A. Title & Abstract

The title is a clear, specific statement of the subject of your report. It introduces the reader to your paper and lets them know what to expect. Titles should be concise and informative and need not be complete sentences. Avoid filler words like "Studies on" or "Investigations of" and opening words like A, An, or The. Be as specific as possible. Avoid abbreviations and jargon. Do not use the lab manual titles as they provide no detail of the project's actual content. A particularly effective title states the results.

VAGUE: A Study of Aquatic Plants in a Pickle Jar

SPECIFIC: Competition Between Elodea canadensis and Ceratophyllum demersum in a Model Aquatic Ecosystem

PARTICULARLY EFFECTIVE: Drosophila melanogaster Wingless Gene Maps to Chromosome 2

If your report constitutes the results of an experiment where you manipulated variables and analyzed the result, include the independent and dependent variables, the direction of your results as well as the study organism/ subject in your title.

PARTICULARLY EFFECTIVE: Addition of caffeine (INDEPENDENT VARIABLE) to aquatic culture in concentrations of 0.1 to 0.5M decreases (DIRECTION) the stem length (DEPENDENT VARIABLE) of Phalaris arundinacea, reed canary grass (STUDY ORGANISM)

ANOTHER EFFECTIVE TITLE EXAMPLE: Brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) grown in acidic water (pH of 3-5) have faster heart rates than brine shrimp grown in water with pH of 7-9

How will titles be evaluated? The following is part of the rubric we will be using to evaluate your papers

	0 = inadequate (C, D or F)	1 =adequate (BC)	2 = good (B)	3 = very good (AB)	4 = excellent (A)
Title	Point of experiment cannot be determined by title	Has two or more problems comparable to the following: Title is not concise, point of experiment is difficult to determine by title, most key information is missing	Title could be more concise but still conveys main point of experiment; 2 or more key components are missing	Title is concise & conveys main point of experiment but 1 key component is missing	Title is concise, conveys main point of experiment, and includes these key components: study system, variables, result, & direction

The Abstract forces the author to distill the essence of the paper to a very brief summary (100-200 words). Always write the Abstract last, after you thoroughly understand the experiment and its meaning. Use the Abstract to highlight the rationale behind the experiment, the general approach you took, and the principle results and conclusions. One way to do this is to summarize, in one sentence each, the 4 sections of your paper.

Abstracts must relate the main points of the paper and should be understandable without referring to the rest of the paper. Samples are widely available in electronic databases, and many readers use the Abstract to decide whether they want to find and read the entire paper.

How will abstracts be evaluated? The following is part of the rubric we will be using to evaluate your papers.