author: [3] R. C. Carter, Search time with a color display: Analysis of distribution functions, Human Factors, vol. 24, no. 3, pp , Article in conference proceedings, multiple authors: [4] P. Leone, D. L. Gillihan, and T. L. Rauch, Web-based prototyping for user sessions: Medium-fidelity prototyping, in Proc. 44th Int. Technical Communication Conf. Toronto, Canada: Soc. Tech. Commun. 1997, pp Unpublished thesis: [5] D. Daly. Direct GMSK Generation Using Sigma-delta Modulation. B.A.Sc. thesis, Div. Engineering Science, University of Toronto, Standard or manual without author: [6] Recommendation ITU-R BT.601, Encoding Parameters of Digital Television for Studios, Int'l Telecommunications Union, [7] IEEE Std , Scalable Coherent Interface (SCI), IEEE, [8] Unix System V Interface Definition, no. 2, vol. 2, AT&T, Murray Hill, N.J., Patent with information about patentee: [9] M. Hoff, S. Mazor, and F. Faggin, Memory System for Multi-Chip Digital Computer, US patent 3,821,715, to Intel Corp., Patent and Trademark Office, Patent without patentee information: [10] Digital-to-Analog Converting Unit with Improved Linearity, US patent 5,162,800, Patent and Trademark Office, Washington, D.C., Article in electronic journal, single author: [11] R. J. Vidmar (1992, Aug.), On the use of atmospheric plasmas, IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci. [Online]. 21(3), pp Accessed February 4, Available: Company web page: [12] Biopure Investor Relations (2005, February), Biopure announces 2005 first quarter financial results. [Online] Accessed February 4, Available: Personal interview or unpublished information: Updated June

7 [13] S. Retep, Personal interview. January 15, Abbreviations All terms should be written in full at their first mention. The full term or name can be followed by an abbreviation or acronym in parentheses. Once this has been given, then the abbreviation or acronym can be used in place of the full term throughout the rest of the document. Some acronyms (e.g., laser, radar) have become part of everyday language and need not be spelled out. Tables Figures All tables must be numbered and descriptively titled, e.g. Table 1. Annual consumption of oil in thousand barrels daily from 1993 to 2003 by region. The table title must appear just above the table, left justified. Tables must be separated from the body text by at least one full space above and below. All figures must be numbered and descriptively captioned, e.g. Figure 1. Global refinery utilization from 1980 to The figure caption must appear directly under the figure and should be centered (if less than 1 line) or justified, with a margin of ~1.5 (3-4 cm) on the left and right. Labels within figures must be clear and legible. The figure and caption together must be separated from the body text by at least one full space above and below. All relevant dimensions must be included for a floor plan or drawing of an object. Hand drawn sketches are acceptable, but should be high quality and clear (not fuzzy due to low resolution scanning). If the figure is not original, the source it was taken from must be clearly referenced; in the figure caption and followed up with a reference in the Reference section; e.g. Taken from [3], or Adapted from [5]. Appendices Each appendix must be given an alphabetical designation and titled, e.g. Appendix A: Ground Plan. Material in the appendix must be referred to somewhere in the body of the report. Every appendix must include an introduction describing the content of the appendix. This can be brief, just a few lines, or several paragraphs. Updated June