Guidelines for writing Competition and individual size lab report (F and t tests) We will follow the general format of a scientific journal for your this report; this will help you prepare for writing an article for a scientific publication. These notes should be used to supplement the instructions given in the outline for the exercise. Top of the write up. The title of the exercise should go first, center justified, followed by your name, a line space below, also center justified. The Abstract should follow with the title Abstract center justified, then a one line gap then the abstract itself (not to exceed 250 words) fully justified. Report must be written in your own words. Do not copy and paste chunks from other members of your group. This includes all sections of the report. Don’t think that because the introduction is different, that I won’t notice that the methods, results and discussion are not. However, youmay use figures and tables generated by members of your group in your report, but if you do, you must take responsibility for any errors that occur in these tables and figures. Do not just copy and paste from the handouts into your write-up; you need to put this information into your own words. Also do not copy and paste from websites (this is plagiarism – a serious offense that gets a zero) without referring to the work in the references and rewriting it in your own words. For referencing the handout see References, below. Your report is not a narrative of what was done – we all met at the Arboretum, it was a lovely sunny day and the birds were singing etc. etc. Keep it impersonal – just the facts. Terminology and other notes on grammar, calculations etc. Fully justify text. The text in this guideline that wraps around a line (such as this one) is fully justified. The first line of a paragraph is always indented by one tab key. Tenses for different sections of the report – the introduction will use past tense when referring to previous studies and future tense when describing what you will do in the lab exercise. Check on present tense use especially in the introduction. However, reference to previous work on the topic is in the past tense. While the final paragraph saying what will be done is in the future tense. The methods section is always in the past tense. The results section is in the past tense. The discussion of your results is in the past tense as is the comparison of your results with other studies. However, suggested further work is in the future tense. The word data is plural, the singular is datum. Therefore, you should write “data were collected” not “data was collected”; or “data are collected” not or “data is collected” (but you will rarely need to use this tense because data you collected will be reported in the past tense and data that will be collected (e.g. in the introduction) will be in the future tense. Spacing – In the text, two spaces follow a period (.) and a colon (:), an ...

1. Guidelines for writing Competition and individual size lab
report (F and t tests)
We will follow the general format of a scientific journal for
your this report; this will help you prepare for writing an article
for a scientific publication. These notes should be used to
supplement the instructions given in the outline for the exercise.
Top of the write up. The title of the exercise should go first,
center justified, followed by your name, a line space below, also
center justified. The Abstract should follow with the title
Abstract center justified, then a one line gap then the abstract
itself (not to exceed 250 words) fully justified.
Report must be written in your own words. Do not copy and
paste chunks from other members of your group. This includes
all sections of the report. Don’t think that because the
introduction is different, that I won’t notice that the methods,
results and discussion are not. However, youmay use figures
and tables generated by members of your group in your report,
but if you do, you must take responsibility for any errors that
occur in these tables and figures. Do not just copy and paste
from the handouts into your write-up; you need to put this
information into your own words. Also do not copy and paste
from websites (this is plagiarism – a serious offense that gets a
zero) without referring to the work in the references and
rewriting it in your own words. For referencing the handout see
References, below. Your report is not a narrative of what was
done – we all met at the Arboretum, it was a lovely sunny day
and the birds were singing etc. etc. Keep it impersonal – just
the facts.
Terminology and other notes on grammar, calculations etc.

2. Fully justify text. The text in this guideline that wraps around a
line (such as this one) is fully justified.
The first line of a paragraph is always indented by one tab key.
Tenses for different sections of the report – the introduction
will use past tense when referring to previous studies and future
tense when describing what you will do in the lab exercise.
Check on present tense use especially in the introduction.
However, reference to previous work on the topic is in the past
tense. While the final paragraph saying what will be done is in
the future tense. The methods section is always in the past
tense. The results section is in the past tense. The discussion
of your results is in the past tense as is the comparison of your
results with other studies. However, suggested further work is
in the future tense.
The word data is plural, the singular is datum. Therefore, you
should write “data were collected” not “data was collected”; or
“data are collected” not or “data is collected” (but you will
rarely need to use this tense because data you collected will be
reported in the past tense and data that will be collected (e.g. in
the introduction) will be in the future tense.
Spacing – In the text, two spaces follow a period (.) and a colon
(:), and one space follows a comma (,) and a semicolon (;).
Double space the lines in the text throughout the report,
including references with the following exceptions. Lines may
be single spaced in Tables (for sure) and in Table and Figure
titles.
Numbers – A zero must always be put before a decimal point if
there is not another number before it, e.g. 0.45 not .45. This
applies all through the report including in figures and tables.
Do not use more than three decimal places. In the text, numbers
less than 10 are written out in full – e.g. one not 1, three not 3,

3. but 10 not ten, 12 not twelve, and 125 not one hundred and
twenty-five. If the numbers are less than 10 are associated with
a unit of measurement then the number is given along with the
unit of measurement, e.g. 1 m2, not one m2, 5 cm, not five cm.
However, you cannot start a sentence with a number unless it is
spelled out, e.g. Five quadrats were used to sample the
herbaceous vegetation.
See below for numbering tables, figures and appendices.
Calculations – Show an example of your calculations of values
of F-tests, and t-tests.
Results section: You must always use words to summarize your
results and link the tables and figures. The first sentence will
normally say. The data collected for the sand pines are
presented in Appendix I. More appendices may be needed
depending on how many different types of data sheets were used
or sites were examined. Never start a sentence Figure 1 shows,
or Table 1 shows, or with an abbreviation! Always use the
following style: The species-area curve plot for the herbaceous
species became asymptotic at 13 species (Figure 1). Or: The
data for N, f , and ID for the woody species at sites A and B are
summarized in Table 1.
Tables and Figures
Try to be economical with your tables and figures; use as few as
possible to report your results.
You need to have “stand alone” titles for figures and tables.
That is the figure or table and their title could be lifted out of
the report and still make sense. For example:
Figure 1. Species-area curve for herbaceous plant species
collected at Troy Arboretum.

4. Figure 2. Logarithmic plots (log base 10) of species-area
relationship for woody plant species collected at Troy
Arboretum.
Numbering – Tables and Figures should be numbered in
increasing Arabic numerals (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4 etc.) in the order that
they are first cited in the text. The word Table or Figure is
always capitalized in the text when referring to a specific table
or figure (e.g. Table 1 not table 1, or Figure 1 not figure 1).
Don’t use abbreviated titles for figures and tables (i.e. don’t use
Fig. 1 or Tab. 1) Appendices are numbered in Roman Numerals
(I, II, etc.).
Tables and figures used in the report should preferably be
pasted into the relevant section of the report or placed in order
(tables first and then figures) following the references and
before the appendices.
Tables: These are prepared with the Table button on the toolbar
of your word processing program. Type the title in first, then
leave a line then insert the table.
Figures: If you use graphics programs to print off your figures,
you may not know which order you will put them in when you
print them and so may not be able to fully labe1 the figure at
that time. If this is the case, then give each figure a short label,
then either cut and paste your figure number and title on it, or
label the top of the page with the figure number (hand written is
ok here) and provide a list of figures with their numbers and
full titles on a page entitled Figures, which will precede all of
your figures.
On pie diagrams, make sure that you use the same colors for a
particular species in all of you pie diagrams. Use a new color
for each new species. Use a standard color (e.g. brown) for

5. bare patches. If you have a number of rare species you can pool
them in a category called “others”, again make sure this
category is in the same color on all of your pie diagrams.
Data sheets – you should attach your field data sheets as an
appendix. If they are readable and have not suffered too badly
from the weather you may use the originals. If you choose to
type your data sheets up, that is fine as well. If you missed a
lab and you used someone else’s data sheets in your group to
get your data, then you must either photocopy them or type
them up and acknowledge whose data you used. Data sheets are
put into the Appendix. If there are multiple data sheets in your
appendix, then a cover sheet should be added containing the
word Appendix, in bold type, followed by a list of the data
sheets in the order they appear in the appendix and numbered as
described in the next sentence. They should be labeled
Appendix I, II, III etc. in Roman numerals in the order they
appear in the appendix. You should label each data sheet with
its respective number at the top in hand writing. Appendices
are just for your data sheets.
References
References are listed in alphabetic order of the first author’s
last name. Do not number the references for papers or book
chapters etc. Only URLs are numbered. This is the only thing
that will be different than in the instructions to authors given by
the American Fisheries Society: http://fisheries.org/books-
journals/writing-tools/style-guide/
All references cited should be put into a reference section with
the following format for parts of the text or papers (use hanging
indent – except for numbered URLs):
McClave, J. T, and T. Sincich. 2009. Inferences based on a
single sample. Pages 316-319 in Statistics, 11th Edition,
Prentice Hall.

6. Gotelli, N. J., and L. G. Abele. 1982. Statistical distributions
of West Indian land-bird families. Journal of Biogeography
9:421-435.
Reference to lab handouts: Lab handouts should be referenced
along with the text or papers as follows:
Billington, N. 2016 (or date of the year in question).
Competition and individual size. Research Methodolgy and
Experimetal Design handout, Department of Biological
Sciences, Troy University, 3 (or relevant number of pages in the
handout) pp.
Similarly reference a relevant PowerPoint by giving the lecture
number and PowerPoint title.
It would be cited as Billington (2016) or (Billington 2016) in
the text. If you need to cite two of them, then label them 2016a
and 2016b.
Web sites should be numbered in the order first cited (after all
of the other references) and include a URL and title (if
available):
(1) http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ecophysiology/hilaria.htm
Intraspecific Competition in Hot Deserts
You must retain the computer files of your work for this course
until after you receive the final grade for the class or your lab
report is returned to you – a disk version or other information
storage method (e.g. memory stick) is highly recommended.
© Effin Publications
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