This chapter discusses the concept of preparing reports. Just as Burnett states, reports account for substantial amount of writing in business, industry, government and non profits. Why would you write reports? A well written report is the only way you can communicate your knowledge and ideas to others. In every profession there is a substantial amount of report writing involved. Burnett states that to be a more successful professional you need to differentiate between informal and formal reports, examine reports’ purposes and characteristics, learn ways to plan and design them, and understand specific types and formats of informal and formal reports.
PLANNING REPORTS
The following are a series of questions you need to ask yourself to determine the purpose, assess the level of formality, identify the audiences and determine the most appropriate and effective organization;
1. Purpose – What’s the overall purpose of your report and your goal as a writer?
2. Formality – what's the appropriate tone and approach?
3. Audience – Who is your audience? What do they know and what they want to know? And what will they do with the information in your report?
4. Organization - How should you organize the report and design the information?
5. Genre - which information should you present in writing, which in visuals and which orally?
TYPES OF REPORTS
This section of the chapter presents the discussion of the function and organization of the most frequently used reports:
1. Research reports and articles
2. Task reports (recommendation, justification, inspection, information investigation)
3. Periodic activity reports (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly)
4. Progress (interim, status) reports
5. Trip and conference reports
6. Meeting minutes.
Research Reports and Articles
Research is a systematic investigation to establish verifiable information. This means discovering new knowledge rather than applying existing knowledge. Regardless the discipline, research has several characteristics:
2. Transparent - should be clear in structure, process and outcomes.
3. Transferable – Should be useful beyond the specific research project, applicable in principles (if not specifics) to other researchers and research contexts.
Task Reports
Professionals in the technical field deal with many tasks that result in reports. Most common are recommendation, justification, inspection, information investigation. A recommendation report or justification report presents or defends specific suggestions or solutions for a particular situation. An inspection or examination report focuses on recording observable details, sometimes followed with recommendations. An investigation results in an information or investigation report that collects and evaluates information about some existing situation, but the writer need not always include a recommendation.
Periodic activity reports
Some organizations have developed reporting methods to keep track of ongoing activities within the organization. They are either filed daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly and compiled by supervisors and managers to describe the work completed by either section or group.Organizations usually list information they expect in a periodic activity report as follows:
- Overview - identify the projects
- Activities - Specify project activities that are completed, in process and planned.
- Recommendations - Establish needed changes in scheduling, personnel and budget.
- Chronological order - appropriate if readers expect a straightforward listing of activities with no comment or evaluation.
- Descending priority order - appropriate if readers need the report to rank order the completed and in-progress work by importance.
Progress (interim, status) reports
Progress reports (sometimes called status or interim reports) summarize the progress, status, and projections related to a particular project. They are part of almost all long-range projects and may also be expected in short-term projects. Progress reports usually follows this sequence of information:
- Overview - Introduce the project by identifying the purpose of both the project and the report.
- Progress -Summarize the progress to date
- Recommendation - Identify major recommended schedule changes
- Evidence - Provide reasons for changes
- Discussion - Discuss the impact of the proposed changes.
Trip and conference reports
Why are trip and conference reports important? They help the traveler to review and evaluate the activities of the trip or conference and distinguish the major accomplishment from those less important. Also, they enable the traveler to share the activities and information with people who didn't make the trip or attend the conference. Trip and conference report follow priority order. Tasks and information are ranked according to their value to your organization. Below is the information incorporated into a well organized and clearly stated report:
| TRIP | CONFERENCE |
| Purpose and date of trip | Purpose and date of conference |
| Primary task (s) | Primary Task (s) |
| Personal role | Personal role |
| People contacted | Sessions attended |
| Question (s) raised or resolved | Information gained |
| Conclusions | Conclusions |
Meeting minutes.
Minutes provide a record of the discussion and decisions that occur at meetings, serving as official (sometimes legal) records. Minutes provide a convenient review of the meeting for the people who attended as well as for those who didn't. Unless the minutes are to be published, they should record what was done at the meeting, not what was said by the members. They should never reflect the secretary's opinion, favorable or otherwise, on anything said or done. Roberts Rules of order recommends the format and sequence of information for meeting minutes. To learn more about this rule go to www.english.wadsworth.com/burnnet6e. CLICK ON WEBLINK and then CLICK on Chapter 20/Robert's Rules.
You can write a report using inductive or deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning moves from specific to general while deductive reasoning is the opposite. Most readers prefer deductive. From there, the report can be divided into 4 pieces; front matter, body, end matter, and design elements.
Front Matter of a Report
This is the beginning of the report and comes before the body. This can include a letter of transmittal and a table on contents. A letter of transmittal is not required, but helps the reader to better understand the report that follows by giving the main points up front. After the letter of transmittal comes the table of contents. The book gives two examples: numeric and conventional. Numeric is often used by government agencies and is defined by its use of numbers to differentiate each subsection. Conventional uses only all-capitol sentences and indentation to signify differing subsections.
Body of a Report
The body of the report should be broken into two parts:
Part 1
- statement of purpose or problem
- summary of findings
- summary of recommendations
- background to problem
- literature search of information relevant to problem
- approach, method, and materials (for reports of experiments, surveys)
- available option (solutions)
- results: collected data or findings
- discussion
- interpretation(s)
- conclusion(s)
- recommendation(s)
- Chronological Order - used for explaining processes.
- Spatial Order - used to describe objects or locations.
- Cause and Effect - used for problem-solving situations.
- Comparison and/or Contrast - used for focusing on similarities and differences.
End Matter of a Report
This part comes after the body and is greatly influenced by the formality of the report. A more formal document may include a great amount of end matter while an informal one may contain very little or none at all. Some end matter that is commonly found in reports is as follows:
- Appendixes - contains supplementary information to help the reader better understand the report.
- Glossary - defines terms that the reader may not understand.
- Sources Cited - placed at the very end of the document and contains a list of the locations in which the report got its information.
Design Elements
This has to do with how a document looks and contains several aspects:
- Headings and Subheadings - should match from one to the next and allow the reader to easily determine when there is a change in topic.
- Pagination - the numbering of each page should be easily understood by all readers.
- Figures and Tables (Visuals) - should be placed in accordance with the writing and make sense to the reader.
- Accessibility, Comprehensibility, and Usability - the placement of information and the formats used can greatly change how easy it is for a reader to get the information they need.
EXAMINING A SAMPLE REPORT
When going over the final revisions of a report, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Identify the Content and Context - Have as much information as possible early in the report for easy accessibility.
- Anticipate Reader's Needs - Be sure the report is organized and put together with the expected reader's in mind.
- Establish Connections - By linking various ideas together, the reader and get a better understanding of the material.
- Use Effective Design and Visuals - Make sure all typing and spacing is consistent, information is where not fragmented, and heading and bullets are utilized wherever possible.
- Make the Text Accessible - Adding preview paragraphs to help motivate the reader to read the following information.
- Reflect Professional Standards - Being sure that the report conforms to professional style and usage guidelines.
17 comments:
Nelson and Kithinji's review of chapter 20 discussed reports. I agree that it is generally good practice to ask yourself some basic questions before attempting to prepare a report. One of the most important of these questions is to ask who the audience is. You do not want to prepare a report using to complicated of jargon for audiences not associated with the topic being discussed. On the same note, you want to use appropriate terminology for audiences who are familiar with the content, so you appear to know what you are talking about. Lastly, I agree that organization is important. Often, a report may make perfect sense to the person who spent hours creating it, but care should be taken to ensure that anyone can pick up the report and get the information they are looking for easily and without having to ask questions.
The review of chapter 20 was very well said. I think that it is very important to plan out the report before attempting to wirte one and always remembering who your audience is. You have to remember to use language that your audience will understand as well as keeping your audience interested. Another important aspect of reports is obviously organiztion. Having it organized can make a big difference in the way that it is delivered and in making sure the audience understands what is going on.
this is something that i dont have that much experience in out side of the school atmosphere. my jobs have not exactly been the type of jobs where i have to sit down and write a professional report about anything. my jobs have consisted of being a dish washer for a guldens resteraunt, then i was a bus boy at an outback steak house, then i have been in construction doing the grunt work as a laborer for two different construction companies. even though i have not had to right reports for any company i know how important they can be to good communication and maybe even moving up in the company. i know this because my dad has to write reports for his company and he is always stressing out about how good they are and having the family read them over to make sure there are no mistakes.
I also haven't had too much experience in writing reports for jobs, but I can imagine how important they are. People need written records of things--you can't just tell them or email them important information because they'll forget it. It is also important to present it in a way that different kinds of people can understand, which is why you should choose an appropriate format for your report. This is a subject that applies to almost every professional because there are lots of different kinds of jobs that require report-writing of some kind.
I think that the summary of Chapter 20 was well written and organized. I think that it is a real good idea to prepare yourself with a few questions before evaluating a report. There are many different factors to take account for like your audience. You dont want to write a report on something that you know the audience is going to disagree on. It is important to remember the audicence but also the attention span and how long you can keep them reading is a huge factor so everyone is easily able to understand
The review of chapter 20 is important for report writing. As we know we should make good report but we don't know the strategies to follow.When i read this review, i get my point.Organization is important with the view of audience too.I learn that we should have good interpersonal thought to make report better so report will be understand and have information. The audience is so important to magnify the report that we should see all point that audience will notice and will get it. If it is not organized then audience will not see it and can't have good response.
i feel that movies make a report seem like having to swallow swords, requireing skill and sometimes painfull. In reality reports a a very helpfull tool for anyone who may want to know more about a product or just more info. I feel it saves time and money, reather than having a meeting and what if someones not there you have to go over it again. With reports you have an easy access to info you may not have had without bothering someone.
Chapter 20 deals with preparing reports. One of the things that I do in my job is preparing estimates for customers. In preparing these reports I have to put all types of information so that the client can see what will be done and what they are responsible for paying.
Along with these reports, I also prepare documents for our bank to gain access to funds or funding for equipment or projects we will be bidding. In these documents we have to cover all of our bases and not put too much technical jargon that the banker will have no idea what it means.
The chapter is well sumerised, I know the importance of the report writing but i was not always able to write a good report. Personally, this chapter is really helpful to improve my report writing skill.I think knowing the audience, using proper language and a good preparation is always a good start for report writing. Nelson and kithinji have well organized the chapter.
Every field or profession is responsible for creating formal or informal reports but a professional should be capable of differentiating the formal and informal reports. Exchange of the ideas would be easier if it’s well written. Conventionally, report is like a summary for some kind of activities or assignments like research, recommendation, inspection, investigation, periodic activities etc. While writing a report one should consider the intention, priority, approach, targeted audiences, design and other implementations.
This blog have well explanations of the process for writting reports.
This is a very good and well put together post. This chapter could be a life saver for many people who have to write reports up every day for either work or school. This explains what needs to be included and what doesn’t need to be. I liked how they posted the format that most reports should be in.
This is probably a good chapter to have up right before we go to present our report to the city. I think one thing thats really important is to step back and figure out how and what you are going to accomplish before you start your research.
This is probably a good chapter to have up right before we go to present our report to the city. I think one thing thats really important is to step back and figure out how and what you are going to accomplish before you start your research.
I think that reports are grease that corporations and companies ride on every day to maintain a smooth operation. They are also the evidence to help you in a bad situation. Truthful accurate reports mean never having to remember what was said.
I think that the summary of the chapter was written and organized very well. I also feel that it is important to ask yourself some basic questions that need to be answered before you start writing a report, but I also feel that after you have answered these questions you need to try and think of some that you might have left out of the report. I think that a good report not only answers basic questions but also more in-depth and thoughtful ones as well as other arguments.
A report contains a lot of information and needs to be very organized. The information can be adjusted for whoever the audience of the report is. Just like most documents, there must be a beginning, a body, and an end. I have only had to write a couple reports; the one in this class being one of them. It's not something that I really enjoy but it is a great source of information!
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