Capitalization. — In English titles of books or articles only the first word, 

 proper nouns, and proper adjectives are capitalized; in titles of English serials 

 principal words are capitalized; in foreign citations the particular national 

 practice is followed throughout, except that the first word of a society's name 

 or a series of publications (or the abbreviation for it) is capitalized. Adjectives 

 formed from the names of countries are capitalized. 



STYLE If a report is written for a definite publication, 



the style of that publication should be ascer- 

 tained and followed ; if the report is not for publication, the writer should select 

 a style and follow it. Abbreviation, capitalization, compounding, use of numerals, 

 punctuation, tabular form, and references must be correct, but they must also be 

 consistent. Commercial publishers and learned societies usually have style 

 books, and it is suggested that the prospective writer obtain one of these. 



Some style manuals to be recommended are the United States Government 

 Printing Office Style Manual (1945), Manual of Style (1937), and Words into 

 Type (Skillin and Gay, 1948). Further information on abbreviation is available 

 in Abbreviations for Scientific and Engineering Terms (1941). 



The preparation and reproduction of illustrations cannot receive full con- 

 sideration here. Again the reader is referred to handbooks on the subject: 

 Preparation of Illustrations for Reports of the United States Geological Survey 

 (Ridgway, 1920), which also includes brief descriptions of processes of repro- 

 duction, and Time-Series Charts (1947). 



SUMMARY Writing scientific reports is one of the most 



important tasks that a scientist is called upon 

 to do. Whether working at a frontier of knowledge or supervising an engineer- 

 ing project, he must describe his work and its results if he is to be a useful 

 member of the organization for which he works and of the society in which 

 he lives. 



Organization of the material and the presentation of it are tasks that only 

 the scientist himself can perform. He may and should get advice and sugges- 

 tions from others, but the performance itself must be his. He must first organize 

 his material, to paraphrase the Golden Rule, as he would have it organized if 

 he were one of the readers. Then, keeping the same rule in mind, he must 

 present the material clearly, simply, and straightforwardly. 



There is really no easy way to write a report. It is a task of organizing 

 and reorganizing, writing and rewriting, which Shaw's "Ten Commandments 

 for Technical Writers" (1955) sums up as follows: 



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