WRITING Writing - Scientific - Papers - Full - Version PDF

Writing Scientific
Papers
(Second Edition)
Tim North
Scribe Consulting
www.scribe.com.au
Writing Scientific Papers www.scribe.com.au
Writing Scientific Papers
www.scribe.com.au
www.BetterWritingSkills.com
© 2006 Tim North, Scribe Consulting

All rights reserved worldwide.
ISBN 0-9578426-2-7
Second edition.
Document last modified on 17 April, 2006.
Set in Georgia and Verdana.
All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this work may be reproduced by any process, nor
may any other exclusive right be exercised without the written permission of its author:
Tim North
Scribe Consulting
U1, 66 Park St
Como WA 6152
Australia
ii
Table of Contents
Author’s introduction...........................................................................................................v
1. Structuring scientific papers ............................................................................................1

1.1 The overall structure...........................................................................................1
1.2 Choosing the title ................................................................................................1
1.3 The abstract........................................................................................................ 4
1.4 The introduction .................................................................................................7
1.5 Methods.............................................................................................................10
1.6 Results ...............................................................................................................12
1.7 Discussion .........................................................................................................13
1.8 Conclusions and recommendations.................................................................14
2. General strategies........................................................................................................16
2.1 Use analogies and context ................................................................................16
2.2 Be precise...........................................................................................................19
2.3 Personal pronouns in scientific writing.......................................................... 20
2.4 Emotion .............................................................................................................21
3. Plain English .............................................................................................................. 22

3.1 What is it?......................................................................................................... 22
3.2 Use one word, not several................................................................................ 23
3.3 Avoid pompous, pretentious writing .............................................................. 24
3.4 Eliminate buzzwords and unnecessary jargon............................................... 26
3.5 Use short sentences ......................................................................................... 28
3.6 Use short paragraphs....................................................................................... 28
4. Referencing..................................................................................................................31
4.1 Why reference? .................................................................................................31
4.2 Different referencing styles ..............................................................................31
4.3 Simple references............................................................................................. 32
4.4 Page and volume numbers .............................................................................. 32
4.5 Initials............................................................................................................... 33
4.6 Multiple references .......................................................................................... 34
4.7 Multiple authors............................................................................................... 34
4.8 No stated author .............................................................................................. 35
4.9 Unpublished material ...................................................................................... 35
4.10 Ambiguously dated works ............................................................................... 36
4.11 The reference list.............................................................................................. 36
4.12 General principles............................................................................................ 37
4.13 References to books ......................................................................................... 38
4.14 References to periodicals................................................................................. 40
4.15 References to newspapers ............................................................................... 42
4.16 References to web pages .................................................................................. 42
iii
5. Captions.......................................................................................................................44
6. Neatly formatting tables.............................................................................................46
7. Writing numbers.........................................................................................................49
7.1 Writing large numbers .....................................................................................49
7.2 Spans ................................................................................................................. 51
7.3 Dates.................................................................................................................. 51
7.4 Times .................................................................................................................52
7.5 Writing numbers as words...............................................................................53
8. Units of measurement ................................................................................................55

8.1 Writing units of measurement.........................................................................55
8.2 Metric units.......................................................................................................57
8.3 Metric prefixes ..................................................................................................57
8.4 Case sensitivity..................................................................................................58
Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 60
Other works by Scribe Consulting..................................................................................... 61
iv
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
W elcome.
Scientists are great at science, but they’re generally not the world’s greatest
writers. This second edition of Writing Scientific Papers presents jargon-free
tips on how to write a scientific paper that will have people talking — for all the
right reasons.
Scientific writing is widely perceived to be writing that is so complex that only a

scientist could understand it. This misapprehension is deeply regrettable,
although not without foundation. Much scientific writing is jargonistic, verbose
and pompous. It is quite possible that many scientists write this way because
they think it’s expected of them. So many scientific reports and papers have
been written in this fashion that it seems to be assumed by some authors that
this is the proper way to write.
Not so. Scientific writing is about communicating. More specifically, scientific

writing involves accurately communicating your ideas to your readers. When
you write a scientific report or paper, you are attempting, through the use of
written symbols, to move information and concepts from your mind to the
minds of other people.
Why then would you deliberately make your writing less clear than it could be?
As most of your readers will never meet you, the way you write is one of the few
tools you have at your disposal to convince them to take you seriously. If you
present your ideas in an unnecessarily complicated fashion then you’ve failed
to meet your principle objective, which is to communicate your ideas.
Regards,
Tim North
(info@scribe.com.au)
v
1. STRUCTURING SCIENTIFIC PAPERS
1.1 The overall structure
The exact structure of a scientific paper or report will vary, but the broad
structure listed here is widely applicable.
1. the cover and title pages;
2. the table of contents;
3. tables of symbols or nomenclature;
4. the main body of your work, consisting of these sections:

• Abstract;
• Introduction;
• Methods;
• Results;
• Discussion; and
• Conclusions and recommendations.
5. the reference list or bibliography; and
6. appendices.
The material that follows provides guidelines for writing the content of each of
these sections.
1.2 Choosing the title
Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior and are

disgraced by the inferior.
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, 1903
It may seem trivial to tell people how to choose a title, but the importance of
this task should not be underestimated. A good title may be the difference
between a reader choosing to look at your work or passing over it.
1
Many readers will learn of your work while surrounded by other documents
that are competing for their attention. For example, they may see it while:
• scanning the printed reports on a bookshelf;
• looking through the titles in a printed index;
• looking at a bound collection of reports;
• using an on-line search engine at a library; or
• searching the Internet.
A good title can help your work to stand out from the crowd. Here then are
some guidelines for choosing a good title.
Title guideline one

Use the fewest number of words that express what you wish to say.
When choosing a title, avoid generic phrases like ‘An investigation of…’, ‘A
study into…’ and ‘Observations on…’. These are implied anyway and add little
value.
This guideline is really just a restatement of the keep-it-simple principle we

covered in the previous chapter. We have established that titles are very
important in gaining the reader’s attention, and it follows that good titles are
more likely to succeed at this than bad ones. Compare these two titles:
A study of the effects of chaos as a source of complexity and diversity

in evolutionary processes
Chaos as a source of complexity and diversity in evolution
The first title takes seventeen words, the second one ten. The first one contains
extra words that convey slightly more information (study, effects and
processes) but at the cost of making the title notably longer and less
memorable.
Here is another example:

A description of a variety of different tools for creating an interactive
virtual-cinema environment
Tools for interactive virtual cinema
The first title clearly employs more words than are needed (fourteen versus
five). It does contain more information, but at the cost of being wordier, harder
to remember and burying the key words at the end of the sentence.
2
Indeed, in the first title, the key word virtual-cinema is the thirteenth word in
the sentence, You have to read almost the entire title before finding out what
the paper is about. This leads us to our next guideline …
Title guideline two

Put your topic words near the start of the title.
Titles may contain several key words or key phrases (see guideline three), but
one of these words or phrases will usually be more significant than the others.
Let’s call these the topic words.
Putting the topic words near the start of the title makes it easier for the reader
to decide what your document is about and if it should be read.
Consider the following titles in which the topic words are shown in italics. In all
cases the topic words comes near the start of the title.
Chaos as a Source Of Complexity and Diversity in Evolution
The USC Brain Project: Confronting Models With Data
VLSI Neural Networks: Design Challenges and Opportunities
Low-level Vision In Insects and Applications to Robot Navigation
Title guideline three

Include searchable key words in your title.
Reports, journal articles and conference proceedings are usually indexed by

key words. Traditionally, libraries have stocked paper-based indices that allow
articles to be located from key words. Today, indexing is increasingly done
electronically. It is common to come away from a conference with a CD ROM
containing all the presented papers.
Frequently, particularly with web-based search engines, the key words are
taken from the document’s title. It follows that people will be more likely to
find your work if its title contains the significant key words.
Compare these two titles:

An Interim Report from the Myers Project
The Myers Project Interim Report into the Effects of Sleep Deprivation
on Memory Retention
3
Not only does the second title bring the topic phrase (‘the Myers Project’) to the
start of the title, but it also includes additional key words: sleep deprivation
and memory retention. Readers searching using these terms will have an
increased chance of finding the document.
Note that this guideline is somewhat at odds with guideline one: use the fewest
number of words. Clearly a balance needs to be found between titles that are
brief and titles that contain a suitable number of key words.
Title guideline four

Suit the title to your audience.
An article written for accountants, managers and bankers clearly needs to

employ a different language than one written for specialists working in the
same field as you. Choose your language appropriately.
A title like Fat Rats: What Makes Them Eat? may be judged appropriate for a
non-technical audience but too informal for an audience of your peers. It also
lacks any technical key words that would make it easily retrievable.
On the other hand, The Relationship of Luteinising Hormone to Obesity in the

Zucker Rat is probably too technical for a general audience (U. Wisconsin
1998).
1.3 The abstract
The abstract is a very short summary of your paper. Abstracts are usually only
a few paragraphs in length, though length requirements may vary depending
upon the publication. The abstract should stand alone and should not be overly
technical.
The abstract should address what the article is about, whom it targets and what
key goals have been reached. Above all, it must be concise and readable. In
essence the abstract is a very brief version of the introduction that follows it.
Here are some guidelines for creating a good abstract.
4
Abstract guideline one

Very briefly say what you did, why you did it and whom you wrote the
article for (if appropriate).
These three questions — what, why and whom — put your article in context.
They quickly identify the key aspects of your work and let the reader decide if
he or she wishes to read further.
Saying what you did identifies the area to which the article pertains and helps
identify its readership.
Saying why you wrote your article and, if appropriate, for whom indicates the
motivation for the work. Were you writing in response to a brief from a client?
Were you trying to make a process more cost efficient? Are you a doctoral
student writing an article to publicise your PhD work?
Tell people why you wrote your article. Don’t make them guess.
Here are some example statements that answer some of the what, why and
whom questions.
This report is submitted in part requirement of a Masters degree.

(why; whom is implied)
The client, XYZ Industries, has commissioned a process-control model

of the circuit for the four-hole pressure probe.
(what and whom)
This report is published in order to describe the properties of a new

data structure called the skip list. The skip list …
(why and what)
The concentration of impurities in samples taken from leach pad two

are unacceptably high. This report was commissioned by the client to
investigate the cause of this situation and what remedial action may
be taken to rectify it.
(what, why and whom)
5
Abstract guideline two

Very briefly identify the major methods you used.
Since methods vary so widely from discipline to discipline and experiment to

experiment, this guideline is necessarily broad. Nonetheless, you should briefly
identify in your abstract at least the type of methods you employed while doing
your work. For example, you might say:
The research used X-ray diffraction techniques to …
The study involved an ethnographic survey of eighteen individuals

within the …
A one-tenth scale model of the process was used to study …
Of course, more detail on your methods will be provided in the body of the
paper.
Abstract guideline three

Very briefly state your major results.
Stating your major results should not be confused with stating your
conclusions. (See guideline four.) Your results are what you observed while
conducting your experiments. Your conclusions are your extrapolations as to
what your results mean. Here are some sample results:
Forty-seven percent of the sample group expressed a strong or

moderate liking for the product.
All pHs were in the range 7.9 to 8.5.
No increase in reproductive rate was observed in any of the cell

cultures.
Thyroid activity increased in the study group by an average of

12 percent.
Abstract guideline four

Very briefly state your major conclusions.
As indicated above, the conclusions are your extrapolations regarding what

significance of your results. You are going beyond the value of the data to
synthesise the meaning of the data. For example, here are some conclusions:
6
The results support the conclusion that the leach pad has become
contaminated by significant amounts of air-borne organic matter from
nearby fields.
We conclude from these results that there is no significant difference

between the three sample groups.
If the pH is reduced below 8.6 these cost savings will be more than
offset by increased cyanide consumption.
It is a measure of the importance of your conclusions that the major ones

should appear in no less that three places in your report: the abstract, the
introduction and the discussion.
The amount of detail given varies between these sections, of course. In the
abstract, it is enough to simply state your major conclusions or results without
discussion or detail.
1.4 The introduction
Your introduction is basically a summing-up of your entire paper. In more

detail than the abstract, it identifies what you did, why, for whom, the
literature, your methods, results, conclusions and recommendations.
Remember that many people will read your abstract and your introduction
then stop reading. Write the introduction under the assumption that the reader
might not read anything else. (But try to write it in such a compelling way that
they will want to read your whole report.)
The guidelines below are based on those of Wisconsin (1996) and Bishop
(1996).
Introduction guideline one

Describe the nature and scope of the problem.
This involves expanding upon some of the material presented in the abstract: 1
• What was the problem that you investigated?
• Who did you do the work for? Was it a client?, an internal project?
1 In practice, you may find it easier to write the introduction first then extract the abstract from it.
7
The amount of detail presented should be sufficient to allow the reader to

understand the problem.
Introduction guideline two

Explain why the work was important.
• Why was it important or necessary to do this work?
• What problems does it solve? What questions does it answer? What

processes does it improve? What conclusions does it contradict? What
conclusions does it support?
• Say for whom the work is significant. 2 For example, does the work have
relevance to all engineers (for example), or only those working in a specific
area?
• If you are debating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin
say so. Don’t inflate the significance of your work. Your readers will resent
the waste of their time, and you will diminish your own reputation.
Introduction guideline three

Review the relevant literature
Summarising the relevant research permits the reader to understand the

context of your work together with any specialised terminology or
methodology.
Reviewing the literature also helps to establish a rationale for your work by
relating it to existing unsolved problems, difficulties and questions. Thus a
review of the literature helps satisfy both guidelines one and two.
Day (1979) cautioned that a common mistake is to introduce authors and their
areas of study in general terms without mention of their major findings. For
example:
Parmenter (1976) and Chessman (1978) studied the diet of Chelodina

longicollis at various latitudes and Legler (1978) and Chessman
(1983) conducted a similar study on Chelodina expansa.
This compares poorly with:
2 Of course this may already be clear from the title of the document or the nature of the journal in
which it is published.
8
Within the confines of carnivory, Chelodina expansa is a selective and

specialised predator feeding upon highly motile prey such as decapod
crustaceans, aquatic bugs and small fish (Legler, 1978; Chessman,
1984), whereas C. longicollis is reported to have a diverse and
opportunistic diet (Parmenter, 1976; Chessman, 1984).
Clearly the later quotation provides the reader with more information and
gives them a better grounding in the literature.
Introduction guideline four

Briefly describe the experimental methods you employed and, if necessary,
justify your choice of methods.
This guideline expands upon the mention of methods that was made in your
abstract. It is not necessary to provide a step-by-step description of your
methods in the introduction as more detail will be provided in the methods
section that follows. Nonetheless, your introduction should describe at least the
type of methods you employed while doing your work.
If there were several different methods that could have been employed, this is
the place where you should justify your choice. This will necessarily involve a
discussion of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the competing methods.
If you chose a particular method for pragmatic reasons (e.g. if you don’t have
the equipment or budget to do it any other way) be honest enough to say so.
This is better than leaving the reader wondering why you chose a method that
was suboptimal.
Introduction guideline five

State the major results and conclusions of your work.
Your work is not a detective novel — don’t feel the need to save the exciting bits
for the last chapter. Provide the major results and conclusions of your work in
the introduction.
The amount of detail provided in the introduction should be greater than the
sparse coverage provided in the abstract, but less than that provided later in
the results and conclusions sections.
9
1.5 Methods
The methods section serves two main purposes. It is where you describe what
materials you used and also what methods you used. For this reason, it is also
known as the Materials and methods section.
Methods guideline one

Say how you did the work and what you used to do it.
Bishop (1996) provided a nice summary of what should be in the methods

section:
The Materials and Methods section should provide enough

detail that a competent worker can repeat the experiments.
Careful writing of this section is important because the

cornerstone of the scientific method requires that your results
must be reproducible; and, for the results to be reproducible,
you must provide the basis for repetition of the experiments by
others.
There is, of course, always the question of how much detail needs to be
presented when describing your methods. If your methods are new or involve
significant new or unusual elements, it’s necessary to describe them in step-by-
step detail. Provide enough detail that they can be reproduced.
If, on the other hand, you employ a method that is considered ‘standard’ (i.e. it
has been described in a major journal), it is usually enough to refer to the
method by name and provide a reference. For example:
Cyanate was determined by measuring the ammonia concentration
with an ammonia electrode before and after acid hydrolysis (Smith
2006).
Note also that the methods section is used to describe the methods that you
actually used. A discussion of the relative strengths of alternative methods
(that you ended up not using for one reason or another) is probably better
placed in the introduction or discussion sections.
10
Methods guideline two

Use the past tense.
Because the methods section is describing things that you have already done, it
is written in the past tense.
Methods guideline three

Don’t describe your results.
Remember that the methods section is intended to tell people how you did
your work. Avoid the temptation to intersperse this with a discussion of your
results or their significance.
Methods guideline four

Show your method section to colleagues. Ask them if they could use it to
reproduce your results.
This simple guideline can often be a very fast and effective way of identifying
inadequacies in your writing. Things that you might consider second nature
may be foreign to others.
Methods guideline five

Be precise when describing quantities.
If I can be allowed a cooking metaphor here, don’t you hate recipes that
contain vague advice like ‘add a generous quantity’, ‘place in a moderate oven’,
‘use a pinch of’, or ‘add to taste’?
These type of phrases are ambiguous and are usually unsuited to technical
writing. So be careful when using phrases like ‘an elevated level’ or ‘an
increased concentration’. Ask yourself ‘Would this be better with a more
accurate measurement’?
11
1.6 Results
Most of the great results of history are brought about by

discreditable means.
Emerson, The Conduct of Life, 1860.
In the results section you present the findings of your work.
Results guideline one

Present your findings clearly.
The data should be presented in a clear, readable form. Often this will involve
the use of one or more tables.
Depending upon the audience for your article, it may be more appropriate to
present only a summary of your data in the results section. In this case, the full
data set can be relegated to one or more appendices.
Results guideline two

Use the past tense.
Because the results section is describing findings that you have already made, it
is written in the past tense.
Results guideline three

Don’t interpret your results.
Remember that the results section is intended to present your findings. Avoid
the temptation to intersperse this with a discussion of their significance.
12
1.7 Discussion
Having presented your results in the previous section, now it is time to discuss
what they meant.
Discussion guideline one

Discuss the meaning of individual results in this section, but wait until the
conclusions to tie everything together.
Because most reports include both a discussion section and a conclusions

section, there is a certain ambiguity in deciding where to place your
conclusions. Should you present the conclusions while discussing your results,
or should you discuss your results and leave your conclusions to later?
To some degree your choice depends upon the nature of the report, but as a
guideline, it is generally preferable to discuss the individual results in this
section and wait until the conclusions section to ‘pull it all together’ and
present your conclusions and recommendations.
Discussion guideline two

Say what your results mean.
It is not enough to simply present your data (you have already done that), you
must now discuss their significance. Here are some of the issues that may need
discussion:
• Were the results consistent with your expectations?
• Does experimental error account for any deviations between the results and
your expectations?
• What underlying patterns or relationships exist in your results?
• Do these results support the hypothesis that you were testing?
• Do these results support the predictions in the literature?
Discussion guideline three

Don’t try to gloss over problems in your results.
If your results show a smooth curve with an unexpected dip in the middle,
avoid the temptation to gloss over the unexpected deviation. Who knows, it
may turn out to be the most important part of your data.
13
If you believe that it is due to experimental error (e.g. a leaking vessel) then say
so. All practicing experimentalists will have encountered similar problems in
their own work. If you’re up front about it, most will allow you one or two
imperfections in yours.
1.8 Conclusions and recommendations
Having presented your results and discussed them, it is now time to present
the conclusions that you have drawn from the results. These conclusions may
lead you to certain recommendations and, if so, these should also be presented
here.
Conclusions guideline one

Synthesise your discussion into one or more conclusions.
In the discussion section you will have discussed the meaning of the individual
results. Now it is time to bring these discussions together into one or more
conclusions.
While the conclusions that you draw will be entirely dependent upon your
work, here are some questions that suggest the type of issues you may be
considering:
• If your results were consistent with your expectations, what conclusion can
you make?
• If your results differed from your expectations, can you provide a plausible
explanation for this?
• What theoretical implications do your results have?
• What practical applications might flow from your work?
• Can you generalise from your area of study to a wider field?
• Do your results suggest a need for further work?
Conclusions guideline two

Don’t be afraid to make negative conclusions.
14
It is human nature to want to present positive, exciting conclusions. Deep

down, most of us would rather report that we have found a causal link between
X and Y, rather than reporting that we could find no causal link.
Nonetheless, presenting negative conclusions contributes just as much — and

should be seen as just as worthwhile — as presenting positive conclusions. Your
conclusion that X and Y are not related may be just as significant, or more so,
than the conclusion that they are.
Conclusions guideline three

Examine each of your conclusions in turn, and ask yourself if it leads to a
specific recommendation.
Work is rarely done for its own sake, particularly in a privately funded
organisation. Your work will normally lead to one or more specific
recommendations, even if this is only a recommendation for further work.
15
2. GENERAL STRATEGIES
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.
Thoreau, Journal, 1851
2.1 Use analogies and context
2.1.1 Analogies
P rofessor Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist and respected science writer

whose books are aimed at a lay audience. 3 He has been successful as a writer,
in my opinion, because he manages to make the very complex topics he covers
(including cosmology, quantum theory and relativity) accessible to his chosen
audience. He, and other skilled science writers, manage to do this by drawing
frequent analogies (i.e. comparisons) to known concepts.
Davies’ writing makes an interesting contrast to that of Professor Stephen

Hawking whose book A Brief History of Time was purchased by many but, I
suspect, was read cover-to-cover by very few. Consider the tone of these two
quotations. Remember that both are taken from books aimed at a
non-technical audience.
There is a mathematical theorem that says that any theory that

obeys quantum mechanics and relativity must always obey the
combined symmetry CPT. In other words the universe would
have to behave the same if one replaced particles by
antiparticles, took the mirror image and also reversed the
direction of time.
(Hawking, 1988, p. 78)
Most scientists, under the leadership of Danish physicist Neils

Bohr, accepted that the atomic uncertainty principle is truly
intrinsic to nature: the rules of clockwork might apply to familiar
objects such as snooker balls, but when it comes to atoms the
rules are those of roulette. A dissenting, albeit distinguished,
voice was that of Albert Einstein. ‘God does not play dice’, he
declared. Many ordinary systems, such as the stock market or
the weather, are also unpredictable.
(Davies, 1983, p. 102)
3 http://aca.mq.edu.au/PaulDavies/pdavies.html
16
The first passage invokes complex concepts — such as quantum mechanics,

relativity, symmetry and antiparticles — without providing the reader with any
analogies or explanations that would help to clarify them.
The second passage, on the other hand, is replete with common sense
analogies: clockwork, snooker balls, dice, the stock market and the weather.
These make it easier for the intended reader to form linkages between new
material and concepts that are already understood. 4
Although these passages were aimed at a lay audience, they still demonstrate
that suitable analogies can simplify new or complex concepts for the reader.
This applies even if we are writing for a highly specialised readership.
It’s worth keeping in mind that many parts of a report (particularly the
abstract, introduction and conclusions) may also be read by non-technical
readers such as managers and accountants.
Also, many of your readers may be less technically minded than you may
expect. Often these are the ones whom you must work hardest to convince if
you wish to receive funding for a new project. So remember to try and link new
ideas and difficult concepts to known ideas by the use of analogies.
Here are some examples of analogies that liken concentrations to commonly

understood situations (FACS 1998):
One part per million:

• one pancake in a stack four miles high;
• one inch in 16 miles;
• one minute in two years;
• one ounce in 32 tons; or
• one cent in $10,000.
One part per billion:

• one bogie in 3,500 golf tournaments;
• one second of time in 32 years;
• one 4-inch hamburger in a chain of hamburgers circling the earth
at the equator two-and-a-half times;
• one kernel of corn in a 45-foot high, 16-foot diameter silo; or
• one sheet in a roll of toilet paper stretching from New York to
London.
4 There is a much research that shows that the ability to link new material to known material is
crucial to effective learning.
17
While these analogies may be rather frivolous, they still illustrate the value of
analogies in allowing us to understand hard to visualise concepts like one-in-a-
billion.
2.1.2 Establishing context

Raw data presented without a context has little meaning. For example, if you
were to read that the level of compound X in sample Y was 3.2 ppm, what could
you conclude? Probably very little without knowing what the expected level
was. Is 3.2 ppm high, low or about right?
Providing a suitable context for data allows the reader to understand its
significance. Without context, you cannot be sure that your readers will get the
message that you intended them to.
The Foundation for American Communications (FACS 1998) suggested that

when talking about risk one can establish a useful context by comparing the
level of risk of the situation in question to that of a common situation.
The following examples illustrate how a technical report might provide
information in a context that lessens the alarm that might be generated by raw
data alone.
• Comparisons of similar risks: How do synthetic pesticide levels in a food

compare with the levels of natural pesticides found in many foods?
• Comparisons of risks with benefits: The risk to human health of using

chlorine to disinfect drinking water versus chlorine’s role in protecting
human life from infectious diseases.
• Comparisons to natural background levels: How does the level of a

substance in a suspected contaminated area compare with natural
background levels; e.g. the level of lead in someone’s backyard compared
with the average natural lead levels in soils.
• Comparisons with a regulatory standard: How does the comparison of

arsenic in a city’s drinking water compare with the standard set by the
relevant agency?
18
2.2 Be precise
While it is desirable for writing to be simple, this should not be taken as license
for it to be imprecise. For example:
The weight of precipitate increased considerably.
This phrase is insufficiently precise for most technical writing. It would be

better written in the following manner:
The weight of precipitate increased by 37%.
Attiwill (1996) suggested that the terms such as these are best used cautiously
in scientific writing:
• low, high; • massive;

• extremely; • considerably;
• enormous; • exceedingly;
• rapidly; • major, minor.
• dramatic;
When writing and revising your work, it may be best to check all occurrences of
such words. Are they too vague in the context in which they are used? If so, try
replacing them with a more precise wording. For example, you would probably
agree that the following statement is insufficiently precise:
The reaction proceeded rapidly.
The problem is that he writer knew the context well enough to understand
what rapidly meant, but he or she forgot to explain this to the audience. It
would be better written as:
The reaction was complete after 30 seconds.
Written in this way, it doesn’t make any unwarranted assumptions about what
the audience knows. Of course, you needn’t go back to basics. Unless you’re
writing for a lay audience you can assume that your audience will understand
some level of technical material. The trick, though, is not to overestimate this
level.
19
2.3 Personal pronouns in scientific writing
I’m going to be quite proscriptive here and state bluntly that — with few
exceptions — personal pronouns such as ‘I’ and ‘we’ have no place in scientific
writing.
This opinion — and, of course, you’re free to disagree with it — is based upon
the notion of using the right tool for the job. If you’re writing a letter to a friend
then, of course, you’d use personal pronouns. Imagine how dull it would be
without them. Indeed, the document you’re reading now is replete with
personal pronouns and contractions as they seemed appropriate for
establishing a friendly tone of voice.
Scientific reports, though, are usually expected to be detached and impersonal.

Reports in disciplines such as sociology and psychology are notable exceptions.
By necessity, such reports are often littered with personal pronouns. ‘Hard’
scientific disciplines such as chemistry and geology, though, have little need for
such pronouns.
An important exception must be made. If you’re writing for a lay audience
(such as the readership of a newspaper or magazine) then personal pronouns
may make the work more approachable.
When writing most scientific reports, though, the assumption is that your
results must be reproducible by other workers. This leads, quite naturally, to a
detached and impersonal writing style. Consider the following passage:
I weighed both samples then I placed the first sample into a
beaker which I marked ‘Control’ and the second into a beaker
which I marked ‘Experimental’. This done, I placed the beakers
into the equipment that I had assembled using the guidelines I
described in section two.
Admittedly this passage is exaggerated for effect, but most readers would agree
that the repeated use of I is jarring. The writer seems to be aggrandising him-
or herself by repeated references to what he or she did. The style appears that
of a braggart.
Rewritten to eliminate the use of the first person, it appears more neutral:
Both samples were weighed then the first sample was placed
into a beaker marked ‘Control’ and the second into a beaker
marked ‘Experimental’. This done, the beakers were placed into
the equipment that had been assembled using the guidelines
described in section two.
20
This more neutral tone seems to bring with it a greater sense of authority. It
appears more credible than the first passage, perhaps due to the increased
sense of objectivity that it generates.
An additional bonus of this rewriting is that the later passage used

approximately 10% fewer words than the former.
2.4 Emotion
As mentioned earlier, scientific reports are expected to be detached and

impersonal. The tacit assumption is that if scientists are emotionally involved
with their work, their objectivity and authority are lessened.
Consider the following spectrum of phrases:

1. We were astonished by these results.
2. The results were unexpected.
3. The results were inconsistent with the predictions of the model.
The first one has a significant emotional content. The second one is more
neutral and the third quite dry. Note also that the first employs the personal
pronoun ‘we’, while the later two do not. Most science writers would avoid the
first phrase as being excessively emotional.
21
3. PLAIN ENGLISH
The desire of appearing clever often prevents our becoming so.
La Roche-Foucauld, Maxims, 1665.
3.1 What is it?
S o just what is plain English?

We define plain English as something that the intended
audience can read, understand and act upon the first time they
read it. Plain English takes into account design and layout as
well as language.
www.plainenglish.co.uk/introduction.html
Let’s get rid of some myths first. It’s not baby-language, and
it’s not language that is abrupt, rude or ugly. Nor is it language
that puts grammatical perfection ahead of clarity. It doesn’t
involve over-simplifying or ‘dumbing down’ the message so
that it loses precision, force or effect.
It’s any message, written with the reader in mind, that gets its
meaning across clearly and concisely.
www.wordcentre.co.uk/page8.htm
As a before-and-after example, consider the following, wordy text:

High-quality learning environments are a necessary
precondition for facilitation and enhancement of the ongoing
learning process in children.
Rewriting this in plainer English, may yield:
Children need good schools if they are to learn properly.
This rewritten text is shorter, simpler and more comprehensible. The following
sections provide advice on how to write plainer English.
22
3.2 Use one word, not several
In his 1972 work, Say What You Mean, Rudolf Flesch, wrote: “Avoid all
prepositions and conjunctions that consist of more than one word. … There’s
not a single one of these word combinations that can’t be replaced by a simple
word like if, for, to, by, about or since.”
Stripping away the grammatical jargon that Flesch uses, we can generalise
from his comments to say that we should replace wordy phrases with simpler
alternatives.
Table 3.1: Alternatives to some wordy phrases
Wordy phrase Shorter phrase Wordy phrase Shorter phrase
a majority of most in the near future soon
adequate number of enough in the neighbourhood near, close, about

of
along the lines of like in this day and age now, currently
appears to be appears in view of the fact that as, because, since
as a general rule as a rule, usually inasmuch as as, because, since
as per your request as requested it has come to my I have learned that

attention that
at such time as when it is probable that probably
at the present time now it is recommended that we recommend
at this point in time now it would appear that apparently
be in a position to able to, can it would be advisable should, ought

to
being of the opinion I believe notwithstanding the although

that fact that
by means of by on the part of by
despite the fact that although owing to the fact that because
due to the fact that as, because, since predicated upon the based on
fact that
during such time while pursuant to your as you requested

request
during the time that then, when subsequent to after
for the reason that as, because, since take cognisance of the realise
fact that
four in number four that being the case therefore
has the ability to can there can be little probably

doubt that
if conditions are such if to the extent that as much as

that
23
Wordy phrase Shorter phrase Wordy phrase Shorter phrase
in a timely manner promptly to the fullest extent fully

possible
in accordance with your as requested until such time as until

request
in close proximity to near, close, about under the provisions of under
in connection with related to we are in receipt of we have received
in light of the fact that because, since with a view to to
in many cases often or usually with reference to the about, concerning

fact that
in my own opinion I believe with regard to about, concerning
in the event that if
3.3 Avoid pompous, pretentious writing
There is a tendency for some authors to try to be pompous and pretentious —

presumably in the belief that this makes them seem more intelligent. I once
listened to a geologist who kept saying thermally deaggregate instead of melt.
Personally, I think this made him look insecure and foolish.
Franklin D. Roosevelt hated pompous language. He was said to be so annoyed

by the following memo that he rewrote it and sent it back to the author. The
memo described what federal workers were to do in case of an emergency: 5
Such preparation shall be made as will completely obscure all
federal and non-federal buildings occupied by the federal
government during an air raid for any period of time from
visibility by reason of internal or external illumination. Such
obscuration may be obtained either by blackout construction or
by termination of the illumination.
Roosevelt’s revision:
Tell them that in buildings where they have to keep the work
going to put something over the windows; and, in buildings
where they can let the work stop for awhile, turn out the lights.
5 From Gobbledygook Has Gotta Go, U.S. Government Printing Office, n.d., pp. 38–9.
24
The rcmp-learning.org web site describes pompous writing like so: 6

When you write pompously, you judge wrongly that readers
appreciate elegant writing; that they expect you as an
educated person to sound elegant and impressive and will think
you undignified if you don't.
This may have been true years ago, when 5 percent of the
people had social position and educational status and the other
95 percent had neither. But that isn't the way things are any
more and readers don't like you to write like they were.
In short, parading elegant words is no longer a suitable

ceremony for the educated to use to IMPRESS the less
educated.
This is an insightful observation. It is no longer appropriate, you may feel, to

use a pompous style in order to seem impressive. Rather, we can impress our
readers through clear arguments expressed in plain English.
Here’s an pompous piece of writing from a survey conducted by Microsoft:

A plurality (40%) of all respondents felt …
A plurality? Oh come on! Who talks like this? Wouldn’t it sound more natural
like this:
Many respondents (40%) felt …
or:
Forty percent of all respondents felt …
6 No author specified: www.rcmp-learning.org/iim/ecdi1132.htm#pomposity
25
3.4 Eliminate buzzwords and unnecessary jargon
Excuse me, but “proactive” and “paradigm”?

Aren't these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important?
The Simpsons
buzzword (noun) A word or phrase … that usually sounds

important or technical and is used primarily to impress
laypersons. … A stylish or trendy word or phrase. … Stock
phrases that have become nonsense through endless
repetition
jargon (noun) … 3. The specialised or technical language of a

trade, profession, or similar group.
www.dictionary.com
I’m going to distinguish between jargon and buzzwords by likening them to

alcohol and tobacco. Jargon, like alcohol, has a safe level of use. Buzzwords,
like tobacco, do not. Let me explain.
There is a tendency in many organisations for some writers to use pretentious

(but essentially meaningless) buzzwords and phrases. This is usually done to
make it seem like the writer is knowledgeable or is using modern, sophisticated
techniques. Such is the loathing that most people secretly feel for such
language that it usually has the effect of making its users seem foolish. This
sentiment is captured in the Simpsons quote above.
Deloitte Consulting’s Bullfighter web site (www.dc.com/insights/bullfighter/)

provides many examples of absurd buzzwords; e.g.
A future-proof asset that seamlessly empowers your

mission-critical enterprise communications.
A value-added, leverageable, global knowledge repository.
Repurposeable, leading-edge thoughtware that delivers

results-driven value.
This assumes an even greater importance when we repurpose

global value to jump-start scoping and visioning.
We excel at the dissemination of scalable, extensive, global

initiatives and their socialisation throughout an entire
enterprise.
26
While these examples are management oriented, many academic papers are
full of similarly ridiculous phrases.
Remember: You don’t impress your readers with buzzwords. You impress
them with clear arguments written in plain English.
Unlike buzzwords, jargon can be used quite safely if you are absolutely sure
that your audience will understand it.
For example, if I was writing material to be placed on the intranet of a group of

physicists, I’d use the necessary technical language of that profession in order
to ensure brevity and precision. No one in such a group would mind the use of
such language — quite the reverse. If I were to ‘dumb down’ the material, it
would be of lesser value and probably poorly received.
If I was placing the same information on a web site aimed at the general public,
though, I’d employ different language. If pitched at the right level, they
wouldn’t consider it to be dumbed down or condescending; rather, they would
find it clear and comprehensible.
Which content would be the more difficult one to prepare? Surely, the second
one. It would involve a greater preparatory effort on my behalf as every
element of technical language would have to be translated into a simpler form.
A recent British study 7 revealed that three quarters (74%) of Britons believe
that businesses deliberately use jargon to confuse and deceive their customers.
More than half the people surveyed (56%) thought that people who don’t know
what they’re talking about used jargon as a cover. Surprisingly, though, nearly
a third (31%) admitted to using it themselves to impress their own customers
and clients!
7 NOP Research Group, Jargon Research. 1,000 adults over 15 years were questioned nationwide
during November 2003. For further details see:
www.abbeynational.com/home/media_centre/media_centre-press_releases.htm?id=9555
27
3.5 Use short sentences
The full stop is your friend. Use it often. It will make your writing plainer and
your meaning more easily understood. It will also greatly simplify the job of
punctuating what you write as shorter sentences need less punctuation.
Typically, sentences are no longer than 15 to 20 words. Occasionally, though,
you can use a longer sentence for variety. Most long sentences, though, should
be split into two or more shorter sentences. For example:
Now we get to the important part where you’ll notice that some
of the adjectives are a single word (e.g. long), while others are
made up of two words (e.g. action packed), and the two-word
adjectives were all hyphenated.
That sentence was thirty-nine words long and rather unwieldy. If we rewrite it
as three smaller sentences, you’ll find that it’s a lot easier to read and
understand:
Now we get to the important part. / Notice that some of the
adjectives are a single word (e.g. long), while others are made
up of two words; e.g. action packed. / The two-word adjectives
were all hyphenated.
The middle sentence is twenty-three words long and could be further split into
two smaller sentences if you wished. You may be more likely to do this if
writing for an audience for whom English was challenging. This includes
people with literacy problems and those who speak English as a second
language.
3.6 Use short paragraphs
Skim through these pages and look at the average length of the paragraphs.
Now flip through the pages of a newspaper. What do you notice about both?
The answer is that the paragraphs tends to be quite short.
The reason for this is that short paragraphs are easier to read. Let me prove my
point. Let’s say you have two ten-page reports sitting on your desk. They’re
identical except that one consists of a single paragraph lasting ten pages, while
the other has normal-length paragraphs. Which one would you prefer to read?
28
How, then, do you decide when to start a new paragraph? Well, a general rule
of thumb is that you start a new paragraph for each new idea or concept. Put
another way, all the sentences in a paragraph should be related to the same
idea or topic. When you write a sentence on a different idea, it’s time for a new
paragraph.
Let’s put this into practice by dividing the following text up into separate
paragraphs. For clarity, I’ve numbered the sentences.
[1] When you browse the web, some sites will employ a behind-the-scenes
feature that suggests a font for your web browser to use when displaying the
site. [2] For example, my business’s web sites (www.scribe.com.au and
www.betterwritingskills.com) tell your browser to use Verdana when
displaying the site. [3] Of course, if the computer you’re using doesn’t have
the Verdana font installed then it won’t be able to use it, and it will fall back
to another font. [4] Many web sites, though, don’t make any
recommendation about what font the browser should use to display them.
[5] With these web sites, the browser will simply use its default font — and
guess what? [6] That’s usually Times New Roman. [7] That’s right, the font
that most people view the web with is short, skinny and has a small x-
height. / [8] Take heart, though. [9] You can easily tell your web browser to
use your favourite font as its default font. [10] In Internet Explorer, select
Internet Options from the Tools menu then click on the Fonts button. [11] In
Netscape, select Preferences from the Edit menu then click on Appearance
then Fonts.
Sentence 1 talks about how a web site can suggest a font for a browser to use.
This is the topic for this paragraph and should be expanded upon by
subsequent sentences. Sentence 2 continues this same idea by providing an
example. Sentence 3 continues the same idea with a proviso. These three
sentences work nicely together as a single paragraph.
The fourth sentence, though, starts to talk about a subtly different topic — web
sites that don’t suggest a specific font. This change of topic (and the fact that
the previous paragraph was already a good length) suggests that it’s time for a
new paragraph. Sentences 5, 6 and 7 continue the topic of web sites that don’t
suggest a font to the browser.
Sentence 8 starts a new topic: remedying the situation. This calls for a new
paragraph. Sentences 9, 10 and 11 continue the topic and thus the paragraph.
So, reformatted, we have:
29
[1] When you browse the web, some sites will employ a behind-the-scenes
feature that suggests a font for your web browser to use when displaying the
site. [2] For example, my business’s web sites (www.scribe.com.au and
www.betterwritingskills.com) tell your browser to use Verdana when
displaying the site. [3] Of course, if the computer you’re using doesn’t have
the Verdana font installed then it won’t be able to use it, and it will fall back
to another font.
[4] Many web sites, though, don’t make any recommendation about what
font the browser should use to display them. [5] With these web sites, the
browser will simply use its default font — and guess what? [6] That’s usually
Times New Roman. [7] That’s right, the font that most people view the web
with is short, skinny and has a small x-height. /
[8] Take heart, though. [9] You can easily tell your web browser to use your
favourite font as its default font. [10] In Internet Explorer, select Internet
Options from the Tools menu then click on the Fonts button. [11] In
Netscape, select Preferences from the Edit menu then click on Appearance
then Fonts.
30
4. REFERENCING
A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a
pebble in the hands of a fool.
Joseph Roux, Meditations of a Parish Priest, 1886
4.1 Why reference?
A ll published reports and papers draw to some degree on the work of others, and
referencing acknowledges this debt. There are several reasons to reference
properly:
1. Convenience. You are allowing your readers to easily seek out the material
you have mentioned so that they can read it themselves.
2. Authority. By citing the work of others who are in agreement with your
views, you add to the strength of your argument. By citing widely, you
indicate the thoroughness of your research.
3. Ethics. People deserve credit for their ideas. Plagiarising the work of others
has always been a mortal sin in academia.
4. Legality. Plagiarising can, in some instances, lead to litigation.
4.2 Different referencing styles
Having established that there are good reasons for referencing, it is now
appropriate to ask how to do it. Perhaps regrettably, there are numerous
competing referencing styles in use. These include:
• the author–date (or Harvard) system;
• the Oxford system;
• the footnote (or endnote) system; and
• the Vancouver system.
This chapter describes the author–date referencing system — a widely used

system in most academic circles.
31
4.3 Simple references
When using the author–date referencing system, references to another work

consist of the referenced author’s surname and the date of the work’s
publication as shown below:
Earlier work (Monroe 1998) has established the presence of this

deposit.
The Factor C hypothesis (Smith 2001) is not yet widely accepted.
An often seen variation on the syntax shown here is to include a comma

between the author and the date, like so:
Earlier work (Monroe, 1998) has established the presence of this

deposit.
The Factor C hypothesis (Smith, 2001) is not yet widely accepted.
Both variations are in common use. As long as you are consistent in your
usage, either should be acceptable. If in doubt, check for your editor’s preferred
usage.
Sometimes the name of the author is integrated into the surrounding sentence,
rather than being placed in the parenthesis:
Earlier work by Monroe (1998) has established the presence of this

deposit.
Landau (2000) suggests that the claimed effect is spurious.
This usage is just as acceptable as including the author’s name inside the
parenthesis. Use whichever form produces a grammatically simpler or clearer
sentence. The two forms can be used interchangeably in the same document.
4.4 Page and volume numbers
If a reference is to a specific part of a document, rather than to the document as

a whole, then a page or volume number may be necessary:
The existence of a general factor, g, is questioned by some authors
(Wicks 1998, p. 45).
Wicks (1998, p. 45) questions the existence of a general factor g.
32
Note that a comma occurs after the date, and a full stop is placed after the
letter p because it is an abbreviation. Note also that there is a space (or, better
still, a thin space 8 ) between the abbreviation and the page number. Thus we
write:
p. 45 or p. 45
not:
p.45
Strangely, the abbreviation for pages is pp. Thus we write:
Wicks (1998, pp. 45–8) questions the existence of a general factor g.
References to a specific volume of a work are given like so:
Blooms (1999, vol. 2) contains complete data.
As a rule of thumb, references to short works like journal articles are less likely
to need page numbers than references to larger works such as books.
4.5 Initials
If you are referencing two or more authors who share the same surname, it
may be necessary to use their initials to distinguish between them; e.g.
Some authors suggest that the explosive growth of the Internet is

likely to level off before 2005 (Jones, A. J. 2000, p. 12). Other
authors suggest that it will continue in a similar fashion for at least
another ten years (Jones, S. 2001, p. 21).
Notice that the surname is followed by a comma and that the initials (if there
are two or more) are separated with a space.
Without the initials it would still be possible to distinguish between the authors
in the above example because of the different years of publication. This would
require the reader to turn to the list of references at the end of the work,
however, and so initials are used for the reader’s convenience.
If authors share the same initials, it becomes necessary to use their full given
names.
8 A thin space is one that is around half the normal point size. These examples use a six-point space
and twelve-point text.
33
4.6 Multiple references
When several authors are referenced at once, the references are separated by a
semicolon, as shown below:
There is considerable disagreement on this point within the literature

(Jackson 1999; McSweeney 2000; North 2001).
The earlier studies (Watts 1999, pp. 23–7; Agnew 2000, pp. 12–37)
were inconclusive.
Alternately, we can write:
The earlier studies of Watts (1999, pp. 23–7) and Agnew (2000, pp.
12–37) were inconclusive.
If an author has published two or more separate works in the same year then
we distinguish between them by adding a lower case letter after the date, like
so:
The compiler design paper (Thompson 1997a) and the register

optimisation paper (Thompson 1997b) both involve the use of …
The two most recent papers on the subject (Anderson 1998a; 1998b)
both argue that …
4.7 Multiple authors
When a work has two or three authors an ampersand is used between the last
pair of names if the surnames appear within the parentheses. For example:
Earlier work (Monroe & McGuire 1998) has established the presence
of this deposit.
These findings are supported by an earlier study (Andrews, Banners &

Coghlan 1999).
If the surnames occur outside of the parentheses, the word and is used instead;
e.g.
Earlier work by Monroe and McGuire (1998) has established the

presence of this deposit.
34
These findings are supported by the earlier study of Andrews,

Banners and Coghlan (1999).
If a work has four or more authors then only the first author’s name is used. It
is followed by the Latin phrase et al. meaning and others. 9 Thus we write:
Lennon et al. (1963) …
not:
Lennon, McCartney, Harrisson and Star (1963) …
4.8 No stated author
If a work is published by a government department, institution or company

and does not bear the name of a specific author then the name of the
department, institution or company is cited; e.g.
ANTA (2000b) presents information that …
Full financial information is presented in the prospectus (Telstra

1999c).
4.9 Unpublished material
Unpublished material can variously be described as unpublished, forthcoming,

in press or a personal communication. Each has a distinct meaning as follows.
Unpublished: This term is used to describe a work that has not been
published and is not yet ready or intended for imminent publication; e.g.
In one of his unfinished papers (Einstein, unpub.) its was argued that
…
Forthcoming: This term is used to describe an unpublished work that is

intended for imminent publication; e.g.
A soon to be released German study (Kohl, forthcoming) argues that

…
9 Note that there is only a single full stop in this abbreviation. We write et al., not et. al. as we are
abbreviating the phrase et alia, and only the second word is an abbreviation.
35
In Press: This term is used to describe an unpublished work that is completed

and is currently undergoing publication; e.g.
A soon to be released German study (Kohl, in press) argues that …
Personal Communication: This term is used to describe a verbal or written

correspondence that is not available to the reader; e.g.
This view is supported by Davies (pers. comm.).
Unlike the other three notations, personal communications do not appear in

the list of references at the end of the work.
4.10 Ambiguously dated works
If the date of a work is uncertain then it is referenced in one of two ways:

Shakespeare (c. 1603) wrote …
North (?2001) argues that …
The first usage employs c. as an abbreviation for the Latin term circa meaning
about. This form is used when citing imprecisely-dated historical works.
With the second usage, note that the question mark appears before the date,
not after, and that no space is used. This form is used to cite ambiguously-
dated modern works; i.e. works without a publication date.
4.11 The reference list
With the exception of personal communications, every reference that occurs in

the body of a work should have a corresponding entry in the reference list that
appears at the end of the work. These entries are of the following general form:
Hoggit, F. 1995, Pig Farming For Fun and Profit, Prentice Hall,
Sydney.
If the reference list contains entries that were not cited in the body of the work
then it is referred to as a bibliography. If the bibliography contains editorial
comments about the works then it is called an annotated bibliography.
36
The following sections detail the syntax of entries in a reference list or

bibliography.
4.12 General principles
4.12.1 Indentation
Note that the second and subsequent lines of a reference are indented, as
shown in the example above. 10 This is to aid the reader in separating the
entries in a long list of references.
4.12.2 Names
Authors’ names are presented surname first. Initials are used, rather than the
authors’ full given names, regardless of how the name is presented on the cover
of the work. Thus we would normally write:
Caporn, A. J. 1996, …
not:
Caporn, Andrew James 1996, …
Having said this, though, it is occasional practice to use an author’s full given
name ‘if this will enable the reader to recognise the author more readily’ (AGPS
1988, p. 135).
4.12.3 Sequence
The list of references is presented in alphabetical order.
4.12.4 Punctuation
Note that most elements of a reference are separated by commas, and the
entire reference ends with a full stop. The exceptions to this are that:
• Initials are followed by a full stop and separated by a space.
• There is no comma between the author’s name and the date.
For example:
10 This indentation can be achieved easily in most word processors by using a hanging indent.
Approximately 0.5–1.0 cm is appropriate.
37
Henderson, P. 2000, The Exciting Chemistry of Soap Scum, Oxford

Press, London.
North, T. J. 2001, Toenail Clippings: One Hundred and One Uses!,

Prentice Hall, Sydney.
4.12.5 Capitalisation: maximal or minimal?

When setting the name of a book, there are two schools of thought on how it
should be capitalised: maximal capitalisation or minimal capitalisation.
These are also known as title case and sentence case.
The examples above employ maximal capitalisation; however, some authors

prefer minimal capitalisation; e.g.
Henderson, P. 1996, The exciting chemistry of soap scum, Oxford

Press, London.
North, T. J. 1998, Toenail clippings: One hundred and one uses!,

Prentice Hall, Sydney.
The author–date system does not proscribe which capitalisation style is to be

used. Needless to say, one should be consistent throughout.
4.13 References to books
The information required for a reference to a book is presented in the following

order:
1. the author’s surname and initials (or given name if this is needed to prevent
ambiguity) ;
2. the year of publication;
3. the publication’s title (italicised);
4. the title of the series that contains the work, if applicable;
5. the volume number or number of volumes, if applicable;
6. the edition, if applicable;
7. the name of the editor or translator, if this is someone other than the
author;
8. the name of the publisher (usually abbreviated); and
9. the place of publication.
38
4.13.1 Books with one author

The following provide additional examples of how to reference a book that has
a single author.
Lannon, J. N. 1988, Technical Writing, 4th edn, Scott, Foresman &

Co., Glenview, Illinois.
Simpson, H. 2000, 1001 Uses for Doughnuts, 2nd edn, Springfield

Press, Springfield.
Wye, M. E. 1985, The Complete Guide to Punctuation, Prentice Hall,

New Jersey.
Note that the abbreviation for edition is edn without a full stop.
4.13.2 Books with multiple authors

If a book has two or more authors then an ampersand should always be used to
separate the final pair of names; e.g.
Snatchit, A., Grabbit, B. & Run, C. 2000, How to Make a Million as a

Lawyer, 3rd edn, Law Society Press, New York.
Williams, A. J. & Patterson, P. 1995, How to Swill Wine Like an

Expert, Grape Press, Melbourne.
4.13.3 Books with no stated author

If a book is published by a government department, institution or company
and does not bear the name of a specific author then the name of the
department, institution or company is cited; e.g.
Muppet Labs 1999, Electron Microscopy and You!, Pig & Frog Pub.
Co., New York.
Department of Trade 2000, Exporting to Rottnest, vol. 7, AGPS,

Canberra.
4.13.4 Books with an editor

When referring to an edited book one uses the following style:
Andrews, H. (ed.) 1997, Rainfall Data for Southern Queensland 1900–

96, University of Qld, Brisbane.
39
Trappl, R. & Petta, P. (eds) 1997, Creating Personalities for Synthetic

Actors, Springer, Berlin.
Note that the abbreviation for editor is ed. (with a full stop), while the
abbreviation for editors is eds (without a full stop). Note also that the
abbreviation comes between the name and the date. 11
4.13.5 Chapters of a book

If a book consists of various chapters each by different authors then a specific
chapter is referenced like so:
Clark, N. K. & Stephenson, G. M. 1989, ‘Group remembering’, in

Psychology of Group Influence, ed. P. Paulus.
Notes
• The titles of chapters are always set with minimal capitalisation; e.g. only
the first word and proper nouns are capitalised.
• The chapter title is in plain text and single quotes, while the book title is
italicised. (This is similar to the way an article in a journal is referenced.)
• Notice the word in between the chapter and book titles.
• In this situation the name of the editor is written initials first.
• A second reference must also be provided for the book as a whole. The
format for this is as described in the previous section; e.g.
Paulus, P. (ed.) 1989, Psychology of Group Influence, Springer,

Berlin.
4.14 References to periodicals
The information required for a reference to a periodical is presented in the

following order:
1. the author’s surname and initials (or given name if this is needed to
prevent ambiguity) ;
2. the year of publication;
11 See Better Writing Skills for more information on abbreviations

(www.BetterWritingSkills.com).
40
3. the title of the article (in quotation marks 12 );

4. the title of the periodical that contains the work (italicised);
5. the title of the series that contains the work, if applicable;
6. the volume number, if applicable;
7. the issue number, or other identifier, if applicable; and
8. the page number or numbers, if applicable.
This is quite distinct from the information required for a book. Here is a
sample reference:
Cohen, M. F. 1992, ‘Interactive spacetime control for animation’,

Computer Graphics, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 293–302.
Notes
• The format for names and dates is the same as that for books.
• We do not include the word in prior to the name of a journal.
• The article title is in plain text and quotation marks, while the journal title is
italicised. (This is similar to the way a chapter in a book is referenced.)
• Note the way that the volume and issue numbers are presented: vol. 26,
no. 4. This is clearer than the alternative formats that are sometimes seen;
e.g. 26(4).
The format used here is not universal (indeed, there is variation even within
the author–date system), but it has the advantages of being simple, consistent
and clear.
Here are some other general examples.
Bates, J. 1994, ‘The role of emotion in believable agents’,

Communications of the ACM, vol. 37, no. 7.
Denhurst, C. 1986, ‘Hot air over the Himalayas’, Australian

Geographic, vol. 42, no. 5, pp. 20–5.
Mas, S. R. & Thalmann, D. 1994, ‘A hand control and automatic

grasping system’, Proc. Eurographics ’94, pp. 167–78.
12 Users of U.S. English normally use double quotes. Users of British English can use double or single
quotes but should be consistent throughout. See Better Writing Skills for more information on
quotation marks (www.BetterWritingSkills.com).
41
4.15 References to newspapers
If an author is stated for the newspaper article the it is entered into the list of
references like an article in a journal; e.g.
Holland, R. & Grove, J. 1998, ‘Police act on wharf protest’, West

Australian, 17 April, p. 1.
Notes
• Words like the are omitted from the title of the newspaper. Thus we write
West Australian, not The West Australian.
• Note that the date of publication is placed after the name of the newspaper.
It is not necessary to duplicate the year as this already occurs at the start of
the reference.
If no author is stated for a newspaper article then the necessary information is

presented in the body of your work; e.g.
… by the second week of the dispute tensions had escalated (West

Australian, 17 April 1998, p. 1).
The corresponding entry in the reference list starts with the title:
Police act on wharf protest, 1998, West Australian, 17 April, p. 1.
4.16 References to web pages
Referencing styles for electronic sources of information — such as the web,

newsgroups and e-mail — are still emerging, and there is not yet a widely used
standard.
The examples below illustrate the style that I have adopted while writing the
bibliography for this manual. It is simple, but is not a standard.
Phelps, R. [Online] The Author–Date System of Referencing.

http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/sawd/projects/autdat.html
Accessed December 2002
Scribe Consulting [Online] Free Hints and Tips

http://www.scribe.com.au
Accessed February 2003.
42
Note that a publication date is not always shown as this is not always readily
determined. This is because the creation date for a web page may not be the
same as the publication date of the material contained on it. As web pages can
be short-lived, it can be useful to provide a date that indicates how recently the
web site in question was accessed.
43
5. CAPTIONS
Labels are devices for saving talkative persons the trouble of
thinking.
John Morley, Carlyle.
S cholarly documents frequently include tables, charts and figures. The labels
associated with such items are called captions. There are a few comments to
make about captions.
1. We don’t use full stops in a caption unless the caption is a full sentence. For
example:
Figure 3: The convention Figure 3: The convention was successful.
2. A frequently followed convention is to place captions below figures and

charts, but above tables. For example:
Table 12: Durations (in seconds) for the four samples in each of the
two trials
Trial 1 Trial 2
Sample 1 144 156
Sample 2 74 79
Sample 3 100 98
Sample 4 150 162
Notice that way that the second line of the caption for this table was indented.
We wrote:
44
Table 12: Durations (in seconds) for the four samples in each of
the two trials
not:
Table 12: Durations (in seconds) for the four samples in each of
the two trials
You can see that the second line of the caption was indented to line up neatly
with the word Durations, not with the word Table. This makes the caption title
(‘Table 12’) more prominent.
We call this form of alignment a hanging indent. Your word processor’s online
help will show you how to achieve it.
45
6. NEATLY FORMATTING TABLES

Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.
Pearl S. Buck, 1967.
C
onsider the following tables. Both present the same information in roughly the
same amount of space, yet they do so very differently.
TABLE 1: DATA FROM THE JUNE AND AUGUST FIELD

TRIALS
June August
Sales Sales Change
Region (000s) (OOOs) (000s)
Site 1 27.4 18.5 -8.9
Site 2 18.2 20.2 2.0
Site 3 2.5 5.6 3.1
Site 4 15.6 12.9 -2.7
Site 5 7.0 11.4 4.4
Site 6 2.6 1.8 -0.8
Average 12.22 11.7333 -0.48
Table 2: Data from the June and August field trials
June August Change

Region (000s) (000s) (000s)
Site 1 27.4 18.5 -8.9
Site 2 18.2 20.2 2.0
Site 3 2.5 5.6 3.1
Site 4 15.6 12.9 -2.7
Site 5 7.0 11.4 4.4
Site 6 2.6 1.8 -0.8
Average 12.2 11.7 -0.5
Which one would you rather be given?
Clearly the first table looks dreadful. The caption is too large, the text is of
different sizes and styles, there are too many grid lines, and the overall effect is
very poor. Although exaggerated to make a point, it is not uncommon to see
printed tables that suffer from one or more of these defects.
46
By comparison, the second table is simple and elegant. Neat and understated,
it presents the information with a minimum of decoration, yet appears more
sophisticated for its simplicity.
There are no universally agreed upon rules for how best to present information
in a table, so the suggestions that follow are not set in stone. These are simply a
set of conventions that I have developed over the years. Feel free to adapt them
to your own use.
The placement of tables

1. Always provide a reference in the text to information that is presented in a
table. That is, don’t just put a table in your report without referring to it.
2. Where practical, a table should be located as soon as possible after the first
reference to it.
3. It is not necessary to repeat the information from the table in the

subsequent text unless you wish to draw particular attention to it.
4. The paragraphs above and below the table (if present) should be separated
from it by a suitable gap; e.g. two lines.
The presentation of tables

5. Set table text in a font that is one or two points smaller than the main text;
i.e. if your surrounding text is 12 points, set your table in 10 or 11 points.
6. Set your table in a sans-serif font such as Verdana, Arial or Helvetica.
7. The information in a table (including the heading row) should use 1½ line
spacing.
8. Columns of numbers should be right aligned if they have no decimal point

and aligned on the decimal point if they do.
9. Generally, the heading in the left most column should be left aligned, while
those in the other columns should be centred. The alignment of the data in
the body of the table will depend upon the type of data being presented.
10. The heading row has a thin line above and below it. There should also be a
thin line across the bottom of the table.
11. Vertical lines should not be used unless absolutely necessary.
47
12. If the caption is more than one line long it should be set with a hanging
indent.
13. If the final row contains summary information (e.g. averages or totals) then
the entire row should be set in bold face.
These formatting suggestions are demonstrated in Table 2 at the start of this

chapter.
48
7. WRITING NUMBERS
One has to be able to count if only so that at fifty,
one doesn’t marry a girl of twenty.
Maxim Gorky, 1914.
7.1 Writing large numbers
7.1.1 Separating groups of digits
W hen numbers have four or more digits to the left of the decimal place, we
usually arrange these digits into groups of three for easier comprehension.
Many writers use the comma to group digits. For example:
4,367 54,218 1,771,561
The presence of a grouping character makes large numbers easier to read.

Compare these two amounts:
1,124,586,548 1124586548
The first of these is quickly comprehensible; the second is difficult to decipher.

You have to stop and group the digits together in threes in order to interpret
the second number. Don’t ask your readers to do this; do it for them. It’s a
courtesy that they’ll appreciate.
Another method of grouping digits is to use spaces between each group of three
digits. This is more common in those European countries where the comma is
often reserved for use as the decimal character. With some fonts, though, using
a space between digits can result in a gap that’s too wide; e.g.
1 124 586 548 12 point Courier New
In some contexts, it may not be clear if this is one number or several.
If you wish to use spaces to group digits, it may be best to use smaller-than-
usual space. Such spaces are called thin spaces. These can be inserted by typing
a normal space then changing it to a smaller point size; e.g.
49
1 124 586 548 12 point Courier New with 12 point spaces
1 124 586 548 12 point Courier New with 6 point spaces
These thin spaces group the characters together (although not as clearly as a
comma) with less risk that the reader might think that there are several
numbers instead of one.
7.1.2 Billions and trillions

Terms like billion and trillion should be used with caution as their meanings
are not universal. To most people, a billion is a one followed nine zeroes; to
others though, it is a one followed by twelve zeroes.
This may be a surprise to you because most folk think that a billion
unambiguously refers to this number: 1,000,000,000. As recently as 1982,
however, the International Committee on Weights and Measures confirmed
the definition of one billion as a million squared, a trillion as a million cubed
and a quadrillion as a million to the fourth power.
Even though these usages are increasingly rare, it is still best to define terms
like billion and trillion to avoid the possibility of confusion. Alternately, you
may wish to avoid the use of these terms.
7.1.3 Scientific notation

When setting numbers in scientific notation one must take care that the
numbers are easily readable. The following is a style that you may wish to
adopt when setting such numbers.
Note: An en dash is a dash that is as about half-again as wide as a hyphen. (You

can produce one in Microsoft Word by pressing the control key and the
numeric-minus key.)
Lower-case, sans-serif
3.104 x 10–6
Thin spaces;
En dash
e.g. 6 pt.
50
A few recommendations:
• A lower-case x is less distracting than an upper-case x; e.g.
3.104 X 10–6. Also, a sans-serif font will more closely resemble a
multiplication symbol (×) than a serif font will. 13
• Without spaces around the x, it may not be immediately obvious that the
number is in scientific notation; e.g. 3.104x10–6. At first glance this
might look like a number raised to the power –6. If normal-sized spaces
are used, it may look like two numbers separated by an x; e.g. 3.104 x
10–6.
• Because the minus sign in the exponent is formatted as a subscript, it’s in

a very small font size — maybe only five or six points. It can thus be quite
hard to see; e.g. 3.104 x 10-6. An en dash is wider than a hyphen, so this
overcomes the problem.
7.2 Spans
Spans of numbers, dates and times are written with an en dash, not a hyphen.
An en dash is a dash that is as about half-again as wide as a hyphen. You can
produce one in Microsoft Word by pressing the control key and the numeric-
minus key. For example:
Items 25–31 concern me.
not:
Items 25-31 concern me.
When writing spans of numbers, it is common to omit repeated digits if this

does not lead to ambiguity; e.g.
Please read pages 168–72.
The war lasted from 1939–45.
7.3 Dates
Users of American English generally write dates in the order month– day–
year, and in one of the following formats:
13 A multiplication character can be obtained in Microsoft Word by selecting the Symbol…

command from the Insert menu. Now select the font Symbol from the pop-up menu. The
multiplication character is on the sixth line.
51
September 27 1928
9/27/1928
9-27-1928
Users of British English generally write dates in the order day–month–year,

like so:
27 September 1928
27/9/1928
27-9-1928
This can, of course, lead to confusion. For example, does 3/8/2001 mean
March 8th or August 3rd? With the Internet making so much of what we write
visible to an international audience, this is an ever-increasing source of
confusion.
It is best then to use a date format that is not open to ambiguity. Writing out
the month as a word avoids any confusion; e.g. 3 Aug 2001 or Aug 3 2001.
If you prefer (or need) to use a numeric format, try putting the year first; e.g.
2001-08-03. Most people will understand that this is in the order year–
month–day. This format (YYYY-MM-DD) is known as International Standard
ISO-8601.
7.4 Times
Times are normally written in one of the following formats:
12.45 p.m. 7:30 a.m. 3:25 PM 8.15 AM
Some writers use a colon to separate hours from minutes; others use a full
stop. Both are acceptable.
Some writers put a.m. and p.m. in lower case, others in upper case. Regardless
of what other choices you make, it is best to leave a space prior to a.m. or p.m.
as this aids readability.
Note that times written in the 24-hour-clock system always use four digits and
do not use any punctuation; e.g.
52
1245 0730 1300
7.5 Writing numbers as words
7.5.1 When do we use digits?

Numbers can be written using digits (37) or using words (thirty-seven), but it’s
not always clear when to use each style. In nontechnical works, such as novels
and poetry, all numbers are spelled out in words. For example:
Smith stared at her — all six feet of her.
Smith shivered. It was down to two degrees.
Smith sighed. He’d be fifty soon.
Smith laughed. He’d just won two hundred dollars!
In technical works, though, numbers are sometimes written using digits and
sometimes using words. For example:
The density increased by 12%.
The mass was 27 grams.
We noted 3,215 events this month.
Even in technical works, small numbers are often written with words. Here are
three conventions that are commonly followed:
• Some writers spell out zero to nine as words and write 10 or more with
digits.
• Some writers spell out zero to ten as words and write 11 or more with digits.
• Some writers spell out zero to ninety-nine as words and write 100 or more
with digits.
The publication that you’re writing for may have a preference for one of these
styles. If so, follow it. If not, chose one and be consistent.
7.5.2 Hyphenating numbers

It was once common that numbers from 21 to 99 took hyphens when written
out as words. For example:
There are twenty-one data points.
Page thirty-seven contains two errors.
53
All sixty-three samples arrived safely.
This usage is far less frequent than it once was, so follow it or not at your own
discretion. As always, though, try to be consistent within a document.
7.5.3 Adjacent numbers

Commas are sometimes used to separate adjacent numbers in order to remove
confusion; for example:
On line 17, 253 should be replaced with 254.
Without the comma, the numbers would tend to run together leading to
possible misinterpretation. Even with the comma, though, this is still not clear.
Does it look like line 17,253 to you?
Ideally, it is best to try to avoid setting numbers next to each other. Instead you
could write:
On line seventeen, 253 should be replaced with 254.
or:
On line 17, replace 253 with 254.
54
8. UNITS OF MEASUREMENT
Man is the measure of all things.
Protagorus, circa 440 BC.
8.1 Writing units of measurement
8.1.1 Units and symbols

Units of measurement include such quantities as feet, seconds, litres, pints,
ounces, watts and volts. Units each have a shortened form called a symbol. For
example:
Table 8.1: Some units and their symbols
Unit Symbol
foot ft
inch in
metre m
watt W
litre L or l
Note that the full names of most units of measurement are written entirely in
lower case; Fahrenheit and Celsius are exceptions. Some symbols are written in
lower case, while others are written in upper case. We’ll talk more about case
shortly.
Symbols are not followed by a full stop unless they occur at then end of a
sentence; thus, we write:
It’s 48 ft long and 14 ft wide.
not:
It’s 48 ft. long and 14 ft. wide.
Symbols do not take an s to make their plural form. For example, we write:
27 ft not 27 fts
12.4 kg not 12.4 kgs
55
8.1.2 Spaces before symbols

Numbers are normally separated from a symbol by a space in order to make
them easier to read. For example, we write
27 ft not 27ft
17.4 mm not 17.4mm
If you feel that this leaves too wide a gap, you might want to use a thin space.
That is, you can reduce the point size of the space character to narrow the gap.
For example:
27 ft 11 point space
27 ft 6 point space
8.1.3 The degree symbol (°)

The exceptions to this rule concerning spaces (aren’t there always exceptions?)
concern angles and some temperatures. Angles are followed by a degree
character only. There is no space. For example, we write:
27° not 27 °
Temperatures measured in degrees Fahrenheit or degrees Celsius have the

symbols °F and °C . No space is used; we write:
82°F not 82 °F
27°C not 27 °C
Temperatures measured in kelvin have the symbol K; there is no degree

character. For example, we write:
300 K not 300°K
The degree character (°) can be obtained in Word 97 by selecting the Symbol…
command from the Insert menu. Now select the font Symbol from the pop-up
menu. The degree character is on the sixth line.
56
8.2 Metric units
As most countries use the metric system of units, it’s worth looking at this
system in some detail.
The metric system (note the lower-case m) is a decimal system of

measurement, which was first adopted in France in 1795. It’s also known as the
International System of Units or the SI system. (It’s SI, not IS because of its
French name: Systeme Internationale.)
The metric system defines a number of basic units including metres,

kilograms, 14 seconds, amperes, kelvins, candelas and moles. Many other units
are defined in terms of these more basic units; e.g. joules, newtons and watts.
The coverage that follows is quite thorough, but if you would like more details,
you can download a free PDF document called The International System of
Units (SI) (7th edn, 1998) published by the Bureau International des Poids et
Mesures. This document is the official definition of the metric (or SI) system of
units:
www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/
A supplement to the 7th edition was added in 2000, and this is also available
for download.
8.3 Metric prefixes
The metric system employs a series of prefixes, each one a successively higher
power of ten as shown in the following table:
14 Yes, the metric unit of mass is the kilogram, not the gram. An explanation for this confusing
situation is found in the BIPM publication referenced on this page.
57
Table 8.2: Metric prefixes
Prefix Symbol Value

yocto y 10–24
zepto z 10–21
atto a 10–18
femto f 10–15
pico p 10–12
nano n 10–9 0.000000001
–6
micro μ 10 0.000001
–3
milli m 10 0.001
–2
centi c 10 0.01
–1
deci d 10 0.1
1
deka da 10 10
2
hecto h 10 100
3
kilo k 10 1,000
6
mega M 10 1,000,000
9
giga G 10 1,000,000, 000
12
tera T 10
peta P 1015
exa E 1018
zetta Z 1021
yotta Y 1024
The case of the symbols for these prefixes is important and, if used incorrectly,
can change the meaning of the prefix. For example, m implies milli-, but M
implies mega-. The difference between mg and Mg is thus a factor of one
billion. Case is discussed further in the following section.
Note that the symbol for the prefix micro is the Greek letter mu (μ). This can be
obtained in Word 97 by selecting the Symbol… command from the Insert
menu. Now select the font Symbol from the pop-up menu. Mu is on the third
line.
8.4 Case sensitivity
8.4.1 Names of metric units and prefixes

When written out in full, the names of all metric units (except Celsius) are
written entirely in lower case; thus, we write metres, grams, newtons and
joules; not Metres, Grams, Newtons and Joules.
58
When written out in full, the names of all metric prefixes are written entirely in
lower case. We thus write milli-, kilo- and mega-; not Milli-, Kilo- and Mega-.
8.4.2 Symbols for metric units and prefixes

The symbols for most metric units are written in lower case; e.g. g, s, m. The
exceptions are the symbols for units named after people (e.g. joules, J;
newtons, N; and pascals, Pa) and the abbreviation L for litre. 15
The symbols for the metric prefixes up to and including kilo are written in
lower case (e.g. n, c and k), while the others are written in upper case (e.g. T, G
and M). See Table 8.2 for a complete listing.
8.4.3 Some examples

The following table illustrates these (sometimes confusing) conventions:
Table 8.3: Examples of the use of metric units
Full Form Abbreviated Scientific

Form Notation
1.23 milligrams 1.23 mg 1.23 x 10–3 g
7.8 kilograms 7.8 kg 7.8 x 103 g
27 millilitres 27 mL 2.7 x 10–2 L
27 megalitres 27 ML 2.7 x 107 L
4 metres 4m 4 x 100 m
100 kilometres 100 km 1 x 105 m
4.0 gigawatts 4.0 GW 4.0 x 109 W
13 megajoules 13 MJ 1.3 x 107 J
The official specification for the SI (or metric) system of units can be found
here:
www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/
15 The symbol for litre is an upper- or lower-case l. In practice, I recommend using upper-case to
avoid confusing the symbol with the digit 1.
59
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Attiwill, P. [Online] Tips on Scientific Writing.

http://www.deakin.edu.au/library/ScientificWriting.html
Accessed June 2001. [No longer available.]
Australian Government Publishing Service (AGPS) 1988, Style Manual for Authors, Editors
and Printers, 4th edn, AGPS Press, Canberra.
Bishop, 1996. [Missing a reference. Sorry.]
Davies, P. 1983, God and the New Physics, Penguin, London.
Day, 1979. [Missing reference.]
Foundation for American Communications (FACS) [On-line] Concentration Analogies.

http://www.facsnet.org/report_tools/guides_primers/risk/appendix.html
Accessed May 2000. [No longer available.]
Giquinta, R. [Online] 11 rules of Writing.

http://www.mailzone.com/users/pub/rgiaquinta/writing.shtml
Accessed April 1998. [No longer available.]
Hawking, S. 1988, A Brief History of Time, Bantam, Toronto.
Mohr, N. [Online] Ambiguous Newspaper Headlines

http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/~mohr/humor/headlines.html
North, T. [Online] Better Writing Skills

http://www.BetterWritingSkills.com
Accessed April 2006.
Phelps, R. [Online] The Author–Date System of Referencing.

http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/sawd/projects/autdat.html
Accessed June 2001. [No longer available.]
Strunk W. [On-line] Elements of Style.

http://www.bartleby.com/people/Strunk-W.html
University of Wisconsin [On-line] Academic Writing: Scientific Reports.

http://www.wisc.edu/writetest/Handbook/ScienceReport.html
Writers Web [On-Line] Avoiding Cliches in Writing.

http://www.urich.edu/~writing/cliche.html
60
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WRITING Writing - Scientific - Papers - Full - Version PDF

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Writing Scientific

Writing Scientific Papers

© 2006 Tim North, Scribe Consulting

Set in Georgia and Verdana.

1. Structuring scientific papers ............................................................................................1

3. Plain English .............................................................................................................. 22

6. Neatly formatting tables.............................................................................................46

8. Units of measurement ................................................................................................55

Other works by Scribe Consulting..................................................................................... 61

Scientific writing is widely perceived to be writing that is so complex that only a

Not so. Scientific writing is about communicating. More specifically, scientific

1. STRUCTURING SCIENTIFIC PAPERS

1.1 The overall structure

1. the cover and title pages;

2. the table of contents;

3. tables of symbols or nomenclature;

4. the main body of your work, consisting of these sections:

5. the reference list or bibliography; and

1.2 Choosing the title

Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior and are

• looking through the titles in a printed index;

• looking at a bound collection of reports;

• using an on-line search engine at a library; or

• searching the Internet.

Title guideline one

This guideline is really just a restatement of the keep-it-simple principle we

A study of the effects of chaos as a source of complexity and diversity

Chaos as a source of complexity and diversity in evolution

Here is another example:

Tools for interactive virtual cinema

Title guideline two

Chaos as a Source Of Complexity and Diversity in Evolution

The USC Brain Project: Confronting Models With Data

VLSI Neural Networks: Design Challenges and Opportunities

Low-level Vision In Insects and Applications to Robot Navigation

Title guideline three

Reports, journal articles and conference proceedings are usually indexed by

Compare these two titles:

Title guideline four

An article written for accountants, managers and bankers clearly needs to

On the other hand, The Relationship of Luteinising Hormone to Obesity in the

1.3 The abstract

Here are some guidelines for creating a good abstract.

Abstract guideline one

This report is submitted in part requirement of a Masters degree.

The client, XYZ Industries, has commissioned a process-control model

This report is published in order to describe the properties of a new

The concentration of impurities in samples taken from leach pad two

Abstract guideline two

Since methods vary so widely from discipline to discipline and experiment to

The research used X-ray diffraction techniques to …

The study involved an ethnographic survey of eighteen individuals

A one-tenth scale model of the process was used to study …

Abstract guideline three

Forty-seven percent of the sample group expressed a strong or

All pHs were in the range 7.9 to 8.5.

No increase in reproductive rate was observed in any of the cell

Thyroid activity increased in the study group by an average of

Abstract guideline four

As indicated above, the conclusions are your extrapolations regarding what

We conclude from these results that there is no significant difference

It is a measure of the importance of your conclusions that the major ones

1.4 The introduction