Scientists' roles include writing lab reports clearly so their experiments may be understood and replicated. To write effective reports, the format and style need to be consistent and also reflect the discipline for which they are intended (e.g. biology as opposed to engineering).

For undergraduate students, the purpose of a lab report is to show an understanding of the scientific concepts in the course. It is a good idea to reread the background theory in the lab manual, answer the questions in the lab manual, and consult the lab demonstrator or teaching assistant for clarification before writing a lab report.

The links below offer students advice on how to write so that readers can understand complex material and how to write general science and discipline-specific lab reports. Many of the sites provide useful examples. There one links to several style manual sites as well.

The Science of Scientific Writing

Writing a Science Lab Report handout

Lab Report Style Manuals

Discipline specific science lab report writing

Lab report writers for all disciplines need to consider their audience, the purpose of their lab report assignment, and the expectations for each of the elements in the lab report. It is also important to maintain a clear focus and to edit the report for grammar and punctuation. The following list of web links includes specific criteria for science departments when writing science lab reports. If you cannot find the information that you seek on a website for one discipline, you may find it on a website for another discipline. First and foremost, follow your lab manual or your instructor’s directions for writing the lab report.

Writing an Engineering Lab Report

Writing a Physics Lab Report

Writing a Chemistry Lab Report

Writing a Biology Lab Report

The "Writing a Science Lab Report handout "provides a general introduction to lab report writing for entry level science courses and is intended to familiarize students with the criteria for writing university-level lab reports.

What will I be able to do after reading this handout?

• Understand the purpose of writing lab reports for science courses
• Consider your lab report assignment criteria as outlined in the lab manual
• Consider formatting and voice before writing a lab report
• Identify the basic elements of a science lab report
• Use Microsoft Word options to display scientific symbols necessary for writing lab reports

When might I use this handout?

• When I don’t know how to get started writing a lab report for courses in chemistry, physics, biology, engineering, and mathematics
• When I am ready to edit a lab report for format, content, and style

How should I use this handout?

• As a guide to understanding some basic guidelines for a lab report
• As a checklist for criteria to consider when editing a lab report

Why should I use this handout?

• To help me write an appropriate lab report

This article deals not with the organization of a lab report, but rather the organization of sentences and paragraphs within scientific writing. For those who have often heard from their readers that their writing is hard to follow and unclear, this article may prove to be a turning point in your writing career. Topics covered include writing with the reader’s expectations in mind, limiting the separation between the subject and the verb, and placing new information in the stress position. Though this article was written in 1990, the content is timeless, especially for writers of complex ideas, such as writers of science.

There are two main reasons to follow a discipline specific style manual:

• To provide readers with sufficient information so they are able to access articles, books, or websites from your reference list
• To maintain academic integrity and avoid plagiarism by properly referencing the source of your information

This physics specific style manual is available for downloading as a PDF document. It offers instructions for reporting scientific results with requirements for punctuation and voice.

This website offers a synopsis of the American Chemistry Society style guide for referencing books and journals.

Engineering lab reports are like technical reports (e.g. instruction manual for a DVD player) with respect to writing style. They both include communicating complex concepts in a clear and interesting writing style with specific details. The web links below offer great examples of how students are encouraged to think of science report writing in the same way as they would any other writing assignment.

This web link assists writers in identifying the correct format and style to suit the audience in scientific report writing and links to grammar and punctuation exercises for engineers and scientists.

This website has links relating to the definition of a lab report, information on the importance of project notes, types of lab reports, general format of a lab report for electrical engineering, the importance of each element to the reader, examples to follow, and the lab writing process. However, the best feature of this web site is the links under additional resources to guides about audience, purpose, and focus that are helpful for graduate and undergraduate students writing for any discipline. Information on this site is quite thorough; however, a lot of clicking is required to access it.

In order to differentiate the physics style of report writing from writing for other departments, it is helpful to view a sample article from a physics journal. In physics, by adding an explanation of the concepts underlying your experiment in the discussion section, you demonstrate a level of understanding of your experimental results above knowing how to use equations appropriately.

This website is a quick reference that begins with three questions to ask of your lab report to ensure you have met all the criteria. It has an outline of the elements of a physics lab report and includes a grading scheme that though not applicable for your course, it is helpful to self-evaluate your lab report.

If you scroll to the bottom of this website, it has examples of common errors in writing, phrases to avoid in lab report writing, and a brief list of the essential parts of a report.

On this site, you’ll find a sample physics publication in a traditional format for undergraduate physics students with links to handouts on formatting a lab report and a lab report checklist.

Recording life processes and systems requires many descriptive terms. It is important not only to include all the necessary information but also to write with focus - addressing all the criteria needed for each lab report section. It may be necessary to consult a style manual for lab report writing for a particular subdivision of biology (e.g. ecology or botany) to follow the accepted method of reporting data such as the nomenclature of bacteria.

This website provides a quick reference for the elements of biology lab reports with specific guidelines for length and questions to evaluate each section of a biology lab report. It includes comments on writing style.

In the chemistry lab you are physically manipulating properties of matter so a good lab report is largely dependent on technical lab skills. Since precision is important to achieve the expected experiment results, communicating the results with clear, concise, and comprehensive writing is also important.

This website outlines the conventions of writing chemistry lab reports and covers verb tense, person, writing ethics, great examples of clear and concise writing with practice exercises in chemistry lab reports, and information on accessing a chemistry style manual.

The website describes the purpose of the following sections of a biochemistry lab report: abstract, introduction/theory, experimental procedure, results, discussion, and conclusion.