4Not intended to be read from cover to cover, this book was designed instead to be a quick and useful reference for students, young engineers, and experienced professionals alike. It provides guidelines, advice, and technical information for preparing formal documents-covering a range of report formats (e.g. assessment, laboratory, and progress reports). This concise, no-nonsense guide provides alphabetically ordered and cross-referenced topics, which make it easy to find answers to questions related to writing a technical report or thesis. Topics include: the format and content of reports and theses; copyright and plagiarism; print and Internet reference citation; abbreviations; units and conversion factors; significant figures; mathematical notation and equations; writing styles and conventions; frequently confused words; grammatical errors and punctuation. It also provides commonsense advice on issues such as how to get started and how to keep your reader's attention.