How to Make a Black Book Project: Step by Step (Final Year Project Report)

Key takeaway

A black book is the bound final-year project report. To make one: get your topic and your college's format, write the chapters in that format, add the front pages, set the pages up for A4, have your guide check it, then print and bind it. Write the chapters first and the front pages last, because the abstract, contents and page numbers all depend on the finished chapters.

Before you start

Have these ready before you write a page:

1. Your project, finished or nearly finished. The report describes what you built or studied. You cannot describe a system that does not work yet.
2. Your guide's approval of the title and the scope.
3. Your college's format. Most colleges issue a circular or a template: the chapters, the page order, the font and the margins. If yours does, it overrides any general guide, this one included. Where a board sets one format for every college (for example MSBTE's capstone project report), use that.
4. Your material: screenshots of every screen of your project, your data or survey responses, the code you will quote, and the books, papers and websites you used.

Step 1: Fix the chapter list

A software or engineering project usually has seven chapters: Introduction, Survey of Technologies (or Literature Review), Requirements and Analysis, System Design, Implementation and Testing, Results, and Conclusion. A commerce or management study has a research methodology chapter, data analysis and findings instead. The structure for each stream is on the templates page, and what belongs in each chapter is in Final Year Project Report Chapters.

Write the chapter and section headings down first, numbered (1.1, 1.2, 1.2.1). This is your contents page in draft.

Step 2: Write the chapters, in order

• Chapter 1 sets out the problem, the objectives and the scope.
• The literature review compares existing work: see how to write a literature review.
• The design chapter carries your diagrams: DFD and ER diagrams and UML diagrams.
• Testing needs real test cases; a survey-based study needs its questionnaire and methodology.
• End with the conclusion and future scope.

Describe only what your project really does. Examiners compare the report with the demo, and a feature in the report that is not in the project is the easiest thing for them to find.

Step 3: Add the front pages

In the usual order:

1. Cover and title page
2. Certificate and declaration
3. Acknowledgement
4. Abstract
5. Index (table of contents), then the list of figures and the list of tables

Then the references and any appendices go after the last chapter.

Step 4: Set it up in Word

Setting	Common requirement
Paper	A4, printed on one side
Font	Times New Roman 12 pt for text; 14 to 16 pt bold for chapter headings
Line spacing	1.5
Margins	About 1.5 in on the left for the binding, 1 in elsewhere
Page numbers	Roman (i, ii, iii) for the front pages, Arabic (1, 2, 3) from Chapter 1

Three Word features save hours:

• Heading styles. Mark every chapter heading as Heading 1 and every section as Heading 2. The contents page is then made from them.
• An automatic table of contents. References → Table of Contents. Right-click it and choose Update Field after every change.
• Section breaks for the page numbers. Put a Layout → Breaks → Next Page break before Chapter 1, untick "Link to Previous" in the footer of the new section, and set its numbers to start at 1 in Arabic numerals.

The full checklist is in the black book format guide.

Step 5: Check it with your guide

Give your guide a printed or PDF copy before the final print. Check the title, your name, roll number, guide's name and academic year on the cover, certificate and declaration: they must match exactly on every page.

Step 6: Print, bind and keep a soft copy

• Print on good A4 paper, one side, colour where the diagrams and screenshots need it.
• Bind in a hard cover. In Maharashtra it is black with the title in gold lettering, which is where the name "black book" comes from. Elsewhere the colour may differ: follow your college.
• Copies: commonly one for the department, one for your guide and one for you. Ask before you print.
• Soft copy: a PDF named with your roll number and title, and the Word file, in case a correction is asked for after the viva.

Making it on a phone

Typing a report on a phone works; formatting one does not, for most students. Tables, diagrams, section breaks and an automatic contents page are hard to manage in a phone app. If a phone is all you have, write the text there and format it once on a laptop, or use an editor made for project reports.

With BlackBook

BlackBook writes the whole black book from your title and a line about your project, in your stream's structure or your college's format where it has one: every chapter with its diagrams, the cover page, certificate, declaration, acknowledgement, abstract and contents. You read and edit it, on a laptop or a phone, then download it as PDF and Word. It is written before you pay anything; see pricing.