There is one area of business communication that seems to cause problems for many people – and that’s report writing. Lots of people come to us and say that they are unsure of how to go about this; they lack confidence and they feel embarrassed and uncertain when they hand over their finished report to whoever has asked them to write it.
Report writing isn’t exactly easy but you can take a lot of the stress out of it if you get yourself organised and plan your work before you begin. Before starting to write your report, you need to be absolutely clear about the answers to the following four questions:
- WHY am I writing the report?
What are my aims and objectives?
- WHO am I writing for?
Always keep the readers in mind: their background; level of education; familiarity with the subject; knowledge of the language.
- WHAT am I writing?
What information is the report going to contain and where can it be found? In order to write a good report, you must know how to find the facts you need. Then you have to decide which information is useful and which is not.
- HOW am I going to write it?
What kind of layout shall I use? What will be the approximate length? What style and tone shall I use? Think of your reader, and then try to write in a way that they will understand.
Once you’ve found your answers to all these questions you need to be equally well organised when you are gathering your material. Make a plan of what you need and where you can get this information. Will you need to talk to people, or ask them for information by email? Can you find most of your facts online? Will you need to refer to documents in libraries or archives? Will you need to gather statistics or send out questionnaires?
As we’ve said earlier, once you’ve got your information you will need to decide what is relevant and then organise it logically so that your reader finds it easy to understand. Leave out anything that isn’t useful or confuses the issue.
And when you’ve written up your report the final stage is to check your work. First you should check the content. (Are your facts correct? Is what is clear to you equally clear to others?) Then check for spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes. Finally, do a third check – just to be on the safe side! If you follow these steps I can guarantee that you will find report writing much easier.
But, if you want a much more in-depth view of how to plan, write and set out a report then you might consider our Report Writing Course. It really does hold your hand all the way and there are two tutor-marked assignments where you have the opportunity to find out how well you are doing and get feedback from the experts. Like everything else – report writing isn’t difficult if you know how. It’s just making sure you have that knowledge that’s important.
Author: Diana Nadin
