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Quick tabs to parts of a research paper (this page)

• Title page
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Materials & Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Literature Cited

Other resources

• Common errors in student research papers
• Selected writing rules

Materials and Methods Examples

I usually steer clear of the visual puzzles that ask you to find as many things as you can that are wrong with a picture. I can seldom find even half of them, and doing it makes my brain hurt. All the same, a similar exercise with a writing sample might help you to recognize when you are making an obvious mistake in your own writing, such as deviating from a required form or style.

A set of laboratory procedures is described informally below, followed by a writeup as it would appear in the materials and methods section of a research paper. Below the "good" example is a writeup of the same set of procedures that is full of mistakes. As an exercise, see how many you can identify.