report writing help

report writing help

The Importance of Effective Report Writing

1. Introduction

Report writing is a time-consuming business, so it is a great shame if, having devoted so much time to writing your report, the quality is such that hardly anyone can be bothered to read it. Quite frankly, most report readers do not actually read all the report; they are too short of time. You might as well know, and this is the worst part of it, it is often the case that those who will read only a fraction of the report will form their judgment and take action on it (perhaps by taking the conclusions and recommendations and ignoring the reasoning) just as if they had read the whole thing. Now if the reader forms a poor judgment because your report is not easy to read, he is not likely to go back to it in order to think again: he will go on the inadequate information – probably to take some decision or to initiate some action. That will be most discouraging for you if you put lots of effort into the report and had high hopes of it leading to some useful action. The result is that the bad report can be worse than a waste of time. The matter is widely appreciated in principle, but there are many who do not fully realize the extent to which report quality affects judgment and action. They tend to think that if the reasoning is sound, the report quality does not matter; or if the subject matter is dull and uninteresting, there is nothing much that can be done about it. This is quite mistaken. An excellent piece of reasoning can be totally obscured by its manner of presentation; and it is possible to make any subject interesting to anyone who has a need to know. The trouble in the latter case is to find out why the reader needs to know your subject, and then to write to satisfy that need. This is a principle that should guide every aspect of your report.

2. Planning and Structuring Your Report

For audience purposes, it helps to create an audience profile, which is basically a detailed description to guide through the best way of influencing the target audience. It should cover items from age, education, and attitude to technical knowledge and the potential grievances the audience may have about the material to be presented. The extent of these profiles can vary depending on the nature of the audience and the type of report. Profile data on the audience of a long-term project reviewing company expenditure could be vital, whereas a brief mental note may suffice for an audience placing an order for an IT system.

So, the first thing that should be done when planning your report is to investigate the purpose of the report: why it is needed, its required outcome, and what, if any, action is meant to be taken. This, in turn, will help identify the type of report needed and the nature of the audience. This will, as a result, determine the material to be included and the extent and depth to which it should be written. An attempt to carry out a report lacking understanding of these key elements would result in wasted time, money, and resources. This is because there is a clear possibility of the report not meeting its full potential, which can range from being oddly unsatisfactory to a complete disaster.

Good writing is essential for ensuring the importance and influence of your business. While a few individuals are born writers, most of us have to learn and try various approaches in order to find out what works best for us. One place to find it effectively is in writing reports. An effective report can be written by going through the following steps.

3. Writing Clear and Concise Content

A common problem with complex issues is that it is easy to stray off topic and confuse the situation with another. Staying on point by constantly revisiting the issue can ensure that the report stays simple and easy to understand. An issue that coincides with simplicity is brevity. Usually, when a topic is very complex, there is a lot of detail to cover and reports can end up being overly long. While detail is imperative in understanding the issue, it is important to cover the detail in a concise manner and only cover what is necessary. Often, reports are overly long because they cover irrelevant information. It is important to keep in mind to only cover details that will help to address the situation. If it does not, then it is irrelevant. This can always be ensured by constantly revisiting the issue, and this will also ensure that the report is cohesive, which is imperative in any report.

A necessary tool for effectiveness is simplicity. Simplicity ensures that complex issues are more easily understood. This means using terminology that is not overly complex, and when it is necessary for complex terms to be used, they should be explained. Many would also argue that a situation-action format is the simplest and most effective way to address an issue because that is how people are used to thinking. Reports will show complexity through the details put into the action and the potential impact if it were successful.

Finally, it is important to be conclusive. This ensures that the report does not leave the reader thinking “So what?” This is often the case in reports that leave out the resolution, and it is highly frustrating for a reader to have to go back and try to understand something that is not clearly stated.

Being conscious of the reader is highly important. It is good to occasionally ask oneself, “Would I want to read this?” People often write as if a professor is grading the report and understands every word of what is being written, when in reality, this is not the case. Understanding the reader will also help in better addressing the situation and the resolution.

Always stay on the topic of the report. Do not write irrelevant information, even if it is very interesting. Often times, irrelevant information leads to confusion. Write in an ordered and logical manner. This ensures that the report is easy to follow, and if the report is done properly, it will lead to a situation-action format. This is often the most successful and easy to understand format, as everyone is accustomed to it.

The forthright aim of the area is to ensure that the expectations people have when reading reports are met. They do not want to hang around and wait for the main idea. When reading through a report, people want to quickly understand the situation and the resolution to it. One way to ensure that they are able to comprehend the main idea is to provide a preview in the first couple of sentences. This way, the reader knows exactly what they will be getting out of the report. This also sets the stage for the rest of the report, which makes everything afterwards easier to understand.

4. Formatting and Presentation

The presentation of work is also a vital part of the writing process. A well-presented report is easier to read and the information it contains is more accessible. A model proposed by Van Blerkom (1980) identifies five basic functions of display. These are (i) attracting the reader’s attention, (ii) imparting information, (iii) organizing information, (iv) encouraging further reading, and (v) interpreting the text. All of these functions use the principle that the reader should be able to understand the content without having to read every word. The report should therefore be user-friendly and allow the reader to extract the information they require quickly and efficiently. But again, the form of a report and the expectations of its readers have changed over the past decade or so. With the development of technology, a vast amount of research is currently being disseminated via the Internet rather than paper form. This may change the outlook of report writing to a more interactive and less linear experience. For now, however, the conventional wisdom is that the form of a report is still an extremely important factor. The following is a general list of the functions of the form and final function of a report, primarily focusing on the standards established by the APA.

5. Conclusion

The information in a report provides the basis to convince us whether to continue the present course, or decide on a new one and it is useful to re-evaluation of the situation to determine whether we are getting better or worse. Reports are used to provide information across a large area and time to those connected with the original incident and/or to an action plan developed from it.

To influence an improvement, action has to be taken and to affect an improvement in a situation an action plan is developed. Only through it will we know whether the action taken was the correct one and the situation has improved. Reports contain information which is compared to the action plan and thus we determine whether progress is being made.

In this study, the importance of effective report writing is emphasized in the hope of helping personnel create reports that will be useful for communication within their organizations. It is clear that we report something that happened or we make a report in order to affect an improvement in a situation. Reports are valuable only if the information they contain leads to the improvement of some situation. If no action is to be taken, there is no point in creating a report.