Report Writing

Report Writing — the quality bar for the final report

Shared standard for the report pipeline (planner, section writers, assembler, critic). references/final-report.md defines the section skeleton and the practical-contrasts requirement; this file defines what makes the writing good. The critic tests against these rules by name. For visual format (HTML skeleton, typography, figures-as-files), see artifact-guidelines > references/html-report.

The skim test (the master rule)

Title + dek + section headings + figures with captions + the first sentence of every section must carry the complete argument on their own. A reader who skims exactly that should walk away knowing what was found, how strongly, and what to be careful about. Everything else is elaboration for readers who slow down.

Corollaries:

• Headings state findings, not topics ("The noise is multiplicative on the command", not "Noise analysis").
• Every section's first sentence is its conclusion.
• The figure sequence, read alone in order, tells the story: phenomenon → evidence per question → mechanism → validation.

Narrative arc

Phenomenon → question → answer → mechanism → caveats. At every level — report, section, paragraph — lead with the answer.

• Show the phenomenon before the model. The reader must SEE the raw effect in the data (an EDA-grade figure) before any model is mentioned. A report that opens with model structure is answering a question the reader hasn't been made to ask.
• Chronology is for the lab notebook. The reader gets the logical order, not the discovery order — except when the discovery story is the finding (a surprise that redirected the analysis earns a short narrative).

Density — one load-bearing number per paragraph

Each paragraph advances ONE claim and carries THE number (with uncertainty) that supports it. Supporting statistics go to a table or the supplementary tier.

• Hard rule: more than 3 intervals in one paragraph → restructure (split, or move numbers to a table).
• Numbers on the original scale where possible; as comparisons, not bare values ("+140.6 ± 31.5 over the constant-CV model", never "ELPD −12,304").
• Consistent precision (2–3 significant figures); one convention for intervals throughout.

Rhythm — don't run a template

Identical section shapes read as machine output. Vary the entry: one section can open with the figure, another with the contrast that settles it, another with the anomaly that motivated it. Labels like "Hypothesis." repeated in every section are outline scaffolding — remove them and let prose carry the structure. Sentence length should vary; three long compound sentences in a row is a signal to cut.

Figures — each earns its place

• One idea per figure. If a sentence can carry the point, no figure.
• The caption states the takeaway ("Participants under-weight the penalty ~3.5×"), not the contents ("Posterior distribution of w"). What-to-notice belongs in the caption; how-it-was-made belongs in supplementary.
• Every figure is referenced from the text at the exact point of argument, and appears adjacent to that point.
• Do not repeat the caption's numbers verbatim in the body text — text argues, caption anchors.

Detail tiers — push down, don't delete

When a section overflows its budget, move detail down a tier rather than cutting it.

Hygiene (mechanical — the critic checks these literally)

• No dangling promises. Every "the table below", "the full specification:", "see Figure N" must resolve to content that actually exists, adjacent to the reference.
• Experiment ids are bookkeeping. Call models by what they claim ("the risk-sensitive model"), give the id once in parentheses at first mention, and keep the id-to-model map in supplementary.
• Define before use. Every acronym/metric defined at first occurrence; metric caveats stated once, in one place, and referenced elsewhere.
• Every number traces to the fact sheet. Writers use fact-sheet numbers verbatim; a number that isn't there is flagged, never improvised.
• Honesty is structure. Caveats and informative negative results get their own place in the arc — not an apologetic afterthought, not scattered hedges.