Brief Reports

Abstract

Paradoxically, brief reports can take even more time to write than a full report. Why? Because the only way to write a good brief report is to first write the full report and then boil that down to a brief report. If you try to simply write a brief report directly, it will never come out right. The contents will seem thin or diluted. A brief report is so short that it only works if the authors really make full use of every sentence and every word. The only way to do that is to write twice as much material as you are allowed (so you can see everything you might possibly say if you were allowed more journal space) and then to cut out all the fluff that is not essential for the readers to know. You may be disappointed to hear that a brief report actually requires more work than the longer full report. The compensation is that brief reports usually come out much better and people are more likely to actually read them.