Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar

It might be argued that careful attention to grammar is not necessary for scientific writing, but only for writing in the humanities. This is a false dichotomy. Poor grammar or spelling diminishes work in any field. Every time a student confuses its with it’s, or lose with loose (or some similar infraction) the reader takes note. Students should expect marks to be deducted for writing of poor quality. I highly recommend The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White as an excellent resource. This book is widely available, easy to read, and will help you improve your writing in all genres.

Tenses

Each section in your report has a specific purpose and therefore a standardized tense expression as follows:
Abstract: past tense
Introduction: present tense (The background information is current information)
Purpose statement: Past tense. This statement comes at the end of your introduction and reflects the reason for your paper.
Materials and Methods: past tense (you are relating information about something you did in the past)
Results: past tense
Discussion: past tense when discussing your results, but future tense when you discuss future work to complete.

Capitalizing/italicizing names:

• Italicize all scientific names (Genus and species).
• As a general rule, names are not capitalized, unless they are part of an official list of names, in which case they have become proper nouns and are capitalized.
• e.g. Echerichia coli, Drosophila melanogaster, red-checked ground squirrel, Oregon forest snail (Algonia townsendiana), Western red cedar (A place name), Bryde’s whale (person’s name),
• Ornithology exception: Common bird names should be capitalized: – Yellow Warbler, Red-winged Blackbird

Other notes

• Avoid slang language and contractions, and use the appropriate scientific terms to explain your project. However, there is a fine balance between sounding professional and sounding unnatural or contrived. If you do not know what a word means, you should not be using it. Consider your audience as well – you should be writing at a level of your current year of study; therefore your paper should be attainable for your classmates and not dumbed-down or over their heads. Will your instructor be impressed with your writing style, or think you were writing for highschool students?
• Always use metric measurements – you are in Canada (and all scientific literature uses the metric system). Be consistent in your measurements as well (units, significant figures).
• The first time you use an acronym like sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) write it out in full followed by the abbreviation in brackets. Next time just use the abbreviated version.

Additional Resources

A more comprehensive guide for writing in the life sciences is available in the TWU library. This is an excellent resource and is highly recommended:

Pechenik, J.A. (2013). A short guide to writing about biology. Pearson, New York.