SUBJECT ; BENEFITS OF DRINKING WATER

The Long Report is 1,200 – 1,500 words of high quality information about your chosen topic from the Revised Topic Proposal and directed toward your intended primary audience. Include WHY your reader(s) should act as well as HOW to act. The technical components of the report will support your recommendations. Create a logical flow of information with clear and connected sections defined by headings. Readers for the Long Report may not take in the information in a linear manner; craft a report that allows your audience to easily identify key terms for use in multiple reading paths.

This assignment will focus on the main content of the report, including only the introduction, body, conclusions, and documentation of sources. Figures and tables are welcome, but not required. Students are encouraged to include tables and figures if those are necessary to understanding the report. The next step of this long-term writing project is to take the information from the Revised Long Report, and create an effective design for it, which will require tables and/or figures. Use the requirements listed below as a checklist – these are the criteria by which you will be assessed for this assignment.

Requirements

Introduction (Links to an external site.): sets the context of the report

• Prepare the reader(s) by clearly describing the purpose and content of the report.
• Create an introduction that is relative in length to the complete report — keeping it between 10% to 20% of the report’s contents.
• Sub-sections may include background, scope, a note about the audience, and lists.

Body (Links to an external site.): the main text of the report

• Inform your reader(s) by explaining the reasoning behind your final recommendations in the conclusion.
• Incorporate specific examples and analysis supporting your purpose.
• Detail the technical components of the report.
• Separate meaningful parts with headings and subheadings to help the reader identify sections quickly.
• Construct the order so that new sections build upon the last and have clear connections to other areas of the report.
• Support all of your assertions with credible evidence from substantive sources—connect data driven research to specific examples.
• Include minimum 3 credible sources.

Conclusions (Links to an external site.): the final section of the report

• Recommend a course of action to readers based on the findings recorded in the body of the report.
• Avoid presenting new support—all assertions should be well supported in the previous sections and repeating your documentation is discouraged.
• Keep it brief. Should the final section become long, consider moving important details to another part of the report.
• Summarizing important points is a common part of the final section of long reports with many complex details, but may seem unnecessary for shorter reports—use your best judgment to decide if a summary is rhetorically effective.
• Predicting future implications related to the information in the report can be a logical end—sticking to general speculations is best to avoid getting into an entirely new detailed section. This is an optional component to the final section.

Documentation (Links to an external site.): citations for research, words, ideas, or images gathered from outside sources

• Choose a citation style and remain consistent — MLA (Links to an external site.), APA (Links to an external site.), and Chicago (Links to an external site.) are acceptable.
• Include in-text citations in the text of the report for all information extracted from outside sources. Readers should be able to easily understand how the in-text citation corresponds to a source on your list of full citations.
• Create a list of full citations at the end of the document according to the citation style you chose. Generally, there are three major parts to a full citation: the person or body that created it, information about the type of content, and an indication of where and when it was published.
• Link to sources in the full citations for the purposes of this course, even if those are not part of the requirements for the citation style.

Tone (Links to an external site.): the writer’s attitude toward the reader and the subject of the report

• Choose formal (Links to an external site.) language.
• Provide an objective (Links to an external site.) point of view.
• Construct sentences using third person (Links to an external site.).
• Avoid language that may be perceived sexist or stereotypical.

Design (Links to an external site.): how the information is presented—contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity

• Do not worry about specific formatting parameters that abide by any one style manual (MLA (Links to an external site.), APA (Links to an external site.), Chicago (Links to an external site.), etc.) at this point in the project because you will enhance the design later.
• Keep it uncluttered and remain consistent in all design choices.
• Focus on readability (Links to an external site.) by strategically including design and typographical elements like headings, bolding, white space, and bullets.
• Choose one font that is easy to read.
• Left align paragraphs. Do not indent.
• Single space within paragraphs and double space between paragraphs.
• Avoid widows, orphans, and runts (Links to an external site.).
• Use blue for links–keep everything else black and white.

Editing and Proofreading (Links to an external site.): changes to make the writing more discernible and to correct errors

• Construct coherent (Links to an external site.) paragraphs and cohesive (Links to an external site.) sentences.
• Use a clear and concise writing style.
• Eliminate run-on sentences and inappropriate sentence fragments.
• Edit unnecessary words.
• Demonstrate clear usage and strong word choice.
• Correct spelling, grammar, capitalization and punctuation.