|
This page is dedicated to Technical Writing. There are
many types of Technical Writing and many resources available to help improve and
produce technical documentation.
Links to Technical Writing Resources:
Writing
Instructions: Links to East Bay Society for Technical Communication site
with Samples
Writing
Descriptions: Links to East Bay Society for Technical Communication site
with Samples
Links to sites on Research Notebooks
Keeping a
Research Notebook at Swarthmore
Scientific
Notebook guidelines
UCSF Lab
Notebook guidelines
Book Factory Notebook guidelines
Legal
guidelines
Stanfords Lab Notebook guidelines
Tracy Specific Technical Writing Guidelines
How to Write a Data Book,
and Data Book Rubric,
Formal Technical Paper
and Rubric
IB Internal
Assessment Rubric, IB Internal
Assessment Marking Form
Overall Suggestions for Formal Technical Writing
(from T.R. Girill 2006)
- Draft and Revise
- Actively look for ways to improve your draft
- Revise Content and structure first, then
style, then mechanical details.
- Ask "Is the size of this passage proportional
to its importance?"
- Test your writing by ear; read aloud to
yourself what you write.
Writing Effective Abstracts ( From
T.R. Girill 2006)
Goal
- A concise, compact surrogate for your whole
paper
- a self-contained but meaningful summary of
your work
- Someone who had never seen your paper could
use to reliably judge its relevance to their interest
| Include |
Exclude |
| Your topic or problem (purpose), but usually not your hypotheses
unless directed to do so. |
Background information (except to briefly frame the
problem) |
| Scope of work |
Historical details |
| Treatment (experimental, theoretical, methodological, practical) |
Literature review, cross reference, footnotes |
| Novel methods or alogorithms (but always age, sex, genus, species of
biological subjects) |
Procedural details, apparatus diagrams |
| Key numerical or statistical results |
Equations, formulas, data tables, graphs |
| Significance; interesting conclusions |
General principals or trends, common knowledge |
| "Keywords"--searchable terms, distinctions, comparisons that
identify your work to others |
Definitions of technical terms |
Techniques for Abstract writing
- Write your abstract last, after you have
written your technical paper.
- Survey each section of your paper and distill
it into a sentence or two
- Find and extract your key claims
- Preserve key distinctions, comparisons, and
outcomes
- Arrange sentences into a clear logical
summary
- Be specific, not vague in your vocabulary as
well as your assertions
- Make your abstract lead your readers to your
unique paper.
- If you have trouble summarizing the problem
that you addressed, try starting your first sentence with " this study...."
Sources to Purchase Lab Research
Notebooks
Scientific Notebook Company
Eureka Lab Notebooks
Sources to Purchase Lab Data Books:
(Hayden McNeil 100 page
Book)
Tracy High School Student Store
San Joaquin Delta College Bookstore
|