Specifics

Specific things to pay attention to

• Research questions and hypotheses
  
  • Try a simple, straightforward answer.
    Try providing a "placebo" answer for your research questions. This will help you understand if your questions are clearly formulated or not.
    E.g. could "yes" be an answer to the question? If so, make sure to explain why you are writing more than just "yes" or "no".
  • Try answering without context.
    Imagine how to answer the question without thinking of your approach. What would be a logical way to work to address this question?
    If this does not result in your desired approach, update the question and/or your approach.
• Figures and tables
  
  • Charts/functions: Label the axes clearly.
  • Is it clear what the table/figure shows?
  • Is it clear what you want to show by including this table/figure?
  • Credit sources - even if a source is only partially responsible for the information in the figure/table: credit them.
• References
  
  • Use an appropriate and uniform style (BibTex, APA, ...)
  • Embed the references logically.
    E.g., "as Researcher et al. showed [1], ...".
    References must be embedded in the report, not just supplied as a list at the end.
• Formulas
  
  • Is the idea behind the formula clearly introduced in the text?
  • Is the formula necessary, or does the text suffice?
  • Is the formula syntactically and mathematically correct?
    E.g., no free variables, give the formula a name, a definition is of the form "term(variables) = ...." and not of the form "...", etc.
  • Can the formula be simplified (mathematically, logically)?
    If so, then use a simplified version.
    If the simplified version is too simple, then the idea behind the formula may be erroneous.