Can You Use First Person In An Abstract For Science Fair Projects?
By: Shawn Cox
Submitted: 2010-11-17 15:11:09 | Word Count: 435
One of the requirements of entering a science fair is to complete a science fair project report. To be graded or scored well, the student needs to use the correct format, voice, tone and style, and they will need to include the right elements. Fortunately, all of these things are easy to accomplish once you know what is expected of you.
Writing Style
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The first question that many students have that relate to writing a science fair project report is if it is okay to write in the first person. Students cannot write in the first person when writing a science fair project report. The entire report needs to be written in third person. This can be tricky as students are discussing what they did and what they discovered.
In addition to writing the report in third person, students will also want to avoid creative tones in their writing. While students are encouraged to use similes, metaphors and other creative expressions in English class, these are generally not appropriate in science writing. Students want to keep things as simple and straight forward as possible. The key is to explain the situation with as few words as possible.
Clarity
Clarity is one of the characteristics that judges will be looking for when scoring your science fair project. They are going to evaluate how easy your report was to understand, how logical it progressed from data to conclusions and how organized the overall report was. The design of your display board and you presentation will also be judged for clarity.
Formatting Your Report
Formatting is very important when you start science writing. To start with you will want to select a 12 point font that is easy to read, like Times New Roman or Courier. Next you will want to double space your report and create a one inch all around margin. Finally, you will want to add a header that includes your project title and a page number.
The format of your science fair project report will also need to follow a common layout. Most reports will have the following sections in this order: (1) title page, (2) abstract, (3) introduction, (4) background research, (5) methodology (experiment), (6) data and data analysis, (7) discussion and conclusions and (8) bibliography. Each of these sections will be broken down into sub-sections. For example, the methodology section will include subheadings of “supplies” and “experiment design” while the introduction will contain information about the hypothesis, the reason for selecting the topic that was selected and definitions of terms used in the report.
