Scientific writing is expected to be clear, concise, and straightforward.  The following notes on style should be applied to everything you write for this course.  Specific instructions for specific kinds of paper are given elsewhere.  Instructions for a scientific report (lab report), a common form of scientific paper in which original data are presented, can be seen by clicking here.

General Style:

• use correct grammar and a style appropriate for formal writing, without colloquial phrases (slang) or contractions (don't say don't.)
• use a clear, straightforward style -- say what you mean plainly without being cute,  grandiose,  meaninglessly catchy, or unnecessarily dramatic. (e.g. avoid  things like "the antelope hopping up and down like jack-in-the-boxes" or "this paper is of earthshaking importance if we are to comprehend the disaster overshadowing the red-cockaded woodpecker" or "the authors set off fearlessly to the wilds of Kenya" or "have you ever wondered about the amazing colors found in birds?")
• be concise (do not use a whole lot of extra words like these that do not do a great deal to add to the meaning of any particular sentence but rather detract from the general overall clarity of the paper in question).
• use simple, straightforward language -- if you have a choice between a simple, widely understood word and a complex, rarely used word, use the simple word (elucidating the purport of sentences like this one is an ineluctably intractable problem.)
• avoid being redundant (just say each thing once, don't repeat it over and over, don't keep saying the same thing in different places, don't repeat yourself like this).
• use active voice for a clear, snappy style that focuses the reader on the action (e.g. say "The authors made mistakes" rather than "Mistakes were made by the authors.")
• avoid the use of synonyms; it's clearer to resue a word throughout your report than to try to come up with different ways to say the same thing (if you say something is "interesting" in one sentence, that something else is "important", that a third aspect is "fascinating" people will be confused, trying to figure out the distinction between these.  If you mean the same thing for all of them, use the same word.)
• write in 3rd person for most of the paper.  You can use the 1st person for describing what you did and found, but otherwise use the 3rd person.  DO NOT use the 2nd person -- avoid "you" and do NOT write in a style in which you are giving instructions (write a paper, not a lab manual or instruction list like this.)
• do not use "filler" sentences that have no additional meaning of their own. (e.g. don't say "The authors used several methods to study woodpeckers."  DO say "The authors studied (some specific aspect of ) woodpeckers by (fill in the specific methods)."

• write in your own words -- state material in your own way so that it clearly makes sense, not as it is written by someone else (in a lab manual, assignment, text, or cited paper for example)
• avoid or explain technical jargon so that your paper would make sense to someone with only a basic (Biology 110-120 level) knowledge of biology.
• write so that the paper would make sense on its own to someone who had not read any of the assigned background material or the assignment. Do not refer to things that only make sense in the context of the assignment (e.g. "the class,"  "this lab exercise," "the students," "the group," "the textbook," "the review paper," and "the research paper." )
• when making reference to previously published works, paraphrase rather than quoting.  Quotes are often recommended in English literature papers where the justifications for your points are the actual written words from the literature.  Here, the justification for your points should be the data obtained and methods used, so present this information in your own words.  Note that you still must cite the source of any information or opinion you use, even if it is written in your own words.
• if you use abbreviations, indicate the meaning of the abbreviation the first time it's used; use the abbreviation for the rest of the report.  If you only use a term or name once, do NOT give an abbreviation for it.

• always give the scientific name of the organisms being studied, at least once, in your paper.  If you are studying organisms with standard, widely used common names, you can give the common and scientific name the first time you refer to each organism and use the common name after that.
• scientific names must be presented either in italics or underlined; genus names are always capitalized, and the specific epithet is always lower case.  (Example: your scientific name can correctly be presented as either Homo sapiens or Homo sapiens.)
• once you have presented the full scientific name (genus and specific epithet) once in a paper, you may use the following standard form of abbreviation as long as it unambiguously indicates the species: give the capitalized first letter of the genus name, with a period after it, followed by the full specific eptihet.  For example, once you have refered to Homo sapiens once in your paper, you may abbreviate it after that as H. sapiens. In situations in which this abbreviation could be confusing -- for example, if you are discussing two species from different genera, but the different genera start with the same letter -- do not use the abbreviation; in this case, you must present the entire scientific name of each species.
• scientfic names are proper nouns, like your name; in general, use them in sentences the way you would use a person's name in a sentence.  In particular, do not use "the" or "a" before a scientific name -- for example,  say "I described the ecology of Upupa epops" NOT "...of the Upupa epops." (Note that this use is like the use of someone's name -- you would say "I see Fred Smith," NOT "I see the Fred Smith.")

• when refering to units of measurement, present all in the metric system (do NOT use degrees Farenheight, inches, feet...)
• always give the units for any measurements presented.  The metric system has standard abbreviations for units; you may use these (but no other abbreviation.)
• if you have completed a statistical analysis, present the standard information for the statistic calculated (typically the value of the test statistic, the sample size, and the "p" value -- that is, the probability of finding the observed trend by random chance) in parentheses at the end of a sentence stating in words whether or not a trend was observed. [Example: "The chance of a dog urinating on a fire hydrant did not depend significantly on the color of the fire hydrant (c2=0.48, N=67, p>0.05.)"]

Literature citation:  if you use any information (data or opinion) from a previously published paper, you must cite it using the author's last names and the year of publication in the body of your paper so that the source of the information is clear.  To do this, give the last name of the author(s) and the year of publication of the paper.  There are different formats for literature citation.  One standard format is given here; this is the format you should use unless your instructor tells you otherwise.

If there is one author of the paper:

•  Graur (1993) reviewed mammal phylogeny.
•  Mammal phylogeny is poorly understood (Graur 1993)

•  Gosling and Petrie (1990) studied lekking behavior in a small antelope called a topi.
•  Topi are small antelope that show lekking behavior (Gosling and Petrie 1990)

• Stangle et al. (1992) found that allele frequencies in red-cockaded woodpeckers did not differ significantly from Hardy-Weinberg proportions.
•  Allele frequencies in red-cockaded woodpeckers did not differ significantly from Hardy-Weinberg proportions (Stangle et al. 1992).

Gosling, L.M. and M. Petrie. 1990. Lekking in topi: a consequence of satellite behaviour by small males at hotspots.  Animal Behaviour 40:272-287.

Note that this includes all authors of the paper, the year, the title of the paper, the title of the journal (Animal Behaviour) in which the paper was published, the volume number of the journal (40) and the page numbers of the paper (272-287.)

The literature cited section must include all papers cited within your paper and no additional papers.  Cite only those papers that you actually read.  If you use information that a paper you read attributes to a previous study, you should still cite the paper in which you read it, not a previous study that you did not read (you can make it clear in your writing that the results came from a previous study.)

If you ever use information in a paper that you obtained from the world-wide web, cite the author of the web page, the title of the page if it has one, the URL (the address of the page) and indicated the date that YOU accessed this information.