The 5th Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association provides guidelines on how to write a research report to an acceptable standard. This not only includes correct referencing but also writing conventions in the report. The list of these conventions run in to the hundreds and we shall not list them here, but rather run through the way LabWriteUp processes the first draft to look for potential problems in the text.

The first process is to look for the existence of certain words in the text, such as 'subjects' that may be inappropriate. When found, LabWriteUp will make a suggestion, such as 'participants'. Of course, you should not blindly accept the suggestions, as the word may be being used appropriately (e.g., as in 'science subjects').

The APA manual has much to say about the presentation of numerical information. For example, numbers less than 10 should be spelt, as in '...the order of the four tasks...', otherwise they can be written as numbers, as in 'there were 32 participants'. However, sentences beginning with numbers should be spelt, as in 'Four hundred and fifty-five questionnaires were sent out to...'. LabWriteUp checks through the text looking for these sorts of errors.

To sum, the sorts of errors checked for include:
Use of the first person, use of hyphens, sexist language, labelling (e.g., 'depressives' instead of 'people with depression'), using data as singluar, use of wasn't or isn't (and many others), nested paragraphs, and much more!

Next >> Exporting to Word (Save text in Rich Text Format)