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er more recognizable geographic area. Someone else should be able to go to the exact location of your study if they want to repeat or check your work, or just visit your study area. NOTE: For laboratory studies you should not report the date and location of the study UNLESS it is relevant. Most often it is not. Top of Page Describe your experimental design clearly. Be sure to include the hypotheses you tested, controls, treatments, variables measured, how many replicates you had, what you actually measured, what form the data take, etc. Always identify treatments by the variable or treatment name, NOT by an ambiguous, generic name or number (e.g., use "2.5% saline" rather than "test 1".) When your paper includes more than one experiment, use subheadings to help organize your presentation by experiment. A general experimental design worksheet is available to help plan your experiments in the core courses. Describe the protocol for your study in sufficient detail that other scientists could repeat your work to verify your findings. Foremost in your description should be the "quantitative" aspects of your study - the masses, volumes, incubation times, concentrations, etc., that another scientist needs in order to duplicate your experiment. When using standard lab or field methods and instrumentation, it is not always necessary to explain the procedures (e.g., serial dilution) or equipment used (e.g., autopipetter) since other scientists will likely be familiar with them already. You may want to identify certain types of equipment by brand or category (e.g., ultracentrifuge vs. prep centrifuge). It is appropriate to give the source for reagents used parenthetically, e.g., "....poly-l-Lysine (Sigma #1309)." When using a method described in another published source, you can save time and words by referring to it and providing the relevant citation to the source. Always make sure to describe any modifications you have made of a standard or published method. Describe how the data were summarized and analyzed. Here you will indicate what types of data summaries and analyses were employed to answer each of the questions or hypotheses tested. The information should include: how the data were summarized (Means, percent, etc) and how you are reporting measures of variability (SD,SEM, etc) this lets you avoid having to repeatedly indicate you are using mean ± SD. data transformation (e.g., to normalize or equalize variances) statistical tests used with reference to the particular questions they address, e.g., "A Paired t-test was used to compare mean flight duration before and after applying stablizers to the glider's wings." "One way ANOVA was used to compare mean weight gain in weight-matched calves fed the three different rations." any other numerical or graphical techniques used to analyze the data Top of Page Here is some additional advice on particular problems common to new scientific writers. Problem: The Methods section is prone to being wordy or overly detailed. Avoid repeatedly using a single sentence to relate a single action; this results in very lengthy, wordy passages. A related sequence of actions can be combined into one sentence to improve clarity and readability: Problematic Example: This is a very long and wordy description of a common, simple procedure. It is characterized by single actions per sentence and lots of unnecessary details. "The petri dish was placed on the turntable. The lid was then raised slightly.