Writing in the Sciences
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Scientific Writing Conventions
The IMRaD Structure
Most scientific papers follow IMRaD format:
- Introduction: What is the question? Why does it matter?
- Methods: How did you investigate? (Reproducibility is key)
- Results: What did you find? (Data and observations, minimal interpretation)
- Discussion: What do the results mean? How do they relate to existing research?
Scientific Writing Style
- Precise, unambiguous language
- Third person, passive voice (though active is increasingly accepted)
- Present tense for established facts, past tense for specific experiments
- Quantitative: specific numbers, not "many" or "significant" without data