The Definition of Appendix and How to Write an Appendix

As an appendix in the human body, the appendix to the text is an essential part of any student assignment. This additional section of the work can contain a pointer, advanced information about the individual materials on the topic, conclusions about the materials, which are published in the main text, description of the research methodology, and so on.

The formatting of most educational projects finishes with the appendix. Typically, appendices are inserted at the end of the work, after the bibliography. After appendix, there shouldn’t be any other chapters in the course work.

What is represented by an appendix? Appendix is documents, charts, tables, which occupy a large volume, but carry important informational component. Due to the large number of pages in the work, it is inappropriate to place appendices in the text.

In addition, there is information that can’t be inserted in the main body, for example, balance sheets, quality certificates, references, statistics, etc.

There are no specific requirements regarding how to write an appendix and their formatting. It is only important to consider the following nuances:

• The pages of the appendix are not numbered.
• The numbering of the appendices themselves is indicated at the top of the page, as there can be a lot of appendices. This is necessary in order for the person who checks the work to be able to quickly find the desired document, as a student puts the number of the appendix in the text itself. For example, after a certain phrase, statement or inference, a student indicates in parentheses “see Appendix 2”.
• Appendices are added in the same order, in which they appear in the text.

Many students ignore appendices, because they don’t know how to write an appendix. But this is a big mistake. Appendix can help you can reflect a lot of useful and interesting information that will allow the professor to conclude that the student worked hard over the implementation of practical sections of the course work.

Guide on How to Write an Appendix

Before you start making appendices look through a few books in order to see how to write an appendix and how to format it. Explore the works written in your subject, or study applications in the books on various topics. Pay attention to what information is included in the application and how it is interconnected with the main text. Can you find the typical contents, repeated in different applications?

Once again look at the task. If you are given a specific topic, this is done with a purpose. Remember why you are writing this project, and by whom it was entrusted (you can ask this person for guidance).

Think about the main purpose of the appendix. What do you want to say in addition to the ideas presented in the main text?

Take into account the audience. Who will be reading the appendix? Will your reader gain valuable experience that can broaden the understanding of the main theme of your work? Will the appendix be a useful tool for reading or using your work?

Find out the opinion of an outsider. Describe the main theme of your coursework of diploma to someone and the content of the appendix to see whether it seems reasonable.

Collect the information that needs to be included in the appendix.

Evaluate the relevance of the data. If the information is relevant to the subject, isn’t it better to include it in the main text in the form of a separate chapter? You may want to opt out of certain information if the connection to the main topic is poorly observed. The application (one or more) should include text-related data, which reveal specific topics more or are a good complement for the work with the main material.

Organize information using the general rules of the organization. Use tables, graphs, and charts for numerical data. Structure your text using subtitles, chapters, and paragraphs.

If the information covers various unrelated topics, it is better to break it up into multiple applications to facilitate the work with additional data.

After that you can start writing the appendix. This step depends on the data format to be included. A header should be placed for digital data, after that you can insert tables with data. If it is a text, it should be broken into paragraphs as plain text.

The title should indicate “ANNEX __” and the serial number of the appendix. This text should be in bold and centered at the top of the page.

Each appendix starts with a separate page, at the beginning of which there is a specified name.

Check the text of the annex for grammatical, stylistic, and other errors, and only then insert it in the text and print your work.

Advice on How to Write an Appendix

Confirm the basic work with clear and balanced conclusions, placing them in the form of the annex. Do not assume that a reader is certainly going to read the annex, and don’t persuade him or her to do so. If you feel that the text of the appendix is strongly associated with the theme of the work, insert this annex in the main text (in the form of chapters, epilogue, conclusions, or any other section).

The appendix is a supplement, but it does not mean that it can be treated superficially. Although the main efforts should be directed to the disclosure of the main theme, don’t put off the writing of the annex to the very last moment, when it can be very easy to make a mistake in a rush or make a bad annex.

Other Rules on How to Write an Appendix

To get an excellent grade for your coursework, your research paper must be perfectly executed and formatted from a cover page to the annex. In order to get excellent results, it is necessary far ahead before writing a term paper to learn all requirements to the formatting of a document, which are usually set by a professor of the university department, where your research paper will be defended.

As it was mentioned above, annexes are the final part of any research work, so save your time and effort to correctly format this mandatory section of your paper. Perhaps, appendices are not the most important part of the course work, but if you have enough of them, it indicates that you have picked so much information on the subject that some of it had to be inserted beyond the main text of the work. In addition, there are materials that are simply can’t be inserted in the main text of the work, for example, photographs, newspaper clippings, engineering plans, balance sheets, etc. What kind of documents should be placed in the “ANNEX” section?

Annexes can be compulsory and informational that explain or prove the research with additional data, Such annexes can be used for reference purposes. That is the ANNEX section can contain tables, charts, drawings, schemes, which occupy more than 2/3 of the sheet. In this section you can also insert copies of the documents, certificates, to make the research more convincing. You can add additional information that is very relevant to the topic, but didn’t fit in the main text of the work. There are no strict rules on what materials should be in the ANNEX section, it will all depend on the research topic. In any case, there should be no less than two annexes in order for the project to be professional.

There are a few rules of placement and formatting of appendices:

• Appendices are inserted at the end of the course work, after the sections “Conclusions” and “References”.
• If you plan to add more than two annexes, this section of the work should be separated from the main text of the course work with a separate sheet with the title ANNEX or ANNEXES. This header is placed in the center of the page and is typed in the same font as that of the whole document (Times New Roman). The size of letters should be considerably greater than the one of a text. The title can be identified in bold italics.
• All applications must be referenced in the text of the coursework. There should be footnotes in the main text after a statement, thesis or conclusions (see. Annex 1). The order of the annexes matches their order in the text.
• Each annex must be placed on a new page, even if the previous appendix has only a couple of paragraphs (e.g., a few terms or a schema). It is important to separate the pages from each other not by repeatedly pressing the Enter key, but by the command Insert – Page Break so the formatted material won’t shift after a small correction.
• If the text of the annex does not fit on one page, then when transferring it to the next page, you should indicate Continuation of an Annex at the top of the page and duplicate its serial number.
• Annexes are numbered in Arabic numerals in the order of occurrence in the text of the research paper.
• Sometimes you can use letters in annexes, such as “Appendix A”, “Appendix B”, etc.
• Each annex must have a title, which is written under the ordinal number of the application, but it doesn’t have to be duplicated hen referencing in the coursework.
• Formulas, tables, and diagrams, which are represented both in the annexes and in the main body of the research, are numbered in Arabic numerals with the indication of the annexes before the serial number. For example, “Table B.3” or “Figure A.2.”
• If there is a necessity, then voluminous text of the annex can also be divided into chapters and paragraphs that are numbered in Arabic numerals.

These basic rules on how to write an appendix must be taken into account when making the section of annexes.