To the dismay of many science students, the field of science is not exempt from conventions of good writing; composing clear and effective prose is an essential skill for all students, regardless of discipline. Although this skill takes time to develop, there are several basic guidelines that will help improve your writing.
Your lab report must be written with complete paragraphs and sentences. Thus, bullet points or other incomplete sentence structures are never appropriate. It is also important that your writing be clear, concise, and direct. This means that you should use the active voice whenever possible; use appropriate and consistent tense; avoid unnecessary words, phrases, and jargon; use modifiers judiciously; and put the main verb early in the sentence and keep it close to its subject.
- Paragraphs and Sentences
- Voice: Active vs. Passive
- Verb Tense
- Unnecessary Words and Jargon
- Precision and Accuracy
Paragraphs and Sentences
Paragraphs are the building blocks of all writing assignments.
Paragraph checklist
- Contains a single controlling idea
- Begins with a topic sentence that summarizes the controlling idea
- Uses details, examples, and analysis to support and develop the idea
- Is no longer than one printed page (between 100 and 200 words)
Read more about effective paragraphs and transitions.
Sentences
Sentences are the basic unit of writing. Although seemingly simple, sentences pose many troublesome problems for writers. It is important to understand a few of the most common errors:
- Sentence fragments
- Run-on sentences and comma splices
- Faulty parallelism
- Subject-verb agreement
- Pronoun reference and agreement
A good way to spot errors in sentences, even if you aren’t familiar the terminology, is to read your writing aloud, slowly and carefully. This will highlight awkward structures that you can then rework to correct. Learn about more proofreading strategies in the Writing Science guide.
Voice: Active vs. Passive
Passive Voice
Active Voice
Read more about active and passive voice.
Verb Tense
Past Tense
- Referring to events that occurred in the past
- Referring to what you did
- Referring to results obtained in the past (in your study and others’ studies)
Examples
- “Smith et al. (2013) found that”
- “We hypothesized that”
- “My group measured the”
- “The results supported my hypothesis that”
Present Tense
Use it in the Introduction and Discussion only when:
Examples
Future Tense
Use it in the Discussion only when:
Example
Unnecessary Words & Jargon
- Replace "due to the fact that" with "because"
- Replace "has an effect on" with "affects"
- Replace "utilize/utilization" with "use"
- Replace "a majority of" with "most"
- Replace "a number of" with "many"
- Replace "are of the same opinion" with "agree"
- Replace "less frequently occurring" with "rare"
- Replace "all three of the" with "the three"
- Replace "give rise to" with "cause"
- Replace "in order to" with "to"
Be Precise and Accurate
Be specific, not general
Be concrete, not abstract
Be formal, not colloquial
Instead of "nowhere near" write "far from"
Instead of "lots of or a lot" write "most or many"