In the current technological era, everything gets done by machine and related technology. Each needs research and development. So, to convey the information or findings one needs to write a technical report, paper, or writings. Most of the time, technical reports are full of quality but they contain common errors which might change the meaning or may cause rejection of technical papers also. So, read the following tips to know what are the common errors and their solutions.
Table of Contents
Numeric numbers:
Technical writings are full of numbers and data. Normally integers or numbers less than ten are written in words. Say to convey ‘2 components, one should write ‘two components’. Numbers greater than ten and fractional numbers can be written in digits like 11, 12.4, etc.
Take care of ‘a, an, the’:
Always remember that ‘a’ & ‘an’ can be used when we talk about indefinite things while ‘the’ can be used while talking about ‘definite’ things.
Symbol and its short form:
When we use symbols in writings, we should write their full form when it appears for the first time and should not necessarily write every-time afterward when it comes again. E.g. “Artificial Intelligence (AI)”. Now when we need to talk about “Artificial Intelligence, we can write AI only.
Use proper word:
a lot of: Do not use ‘a lot of’ word for uncountable objects or things. Use the ‘many’ word instead.
highly increased: Instead of writing ‘highly’ increased, one should write ‘greatly’ increased.
Plural forms: Check before writing the plural form of anything. Do not use ‘works’ and ‘researches’, They are already in plural forms. One should use ‘software’ not ‘softwares’
Do Not: Avoid writing ‘Don’t”. Write full form i.e Do not.
In place of ALSO, one can start the sentence with ‘Besides’, ‘Moreover’, or ‘In addition
Do not say ‘comprises of’, Instead of it, use ‘comprises’ only.
Always make sure to write reports in either ‘Americal English’ or ‘UK English’ because ‘Colour’ and ‘Color’ both are right in their own English type but one must follow only one style of English.
(Source: Hints on Writing Technical Papers and Making Presentations Victor O. K. Li, Fellow, IEEE)