The Write guide

Write is the report app. You write on real A4 pages, the mathematics is typeset properly, and your graphs, tables and sketches can be inserted from your workspace. Write needs a free Plot45 account; sign up or sign in first.

Pages that print true

You write on A4 sheets with page numbers, the way Word works. What you see on screen is exactly what prints, and page breaks go where you put them. Headings, lists and plain paragraphs are all on the toolbar, along with a typeface picker (Sans, Serif, Mono) and a palette of named text colours, the same colours the Sketch app uses. Both apply to whatever you have selected.

A report can open with a cover page carrying the title, your name, your class and the date, in the layout a formally submitted report expects. The toolbar's Cover page button inserts it. Fill in the lines, and the cover stays as page one, with the page numbering starting after it.

Equations

Press the equation button and type. What you see while editing is exactly what prints, typeset like a textbook, and an equation can sit on its own line or in the middle of a sentence. Fractions build as you type (a/b then a space). ^ and _ make powers and indices. Typing \pi, \sqrt or \bar followed by a space produces the symbol itself. The picker under the equation holds every structure, Greek letter, symbol and function, and there is nothing to install.

Graphs, tables, sketches and pictures

The toolbar has three insert buttons for your workspace files (a graph, a data table, and a sketch) plus a Picture button for photos from your device:

• A graph arrives as a numbered figure ("Figure 1.") with an editable caption. Figures renumber themselves automatically if you move them.
• A data table arrives as an editable copy of the lab's table. If the lab has repeated trials, Write asks whether you want the Overall table or one of the trials tables, the same tables you see in Plot's sheet tabs.
• A sketch arrives as a numbered figure, cropped neatly to your drawing.
• A picture (a photo of your setup, say) arrives the same way. Pictures up to 10 MB are resized for print automatically, and camera metadata (location, device) is stripped. Click a picture to select it, drag its corner handle to size it on the page, or press Backspace to remove it.

Inserted content is a copy. Editing it in the report never changes the original lab or sketch.

Citations and references

Click the quotation-marks button on the toolbar and paste a link, a DOI, a book's ISBN, or the title itself. Plot45 looks the source up and fetches the author and date for you to check. One further click places a citation such as (Veritasium, 2020) into your sentence. A References list builds itself at the end of the report, in alphabetical order and formatted correctly, in APA 7 or MLA 9 style; switching style restyles the whole report. If a source has no link, pick its type and fill in a short form instead.

• Click any citation in your text to see its full reference, edit the source, or remove it.
• Re-citing the same source never duplicates it in the list.
• Sources you add without citing still appear in the reference list, so you can paste your remaining links at the end and each becomes an entry.

Assignments and hand-in

If your teacher set the report as an assignment, hand it in from the report itself. Handing in locks your work so the teacher marks exactly what you submitted; they can return it to draft if you need another go. Teacher comments appear in the margin, right beside the sentence they're about.