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Stage 1:
Writing is easy. You sit down and you write. Good Writing is not so easy. Prepare to write
In this stage, you must first collect all the materials you need including your lab notebook, any notes from the pre-experiment lecture, your laboratory textbook, and any other materials (websites, other textbooks, journal articles, etc.) that you think you will need to write a good report. Then you need to decide what you will write about. You should consider each section of the report individually. Each section has its own requirements which are distinct from each other. Read your Laboratory Report Guide carefully paying close attention to the different requirements for each section. A tried and true method to ensure you do a good job at this stage is to prepare an outline. Your outline should be complete and detailed enough so that it is perfectly clear WHAT you will write about in each section and HOW you plan to write it. Most of the work of good writing occurs here in the Preparation stage. The time you spend here saves time once you begin writing. A good outline will contain: A main heading for each section Subheadings when necessary (some reports will be more complex than our first one) A list of topics and items for each heading or subheading. Typically abbreviated entries are used (i.e. discuss the difference between the melting point ranges of pure vs. impure compounds). Be complete here each item here will be later developed into sentence form. Include full citations for textbook pages, journal articles, or other references here this will remind you to put them in your report later and save you the trouble of looking them up when you prepare your list of references. You might also include reminders to yourself here like write in third person, past-tense, passive voice or use language similar to book or paraphrase the third paragraph on page xx of the Pavia text.
D.S.Frohnapfel 2008
Make sure to follow your outline. If you have prepared properly, your outline has a bullet point or two for each topic or item that needs discussed. If you have a really good outline, all you need to do for the report is to take each bullet point and turn it into 1-3 sentences. Also remember that you are writing this report AFTER you have learned the material. Dont endlessly discuss a topic. Make your point and move on.