There’s a key difference between reports and most other forms of business writing, and we get a clue to that in the word “report.” While with many other forms of written communications you can get a little creative and put your own bias into your words, in a report you shouldn’t. Not in theory, anyway.
In a report, it is supposed to inform, not embellish, embroider, influence, etc. Just the facts and nothing but the facts.
However, this does not mean that reports have to be boring. However, it does mean that you cannot make the content more interesting than it really is. Impossible? No, it just takes good organization and clear writing.
Before you proceed, there are numerous books and training courses on the market that teach you the formalities and practicalities of report writing. Some are more extensive than others. Most of them are good.
Here in this article I can’t do what other writers do in a book, so if you need to write reports a lot, I recommend you buy one or two of the most popular books and study them. So what I’m doing here is highlighting the points that I think are most important to help you make your reports more readable and the information in them more vivid.
If you work in a larger organization, there will probably be set formats for reports, at least for the internal variety. Whether you like them or not, you are usually bound to stick with them. However, how you implement and write your content is still up to you.
So what are the key points to focus on?
1. Write for your reader
Don’t indulge in jargon and “business” wording, no matter how much you or others may feel is more appropriate. it’s not. Use language and tone of voice that your key readers are comfortable with. If you don’t know what they’re comfortable with, find out. It’s worth the trouble, because it will make the report that much more enjoyable for them to read – a good reflection of you.
If your report is going to be read by a wide variety of different audiences, focus your language on the most important groups. Make sure less knowledgeable readers are catered for by discreet explanations of technical terms or perhaps a short glossary of terms as an appendix within the report.
2. Organize your information sensibly
Start by writing yourself a list of headings that begin at the beginning and end with the conclusions of your information. If you must include a lot of background information before getting to the “meat” of the information, clearly separate it with headings that say it is background (“Objectives of the research project”, “Research methods used to gather information”, “Personnel Involved in the quiz”, etc.) so that those who already know everything can jump directly to the important things.
Make sure your headlines “tell the story” so someone looking at them only gets the basic messages. (You’ll find that busy executives will thank you for doing this, especially when they have 16 other similar reports to read on a packed commuter train on the way to a meeting to discuss them all.) Then fill in the details below. each title as concisely as possible.
3. Use an “executive summary” to tell it in a nutshell
Depending on the nature of your report, you may be expected to include an executive summary, or at least an introduction that captures the key points of your information. The goal of this is to give the reader the key topics as quickly as possible. Write this after you have finished the body of the report, not before. Use your list of headers as a guide.
Stick strictly to the facts: this remains part of the report, not your interpretation of it. Reduce each sentence to the basic bones with minimal adjectives and adverbs. Use words and short sentences. Don’t just get to the point, start with it and stick with it.
4. If your interpretation is required, please keep it separate
If part of your role is to comment on the report and/or its findings, keep it separate from the main body of information. (Locked in a box or under a clearly separated heading will do.)
Naturally, since you are a professional, you will be as objective as possible. But if you feel strongly one way or the other, make sure your argument is stated as reasonably as possible without going on for pages and pages. Remember, short is beautiful, although it is more difficult to write briefly (and include all the important points) than to produce words in abundance.
5. Do not get carried away by the illustrations
Graphs and charts are great for illustrating important topics and, as the man said, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” However, make sure that the ones you use are of a level of complexity that can be understood by less knowledgeable readers. There is nothing more irritating than a graph that takes you 20 minutes to decipher. It’s not so much that readers are too stupid to understand a complex graph, but that they don’t want to spend too much time figuring it out. The easier/quicker you make it for readers to understand and assimilate your information, the more successful your report will be.
Try, too, to keep graphs and charts physically adjacent to text that talks about the same thing. There is nothing more irritating for the reader if he has to continually go from one document to another. (When in doubt, think of someone reading your report on that crowded commuter train.)
6. Eliminate clutter
Still on that topic, try to avoid including too many miscellaneous elements in your report, no matter how long and complicated it is. If you need to include appendices and various bits of background material, research statistics, etc., make sure they are well labeled and contained in the back of your document.
As I suggested earlier, don’t ask readers to jump around, directing them with asterisks and other reference address symbols. If you are writing a medical report or article, you are required to include them when citing references to other articles, but please keep them to a minimum. They are very distracting and can break your reader’s concentration.
7. Take a job to make yourself look good
I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but people do. Whether you like it or not. According to Tessa S, a UK image consultant, when you walk into a meeting, 55% of your first impression of someone is solely the way you’re dressed. The documents fall into the same hole. So the appearance of your document goes a long way in creating the right impression of you and your work.
Obviously, if a report needs to go outside of your organization and in particular to clients, you’ll take care to make sure it’s polished and clearly marked with your corporate identity and whatnot. However, the appearance of an internal report is also important, although your CFO could have a stroke if you bind it in an expensive glossy card. Be smart about internal variety: Tidy, understated, and tidy appearances don’t have to cost a lot, but they “say” a lot about the value of your report (and you).
8. One minute in minutes
I think taking minutes is a horrible job, having done it for 6 years while on a charity fundraising committee. And being useless at handwriting (thanks to decades of computers and typewriters), never mind shorthand (got kicked out of secretarial school after 3 weeks), I struggled for months to scribble everything down to the price later, until I realized that my brain was a much more efficient filter of information.
At the end of each agenda item, he asked me the classic reporter questions of “who, what, where, when, why, how, and how much.” All I had to do was jot down a few words, and when I got home with my trusty PC, I could expand them into realistic summaries of what was going on. Since much of the dialogue in meetings is unnecessary, repetitive, or both, simply use your brain as a filter. That’s what it’s trained to do for you in your everyday life, so it works for meetings too.
However, a word of warning; don’t wait too long before working your minutes. Another trick the brain does is to forget after a few hours or a day or so…