Table of contents
- General writing
- Writing in Art and Design
- Writing in Arts
- Writing in Business and Economics
- Writing in Education
- Writing in Engineering
- Writing in Information Technology
- Writing in Law
- Writing in Medicine
- Writing in Pharmacy
- Writing in Science
Sample contents
Look at the following tables of contents and select the best one for this report.Contents A
Contents
| Summary | ii | ||
| 1.0 | Introduction | 1 | |
| 2.0 | Car A | 1 | |
| 2.1 | Design features | 1 | |
| 2.2 | Materials selection | 2 | |
| 2.3 | Fuel efficiency | 2 | |
| 3.0 | Car B | 3 | |
| 3.1 | Design features | 3 | |
| 3.2 | Materials selection | 4 | |
| 3.3 | Fuel efficiency | 4 | |
| 4.0 | Comparison of designs | 5 | |
| 5.0 | Conclusions | 8 | |
| 6.0 | References | 9 | |
| Appendices: | |||
| Appendix 1 Design diagrams | |||
| Appendix 2 Contribution of each group member | |||
Contents B
| Summary | 1 | ||
| 1.0 | Background | 1 | |
| 2.0 | Car A design | 2 | |
| 3.0 | Car B design | 4 | |
| 4.0 | The materials we selected | 5 | |
| 5.0 | What are the safety features? | 7 | |
| 5.1 | Car A | 7 | |
| 5.2 | Car B | 7 | |
| 6.0 | Discussion | 8 | |
| 7.0 | Conclusion | 9 | |
| 8.0 | References | 9 | |
| 9.0 | Appendix 1 | 10 | |
| Appendix 2 | 11 | ||
Select the best table of contents for this report.
Contents A
Contents B
1
Look again at Contents B. How many errors can you find?
| 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
5
There are 7 problems with Contents B.
- The page should be titled 'Contents'.
- The Summary should be given a lower case Roman numeral page number (ii). Background information should be included in the Introduction, perhaps as a subsection if there is a considerable amount.
- Section headings should be in parallel grammatical form; for example, Materials and Safety Features, and these should be sub-ections of Sections 2 and 3. Subsections should be clearly indented.
- The Discussion could more informatively be entitled: Comparison of Designs
- The Conclusions section needs an 's'.
- Appendices to a report should not have section or page numbers and, where there is more than one, should be titled Appendices. They also need titles.
- Dotted lines between section headings and page numbers would improve readability.
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