A good report of your project is like a short scientic paper. It should therefore have a title, abstract, introduction, material & methods (or model) section, results, discussion, and list of references. There are courses and booklets on how to write a good paper, and we trust you all know the basic things like: number your pages, label your axis, use a spelling-checker, etc. Here we additionally provide a short list of suggestions to turn your report into an scientific report:
1) Most importantly, a good paper reads like a good story. Do not paste a large number of figures and tables together with a minimum number of connecting sentences, but write a narrative from which you refer to a limited number of figures and tables. The reader should be able to enjoy the story without looking too much at the figures. In the text you may write sentences describing some interesting result, and just end that sentence with (see Fig. 3a).
2) Figures and tables have legends that should be self-explanatory. Without reading the text one should be able to understand what the figure is about, and what its main message is. Combine related results as panels into one figure. Describe each panel in the figure legend after a general sentence about the whole figure.
3) Do not write a sequence of all the things you did (rst this and then that). Make a selection of results that are truly interesting for the theme of your story and make a good plan for what is the most natural order to present these results. Tell your story with a vision, let it build up to its take-home message.
4) Scientific writing means that your sentences should basically be true statements. If you are not sure about the general validity of a statement you should rewrite it into something less general, or prove your point with a reference to the literature. Things you don't know, you may pose as a question, or write \it is tempting to speculate". Example: The hare and lynx densities oscillate because the lynxes have a saturated function response. ! The oscillations in the densities of hares and lynxes can be explained by a saturated functional response [reference].
5) Divide up your pages in subsections and paragraphs. Subsections should have a subtitle such that the reader knows what to expect. Each paragraph typically has a single take-home message. Check whether all its sentences are truly contributing to that take-home message. If not, those sentences probably belong to another paragraph. Split your paragraph when it contains too many take-home messages. End your important paragraphs with a summarizing sentence telling the reader what you have just told him/her.
6) Check your report for repeats. Do you have to describe the same things several times because you have a suboptimal order in which the results are described?
7) Be concise, do not elaborate on what is not important. Dare to make choices on what is important.
8) Plan on what you should write where. The introduction should make the reader interested and bring him/her up to the right level. The results section has paragraphs like: In order to test whether such and such, we did this and this. We found the following (see Fig 5), which means that... Therefore, we next tested whether ... The Discussion gives more interpretation, relates your results to related results in the literature, gives possible caveats, and follow up work.
9) Write in an active tense and let the most important subject of the sentence also be its subject. Don't write \Fig 3 shows that hares and lynxes oscillate due to", but write \Hares and lynxes oscillate due to ... (Fig. 3).", because it is the oscillation of hares and lynxes that is important, and not Fig. 3.
