The consistently intelligent and thoughtful FemaleScienceProfessor, whose blog I highly recommend to all scientists as regular reading, here writes about formatting of articles, by no means a trivial topic. From the FSP’s blog post:

“This issue of formatting is important because if a reviewer of a proposal (or a reader of a research statement) is reading more than a few proposals/statements (e.g., dozens to > 100), they may well not read every word. You need to write your document so that a reader either wants to read every word (because what you write is so fascinating) or you need to structure the text so that essential points will be noticed. It is very important that these essential points have content and not just be empty statements to the effect that you think you are awesome.”

Those wishing to submit their research reports to scientific journals will also benefit from the advice in FSP’s post.