These are intended more as prompts/reminders of what elements are important/that we will be looking for--as long as it is clear in your writing that you have covered these elements, the exact format can be tailored to your writing style/approach.

hal

I would say that you should make every effort to keep the main body of your report within the limits (remember Gerhard's favorite quote attributed to Pascal--the meaning he intends for you to take away from that quote is that you should demonstrate appropriate effort by working to make your writing concise enough to fit the limits). If you go over by a page or so, I doubt that it will have any major impact on our assessment.

It is perfectly fine to put ancillary materials into appendices that go beyond the page limit to support the main body of your report--you should not, however, base the understandability of your writing on those appendices being read in detail.

You might keep in mind that we are constantly writing grant proposals that have strict page limits (they will be returned to us without consideration if they exceed the formal requirements). This tends to lessen our sympathy for those who "did not have time to make it shorter." :-)