Improve Your Score in Project Report by Avoiding 11 Common Mistakes That Students Often Do !

Introduction 

Despite best attempts, a lot of students make the similar types of mistakes.  The common mistakes are gathered scrutinized and the most common ones are here for your understanding.  

You could use it as a checklist.  Please make sure that you haven’t made any of these before sending chapters to read.

1. Not using Heading Styles for the chapter and section headings

It makes life a lot easier, really it does.  Suddenly your document has a set of consistent styles: all headings are the same size, in the same font, and the table of contents can be created automatically.

2. Not using Multilevel lists to do automatic numbering of chapters

It’s a little harder to find these in Word 2007 than it was in Word 2000.  (In Word 2007 select “Multilevel List” from the Paragraph pane in the Home window, and choose a suitable style from the library.  

I’d recommend the one that starts “1 Heading 1”.

(Or, just take the Word version of this document and delete all the text.  Then start writing again using the styles in the document.  They have outline numbering built-in.)

If you don’t do this, you’ll have a terrible time trying to generate the table of contents.  If you do, you can generate a great-looking table of contents in a few seconds.

3. Not using Microsoft Word’s ‘Insert Caption’ feature to title figures

Again, people seem to use Word as a typewriter.  It really would be worth learning more about what Word can do before starting to write your report.  Use the automatic “Insert Caption” feature, and all figures are automatically numbered (and re-numbered when you add or delete a figure).

4. Not referencing figures in the text

I often come across figures just floating around, with nothing in the text referring to them at all.  It’s usually obvious what they are, but this is another ‘Golden Rule’: all figures must be referred to in the text.

5. Inconsistent styles of heading

Most often a problem with overseas students who are not used to the difference between ‘lower case’ ‘UPPER CASE’, ‘Title Case’ and ‘Sentence case’.  All chapter and section headings should be in title case, figure and table captions can be in title case or sentence case provided the document is consistent.

6. Putting citations after the full stop

For example, adding a citation like this. [3]

Why do so many people do this?  

Where does it come from?  

You can’t have copied the idea from anywhere, no-one publishes papers or books like this.  

If a citation applies to something in a sentence, the citation must be in the same sentence.  

And that means before the full stop.

7. Putting two section headings together with no text in-between

That’s a cross-reference by the way – Word knows where it is.  If I move things around later, Word will update this number.)

8. Not putting in enough references

A very frequent problem.  I read things like “research has shown that a = 2.7 is a good value to use”.  

Actually,

What research?  

Where did this come from?

Or perhaps I might read “MIMO systems can help improve capacity”.  

How do you know?  

Where I can go and read more about how?  No-one is born knowing this.

Another ‘Golden Rule’: if you take any information from anywhere, it needs a reference to the source.

9. Not starting new chapters on new pages

It’s easy to do.  Just use a “Ctrl-Enter” to add a page-break.  It makes the report look more professional.

10. Not defining all the quantities in an equation

This happens a lot.  I often read things like “the capacity of the link is then:

[ 5.1 ]

where H is the channel matrix.”

Fine, but 

what is W?  

What is λ?  

What is σ?  

If you write an equation you have to clearly state what all the terms in the equation represent.  

Otherwise it’s useless.

11. Writing something in the report you don’t understand

I can see how tempting this might be to do.  

If you just can’t get your head around a derivation or a proof, you just copy it from a textbook into your report.  

However, this is very dangerous.  

We’ll probably ask you about it in the viva, and if you can’t explain something in your report, it really doesn’t look good.  

It’s much better just to quote the result and add a reference to where the derivation comes from.  

Writing anything is a claim that you understand it (unless you put it in quotes, so it’s obviously not your own words).

Conclusions

The final piece of writing in a project paper, essay, or article that summarizes the entire work. The conclusion paragraph should restate your thesis, summarize the key supporting ideas you discussed throughout the work, and offer your final impression on the central idea.