School Reports

What's wrong with School reports today?

Frequently we are told you need X number of pages, so you push and pull at your words to try to force as many as you can out, many times rather then a clear and concise report you end up sometimes obfuscating ( to be evasive, unclear, or confusing) things.

When will it become clear that writing shorter reports that convey the information required are better then long drawn out reports that are 90% bloat and 10% real information?

Looking at Needless words I started thinking about this, I don't know how many reports this semester alone I've written that are really just bloated with meaningless information, in a simple attempt to pass as a "useful" paper.

When will engineering students write reports as clear and concise as the work we will need to produce?

I have read requirements documents that are so indirect that it's a wonder how people can implement them, and in fact I was once told that if they didn't understand the requirements they were writing that well, they would write it more then once in a couple different ways, so as to give them an "out" when the software comes that they can say "this isn't what I meant" and force you to change it.

That's a tough paragraph to read. Re-Worded: If you don't understand the material you're writing about, make it so the people that are reading it can't understand it.

Start writing what you MEAN. Stop writing bloat into your reports. I'm going to give this a try on my next Microprocessors report, I'll let you know what kind of score I get.

No one likes bloat. Me least of all.