11. Introduction And The Passive Form

The best introductions are written last!

A strong and well-constructed introduction will provide a valuable and engaging insight into the motivations behind your work, what you are proposing and undertaking, and the result you are hoping to achieve. Because the introduction should reflect the work to come in the report, it is much better to write it last, once you know exactly where your report will take you (since you have now written it!). This will make for a more relevant introduction reflecting perfectly the content of the report.

One of the key aspect of the introduction, but also of the entire report, is the choice between the passive from to the active form. For reports involving self-reflection, writing in the first person may be preferred, thus the active form should be employed, as shown in the following example: "I have undertaken this experiment to assess the relevance of this commonly made assumption".

Conversely, engineering, scientific, technical report should, under no circumstances, employ the first person, whether "I" or "we"; therefore, those reports are written in a passive form. The previous example thus becomes: "This example has been undertaken to assess the relevance of this commonly made assumption".

Although uncommon in everyday life, the passive form is most common in report, and experience readers, such as your lecturer or boss, will find the use of the passive form in your report very professional.