Writing Lab Reports: Writing Process

Overview of the writing process

Writing involves not only your ability to string a sentence together, but also how you manage the process. How do you effectively plan and organize the different stages of writing? How do you create space in your day to sit down and write, and find the time and energy to review? Get the process right, and you will feel a lot more confident.

This page outlines one potential process that you can adapt as needed. It leads you through how to think, plan, draft, edit, and proofread.

Think

Before writing your lab report, answer these questions for yourself:

• Who is this report for (the reader)?
• What is the structure of the report (your tutor may have the template for you to use)?
  • NOTE: The fourth tab of this guide, Sections in Detail, provides information to help you.
• Is all the necessary information available (see your lab notebook)?
• Are there relevant references to place this work in an established area of scientific research (check with your tutor if this is necessary for your report)?

You will probably assume that your reader will be a tutor. However, since your tutor knows this topic, you may feel you do not have to ‘spell everything out’. So, it may be better to imagine writing for a friend who is interested in this topic but does not know too much about it. This way, you will work to make everything clear. Having a reader in mind is very important; it determines how you write.

What does your reader know and what do you want to say? Take a report you will be working on and complete the table below.

These are all questions that the reader will want answered when reading your report. You may also prefer to create a mind map at this stage. Use whatever method helps you to answer important questions about your work.

Plan

You will need to know the structure of the report you are writing. Check with your tutor as they may have a particular structure for you to use. Also, if you are lucky enough to write a paper for a journal, you will need to check the structure, formatting and referencing style for that particular journal. A standard structure for a report is (bold items typically required)...

• Abstract.
• Title.
• Summary.
• Keywords (optional).
• Table of contents (advised).
• Introduction.
• Literature review.
• Method (procedure, equipment).
• Results and Analysis.
• Discussion.
• Conclusion and Recommendations.
• References.
• Appendices (large tables of data, illustrations, etc.).

Draft

You can begin a plan with the above structure outline, writing a few key sentences for each required section. Putting in place this sentence outline will help you bypass the 'blank white page syndrome' that many writers face.

Once you have some skeleton sentences in each or most of your sections, try building in further sentences in a section you feel most comfortable with. Many writers feel that the Methods section is the easiest place to start as it is the most concrete.

Each paragraph you draft will develop an idea or concept. When you are writing sentence outlines in the planning phase, the sentences will probably express an idea for a paragraph. If you have several outline sentences for a section, this will probably correspond with different paragraphs within that section. In the drafting phase, you need to develop these ideas through supporting sentences.

Edit

You must revise your work. You revise your work to check it is making sense, possibly adding or deleting things, and address any 'big picture' issues in how you have expressed yourself. You might want to revise your work after each section, and then finally look at all the sections when reviewing the whole work.

If you leave your write-up to the last minute, then you may find you have no time to do this, so make sure your time management includes revision. Most experienced writers have several revisions whereas beginning writers tend to just produce one draft. Be prepared, therefore, for several revisions.

Editing checklist

• Revisit the assignment description to ensure your work covers the stated requirements.
• Is your message coherent and logical within individual paragraphs? What about between sections?
• Check that paragraphs are a logical 'fit' for the section heading under which they appear. Move them if not.
• Think of your reader: check you haven't introduced an acronym without an explanation.
• Check that your results are clearly presented and your figures support what you're saying.

Proofread

It is best to edit for the 'big picture' or content/structure concerns, above, before moving on to proofreading, which addresses smaller (usually sentence-level) issues in the writing. These issues may include typos, spelling mistakes, bad grammar, inaccurate labelling of figures and tables, repetitive word choice, incorrect referencing, and similar.

Proofreading tactics

• Read your work aloud. This method is embraced by many professional authors because it prevents you from skimming over what you have written and missing things. It helps you hear problems like confusing phrasing, disruptive sentence lengths, and so on.
  • Alternately, listen to someone else read your work aloud. You and a peer can trade reports and do this, or you can use the 'read aloud' function of your word processor to have your computer narrate your text.
• Use the spellchecker and grammar checker in Word (with caution). These tools aren't perfect, but they are correct often enough to be valuable. Do investigate potential mistakes flagged by your computer.
• Use referencing software (with caution). Endnote and other reference managers can save time and ensure consistency across your citations, but do double-check the formatting produced.

Proofreading checklist

• Have you used complete sentences? Edit any fragments you find.
• Is the style correct for your audience/context?
• Check your use of passive vs. active voice.
• Confirm if the first-person 'I' and 'we' are acceptable, or if you will need to write in the third-person voice.
• Is spelling accurate and consistent? (Remember to set your word processor to 'UK English' unless submitting to a journal outside the UK.)
• Are citations accurate and consistent?
• Do all sources used appear in your reference list?
• Are references formatted/ordered in the correct way? (See our page on referencing for help.)
• Are you following the correct style guide?
• How are your word choices and variety?
  • Eliminate unneeded repetition.
  • Use your word processor's thesaurus to vary language (within reason: don't use strange or archaic vocabulary when a simpler word will do the trick).