Syntax Guidelines for Reports
- Write about your work using the past tense even if the research is ongoing. When you describe your apparatus use the past tense even if the apparatus still exists.
- Make sure every sentence contributes to your report. Watch out for meaningless fluff!
- Write clearly. Avoid using the words "this" or "these" since "this" is often used in lazy writing to not describe clearly what you are writing about.
- Have someone other than the writer of a wiki page proofread it critically. The standard of excellence is not "can I guess what the writer probably meant." The standard of excellent is clear, concise, and precise writing that provides all the necessary information describing your project so that an educated reader can understand what you did and how it applies to drinking water treatment.
- Spell check everything.
- Provide the technical details. Show the equations that you used. Provide all the important parameters (dimensions, flow rates, concentrations, etc.) that another researcher would need to duplicate your work
Follow the Guidelines listed below when writing your reports.
wrong
right
One space between numbers and units
5mg
5 mg
No leading decimals
.3 g
0.3 g
Graph captions
Graph 1. blah blah blah
Figure 1. blah blah blah
Figure captions
above table
below table
Table captions
below table
above table
- Use Mathtype or an equation editor that produces latex for all equations!
- The biggest mistake of technical writers is to not include enough graphs, pictures, and drawings in their documents. These figures are each worth many words. Use figures that are well labeled to provide information that would be hard to understand if only presented as text.
- Make sure the figures have captions and that you refer to each figure in the text. Don't refer to them as graphs! Refer to them as Figures!
- Make sure your graphs meet the graphing guidelines