Scientific writing has a distinctive style: the writer needs to be clear, succinct, precise and logical. In scientific writing it is also essential to consider your audience.

Being clear

Research findings should be stated in clear simple English in a scientific report. Meandering, descriptive, decorative text is inappropriate. It should be impossible to misinterpret your findings.

Being succinct

Scientific writing needs to be brief - in depth concepts should not be made more complicated and confusing. Redundant phrases should be avoided. For example:

Example redundant phrase*	Improved
Contributing factor	Factor
Exactly identical	Identical
Necessary prerequisite	Prerequisite
Smooth to the touch	Smooth
General consensus	Consensus
Costs a total of	Costs

*from the 'Concise Writing Guide, Garbl's Writing Centre

Being precise

Choose your words carefully when you are writing science. In theory, someone who reads your scientific report should be able to repeat your experiments. Also, your reader should know exactly how your results relate to each other and to the results of others. The use of vague adjectives in scientific writing is inappropriate - you need to convey your exact meaning. For example, is your large increase a ten-fold increase or a ten thousand-fold increase? Say exactly what you mean, avoiding any ambiguity.

Being logical

Every argument in your scientific report should be logical. An argument is a final claim that is made based on at least one other claim. The final claim is known as the ‘conclusion’, and the claims that are used to support the conclusion are known as ‘premises’.

In a sound argument:

the premises should be true
the conclusion should be assured, or very likely, based on the premises

Who is your audience?

Remember who will read your work, and why they are reading it. Will your reader understand your explanations? Your tutor/supervisor will often understand the work already. Do your explanations demonstrate that YOU understand everything?

Learn from others

Draw inspiration from journal articles which you or your supervisor/tutor feel are well presented. Read through the articles that you have chosen, and ask yourself the following questions:

What have the authors included in the abstract/summary?
How much space is dedicated to each of the different sections?
How frequently are references used? What are the references used for?
Which techniques does the author use to keep different sections of the article brief?
How do the authors introduce their articles? Do they start broadly and then focus on their topic? Is any knowledge assumed?
How are the methods described? How much detail is provided?
How is the data presented? Is the data described in the text? How frequently are figures referred to in the text? How have figures and tables been labelled? Which kinds of figures and tables are the easiest to read? Which kinds of figures show the results most effectively?
How do the authors reach conclusions? Do they refer to the work of other authors to provide support for their conclusions? Are any problems with the experiments discussed? What techniques do authors use to explain results that don’t fit?