Effective Report Writing

Purpose

To show participants how to write structured reports – from the pre-writing and planning to the editing and proofreading.

Objective

By the end of this training participants will be able to deliver well-organised and well-written reports.

Overview

For those who need to write formal, structured, research reports. The most common reports in the world of business. The sort of reports that answer the questions:

• What are the facts?
• What do they mean?
• What do we do now?

The training – typically a seminar followed by a 1:1 coaching session for each participant – breaks the subject down into:

Pre-writing

• Understanding the Simple Secrets of Faster Drafting – from “Word Chucking” through to “Bogus Paragraphs”, and the basic features of i) Outlining and ii) MS Outline
• Knowing what you want to achieve; including what supports your aim, excluding what doesn’t; giving your writing a sense of purpose
• Writing for the reader (Primary, Secondary, Tertiary); knowing what your reader wants and doesn’t want; keeping content Relevant and Specific
• Organising your information to best suit the writing task

The Report Structure

• The Executive Summary
  • A good summary gives readers a quick, concise overview of your report
• The Introduction
  • Strong, interesting open; minimum warm-up; minimum background
• The Body
  • Organised to help the reader; concentrating on specifics; answering the readers’ questions
• The Conclusions and Recommendations
  • Drawing out the main points and listing relevant and complete recommendations

Plain-Language Style – including:

• Writing Effective Paragraphs: Making them bite-sized, bulleted, focused
• Writing Effective Sentences: Making them short and clearly constructed
• Making Writing Parallel: Sticking to one pattern in headings, sentences and lists
• Making Writing Active: Spotting and eradicating Passive Verbs and Buried Verbs
• Making Writing Efficient: Being concise; avoiding wordiness
• Adopting a Human Tone: Using verb contractions and personal pronouns; writing positively

Editing and Proofreading – including:

• Grammar, Punctuation, Spelling and Word Use.