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Dissertations will naturally vary in layout and content according to the subject area and design approach.  The assessment criteria above are used in the final assessment of your work and these areas should be discussed with your supervisor for specific advice on presenting your work.  As a general guide to producing your final report the following standard layout, based on the IEEE recommendations (Technical Report Writing, IEE Professional Brief Series, 1989) is suggested (Download the technical report writing guide).  Again, as with the proposal you may need to include additional sections as dictated by the nature of the project work and some sections can be omitted if deemed inappropriate.

The report must be presented on single sided A4 paper.

• The document must be produced in black type, which is not less than 8pt (2.75mm). Times New Roman 11 or Ariel 10 is a good size font to use.
• Margins should be not less than 30mm on the side of the binding (left hand side) and not less than 20mm on each of the other sides (right, top and bottom).
• The lines of text should be One and a Half spaced, except in footnotes or quotations where they may be single-spaced.
• All pages should be numbered consecutively (including contents, through to references and appendices).  Occasionally contents and references are numbered separately.
• Page numbers must be located centrally in the bottom margin (about 10mm up).
• Drawings and photographs may either be in colour or in black & white

Numbers and captions to figures and tables should be at the bottom of the figure or table. If the figure or table is mounted sideways into the report, then its bottom is on the right hand

side of the report. 

The main text of your project should normally be about 10,000 words. You must be concise. Excessively long reports will be penalised. The report itself should not normally contain more than 80 tables or figures, and should be bound as a single volume.