Checklist for reports#

Writing a good scientific report is difficult and requires attention to a lot of details. On this page, we will collect some of the things that are useful to check before handing in a report. Note that this list is not meant to be exhaustive — it’s just a convenient reminder for some of the more common problems.

  • Units: Check that all the numbers and plot axes that should have units actually have units.

  • Axis ranges: Make sure all plots have reasonable axis ranges. (If your code deals with numbers that are not incredibly small or large, but you end up with plot axes with a scale of e.g. \(10^{20}\) or \(10^{-20}\), then this is often a sign that something has gone wrong in your code.) A useful rule is to always set the axis ranges “manually” (e.g. with plt.xlim(...) and plt.ylim(...)) for all plots you produce, since this forces you to pay attention to the axis ranges.

  • Grammar: Read through your report to remove as many grammatical mistakes as you can. Some common mistakes to look out for are:

    • Wrong/missing capitalization (Wrong: “penning trap”, “Penning Trap”. Correct: “Penning trap”.)

    • Singular versus plural forms (e.g. when to use “is” and when to use “are”)

    • The use of “a” versus “an”

    • Switching between “we” and “I”

    • Incomplete sentences (Wrong: “Derivation in Appendix A.” Correct: “The derivation is given in Appendix A”.)

  • Avoid empty lines after equations: Avoid empty lines after equations in your .tex file, unless you actually want to start a new paragraph in your text. (LaTeX will indent the text following an empty line.) If you just want some “air” surrounding the equations in your .tex file, use empty comment lines.

  • Quotation marks: To get correct quotation marks, you should use LaTeX code like this

    Writing a report is ``fun''.

    not like this

    Writing a report is "fun".

  • Consistent mathematical notation: Make sure the mathematical notation is consistent. For instance, check that all vector quantities are typeset like \mathbf{x} or \vec{x}.

  • Explain all mathematical symbols: The first time a new symbol appears in an equation, the surrounding text should specify what it means.

  • Text in math mode: Regular words that appear in mathematical expressions (i.e. in math mode in LaTeX) should be typeset with \text{}. Correct: y_{\text{analytical}}. Wrong: y_{analytical}

  • Explicitly refer to all figures/tables: All figures/tables you include in your report should be explicitly mentioned in the main text.

  • Explicitly cite all references: All references you include in your reference list should be explicitly cited in the main text. If you don’t cite it, remove it.

  • Explicitly mention appendices: Have you added any appendices? If so you must refer to them at the relevant point(s) in the main text.

  • Consistent use of either British English or American English spelling: If you have some time to really polish your report, try to be consistently British or consistently American in how you spell English words. Some common differences are the use of ou (British) versus o (American) in words like colour/color, and the use of ise (British) versus ize (American) in words like analyse/analyze and discretise/discretize.