REPORT WRITING - How to write a report
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Summary
This article describes
how to write a report and makes some suggestions for improving your report
writing. All these suggestions, and many more, are taught on Tony Atherton's
Business Report Writing and
Technical Report Writing courses where they
are set in the relevant context.
Introduction
Report writing is a time consuming
business. It is not easy to construct and write a really good business report.
In many ways report writing is a craft. If you wanted someone to make a really
nice wooden table for you, or a piece of jewellery, you would probably go to a
carpenter or jeweller rather than do it yourself. They have learned and
mastered the necessary skills. They can do the job well.
Within business we do not normally hire a professional writer
to write our business or technical reports for us; we write them ourselves.
However, we can usually do a better job if we take a little time to discover
and develop a few of the skills used by professional writers. It is not that
difficult, but it does take some time and effort. The results are worth
it.
Three
Stages
Many reports are badly thought out and
poorly written; they make life difficult for the reader. If you follow some
specific guidelines you can give your reports a logical structure, write them
better and make life easier for both yourself and your readers.
Your
objective should be to provide what the readers want and need, and provide it
in such a way that they can find it quickly and understand it fully at the
first reading. That must take into account the simple fact that you will
probably have many readers who may want different things from your report. It
is a tall order but you can get very close to it. The Golden Rule is that you
are writing for your readers, not for yourself - that means using terminology
they will understand at first reading and making your points clearly and
concisely.
Begin by recognising that the process of writing a report
has three stages: preparation, writing the draft and editing the draft into the
finished report. Splitting the task into these three distinct stages will save
you time and produce a better report. Good preparation genuinely does save
time.
Stage 1 - Preparing
It may seem silly to have to
say this but, as part of your preparation, make sure you know why your report
is needed and what it is supposed to achieve. What is it for? What is its
purpose? Agree this with your sponsor (probably your line manager). Otherwise
you run a serious risk that after you present your report you will get the
response, ‘It’s not quite what I wanted’. That leads to a lot of
frustration, rewriting and wasted time.
So what is the purpose of your
report and who is it for? The two are linked.
Generally, plan to use
the standard sections that people expect in business reports. You can vary them
but do so only slightly and only with very good reason. Report readers expect
certain things to be in certain places, they are not looking for novelty and
surprises. Make life easy for them by putting the right things in the right
places.
Standard Sections
- Title Section. In a short report this may simply be the front cover. In a long one it could also include Terms of Reference, Table of Contents and so on.
- Summary. Give a clear and very concise account of the main points, conclusions and recommendations. Write it in such a way that it could stand alone from the rest of the report. It probably won’t, but treat it so because some people will not read anything else. Keep it brief and free from jargon so that anyone can understand it and get the main points. Write it last, but do not copy and paste from the report itself; that rarely works well.
- Introduction. This is the first part of the report proper. Use it to paint the background to ‘the problem’ and to show the reader why the report is important to them. Give your terms of reference (if not covered separately) and explain how the details that follow are arranged. Write it in plain English.
- Main Body. This is a catchall phrase for the meat of your report, the facts. It will probably have several sections or sub-sections each with its own subtitle. Collectively these are the heart of your report and will be unique to your report; they will describe what you discovered about ‘the problem’. These sections are most likely to be read by experts so you can use some appropriate jargon but explain it as you introduce it. Many people who just want to know the gist of your report will not read this Main Body or will just glance at it. You may choose to finish with a Discussion in which you explain the significance of your findings.
- Conclusions. Present the logical conclusions of your investigation of ‘the problem’. Bring it all together and maybe offer options for the way forward. Many people will want to read this and most of them will probably not have read the Main Body. Write it in plain English.
- Recommendations. Now, after all your careful work and thinking, what do you suggest should be done? Don’t be shy; you did the work so tell them what you recommend – in plain English.
- Appendices. Put all the heavy stuff here, the detail that only specialists are likely to want to see.
Stage 2 - Writing the draft
When you come to
write the draft (note, not the first draft – just one draft should do the
job if you plan well) try to get a concentrated period of time free from
interruptions so that you can do large chunks of writing at a time. Don’t
worry too much about the grammar and punctuation as yet – deal with those
later. Just get a flow going and write.
Stage 3
- Editing
Finally, edit your report. Aim to do three things.
1. Shorten the report by removing superfluous words and phrases. For
example, you might change 'at this moment in time' to 'now', or 'due to the
fact that' to 'because'.
2. Improve the clarity by replacing complicated
words with simpler ones where that will help the reader. For example you might
change 'termination' to 'end', or 'paradigm' to 'method' or 'process'. Also
check that you are not using too many long sentences and paragraphs. The
average length of the sentences in this web-based article is about 15 words. To
use short paragraphs, short sentences and short words is an old, and still
pertinent, piece of advice for writers.
3. Check and correct the
spelling, punctuation and grammar. Try to use more active verbs than passive
ones. For example, 'The IT Team is investigating the matter' uses an active
verb whereas 'The matter is being investigated by the IT Team' uses a passive.
One is simply the back-to-front version of the other. Actives are normally
shorter and a bit more direct. Reports usually read better if a sizeable
majority of sentences are active. In this article about 90% of sentences are
active.
Conclusion
This article has described some
extremely useful ideas for improving your report writing. Of course,
professional writers use many other techniques as well and some of these are
described on our courses where exercises and examples are used for practice.
Recommendations
Reread the article and try some
of the suggestions we have made. Implementing just three or four of these ideas
should lead to better reports. If in your organisation you have several people
who would like to improve their report writing or general business writing then
please get in touch; we could run an in-company course for you. You can call us
in the UK on 07976-390960 or e-mail direct to
Tony Atherton.
Good
luck with your report writing!
Author: Tony Atherton
© Tony Atherton 2005 (For permission
to reproduce this article please write to
Tony Atherton)
About the author:
Tony Atherton is
a freelance trainer and writer with over 25 years' experience. He runs
in-company courses in Business Report Writing, Technical Report Writing, Better
Business Writing and Taking and Writing Minutes - as well as Negotiation Skills
and Time Management. For course details click
home.
Enquiries: E-mail direct to Tony Atherton or call 07976-390960
Based in Hampshire, England
Last updated 27 March 2008