6. Bibliography and Appendices

In some report writing system, like theses, there is an item called bibliography which refers to background reading that the author of the report has produced, background reading that is not reflected in an ac­tual citation, took place in the paper. Generally, in published papers this is omitted but there you just have to go along with what's customary.

Appendices. If you have information, as often is the case, that's of a very specialized nature, for example: the individual data themselves, rather ab­struse and not of general interest, then it often helps to put in an ap­pendix or a couple of appendices where the specialized material is put in the back for those who really want it not to impede the others. A little semantic mistake that people often make is they don't realize that the appendix is deep cut from the paper itself. For example, they refer to the appendix on page 3 and page 7, they say, "We, as shown above..." but actually appendix isn't above or below. It's just in a separate loca­tion. You can't locate it in any part of the paper. It stands by itself.

7. The Style of a Scientific Report

I've left one item out – the general question of style. I ought to say something specifically as I close. Try and make your paper, your report as interesting as possible. You gain no browny points by producing a dull report or a dull paper. Now actually, the tradition used to be dif­ferent. The idea was that this wasn't Joe Blow writing a report – this was science acquiring a new bit of information and there was a tenden­cy, perhaps fifty years ago, to make reports very pompous and very dull. Well, these days I think we're becoming more informal and I think that reports are becoming more readable. Sometimes people nowadays allow the active tense "We did this and we did that, and we feel this and we feel the other." There's still a few places where this isn't allowed and you have to use the passive tense. I think that's bad because, for one thing, it isn't obvious when you say, "It is believed." That may mean I believed or the scientific world as a whole believes. So it's ambiguous and besides I think it makes reading very bad. I think the aim ought to be to say, "Look, the readers of my report are to have lots of other things to do. At least let them not groan every time they see my report and say, "Oh God! There's another report from Joe Blow. God! Let me get a cup of coffee!" The feeling ought to be: I'm produc­ing the report, I've got readers, I'm going to make it a bit as interesting as I can. I'm not going to be entertaining and produce silly jokes or something like that. I mean, you know, this is a fairly serious business, but on the other hand, I'm going to try and avoid dullness and make the paper what it ought to be and that is a method of selling myself and my work in as appropriate way as, in as good a way as possible.

Well, I've come to the end of this lecture. I've given you more or less the run-through of the report, the simple one, the surface approach. These are all obvious things that are involved. However, there are lots of more things involved in report writing: the subconscious, the sub­tlety, the things that are there although you don't always think of them as being there, which in fact often make or break the report. They de­termine whether the report really represents the experi­ment, really does justice to the work that was done. That's the topic we'll take up next time.