General Information and Suggestions for Technical Writing

•  A considerable amount of judgment must be exercised when writing your reports: the ideas to be discussed and how best to organize these; the detail to be provided; the figures and tables to be shared; the comparisons with theory or other work, etc.  It will take a considerable amount of time to make these judgments.
• Be concise in your writing.  Say what needs to be said but no more.  Do not use three sentences when two will do.  Avoid being overly verbose.
• Write your reports with the attitude that they will be something you submit for a job assignment.
• Do not use phrases like “The purpose of this lab was…” or “For this lab we…”
• Do not use titles like “Rheology Lab”.  Be descriptive, but keep it concise.
• Write with a level of complexity that is consistent with your technical background.  You have acquired a lot of knowledge in your studies.  Show us what you know.
• Write for an audience that also has a technical background but is most likely not entirely familiar with your experiment.
• All variables and uncommon terms need to be defined.  All acronyms need to be spelled out at least once.  However, common terms like psi or mL do not need to be defined.
• Use your own words to avoid plagiarism.  It is not difficult to recognize when material has been copied and this will be heavily penalized.  Do not use direct quotes from your sources; synthesize what you read and put it into your own words.
• Use references where needed.  If you state a fact from a source, you need to cite the source.
• Prepare tables, graphs, and figures very carefully.  Label all visuals appropriately.  See the section on Report Visuals and Data Display.
• Cite references appropriately.  Look in a textbook or journal article for style examples.  See section on References for additional guidance.
• Make your report look good.  Be neat and well organized.  Pay attention to formatting.  Use headings and sub-headings to let the reader know what they will be reading.
• Write in third person and use past tense.  You are explaining what you have done, not what you intend to do.
• Do not begin a sentence with a number (i.e. 10 mL of water was poured into a beaker).  Numerals less than ten should be spelled out – unless it is a measured or quantitative value (i.e. Five pressures were measured ranging from 10 psi to 25 psi). 
• Include the leading zero in a measured value (i.e. 0.75 mL, not .75 mL)
• Avoid using contractions.
• Use superscripts and subscripts as needed.

Report Sections

Your reports should have:

• Beginning
• Goals and introduction
• Background
• Basic principles
• Related models and theories
• Middle
• Nature of experiment
• Equipment used
• Procedures
• Data to be obtained
• End
• Data analysis
• Results obtained
• Error analysis
• Major conclusions
• Nomenclature
• References
• Appendix
• Sample calculations
• Extraneous data or tables

Report Formatting

All reports will be written in Times New Roman 11 pt. font.  All pages will be formatted to have 1” margins.  The text should be left justified with a line spacing of 1.5. Line spacing may be single for Table and Figure captions.

Report Final Check

After writing your report, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Does the report have something meaningful to say?
2. Is the report in a format acceptable to the reader?
3. Are the ideas organized in a way that makes it easy for your reader to understand?
4. Have you used an appropriate level of sophistication in your writing?
5. Does the report look good?
6. Have you made effective use of figures and tables?