Writing Skills

•      Written reports are an essential form of communication in many areas of business. Whether you’re reporting on team progress, writing up a client meeting, or describing how your project is going, your objective is to express all of the relevant information in such a way that the reader can understand it quickly and easily.

•      The exact format of your report depends on several factors. These include its purpose, the level of detail required and the formality needed. For example, if your report is a detailed 50 page document, it will benefit from extra structure such as a table of contents and numbered sections. But such additions would clutter up a two-pager about yesterday’s brainstorm session.

•      Whatever the length of your report, structure is still an essential feature of a business report (you’re not writing a novel here!) Include summaries, and use headings, bullets, tables and charts to break up the text and present information as concisely as possible. This will help make your report more effective for its readers, and you’ll reduce the chance of them skipping a key point.

•      Also, make sure that your language is appropriate for the audience you’re writing it for. If you’re a programmer and you’re writing for other programmers, it may well be efficient to use highly technical jargon. But if there’s any chance that your audience might include non-technical people, the use of jargon risks both misunderstandings and losing your reader’s interest. And when that happens, you’re perceived as a poor communicator.

•      With the right structure in the place and appropriate language, you’ll be well on the road to creating a good report. However, make sure you don’t spoil it with sloppy spelling or punctuation. While some people no longer find this important, there are still many who care deeply about this. Paying attention to spelling and punctuation continues to be good practice and makes for a professional report. Lower your standards on these details and you again risk being perceived as sloppy, and a poor communicator.

Tips for Effective Report Writing

•     Before you start writing the report, spend a few minutes thinking about how you’ll structure it to present your ideas clearly and logically.

•     On all but the shortest reports, include an Executive Summary at the beginning to make life easier for busy readers (this should be a maximum of one page long). Although it’s at the beginning of the report, this will normally be the last part of the report that you’ll write.

•     Break your text up with clear sub-headings, and with bullets and numbered lists where appropriate. This also makes it easier for the reader to skim your reports quickly.

•     Start a new paragraph for each new point or thought. If in doubt, start a new paragraph!

•     When you’re proof-reading your work, try reading it out loud. If you find yourself getting “tangled up” as you read, consider restructuring that sentence so that it’s easy to read. And if you find yourself running out of breath in a sentence, consider breaking it into two or more separate sentences.

•     Simple sentences are easy to understand. Long, convoluted sentences, with a myriad of sub-clauses and extravagant or complex words, are challenging, and risk diverting and confusing the reader with their unwarranted complexity. People are often confused by longer sentences.

•      Also, make sure you check the headings too. It’s easy to assume they must be error-free just because they’re short, big and bold. Always include page numbers on documents that are likely to be printed – just in case the reader drops the pages.

•      Don‘t write one single word more than you have to.

•      Improving Your Report-Writing Skills

•      What areas of report writing are you going to work on? These articles and resources will help you improve your skills:

•      Communicating without creating barriers

•      Actually, jargon has its place, but it can also spread beyond its usefulness very easily. Learn about common jargon traps, and how to avoid being caught out by them.

•      Grouping Information so it’s more easily understood

•      Find out how you can structure information to make it easier to absorb and remember, and learn why you should never include more than nine bullet points in a list.

•      Charts and Graphs: Choosing the right format

Spreadsheets offer several different formats of charts and diagrams, but it's not always obvious which one you should use. Learn the basics of charts and diagrams, and gain confidence in your visual presentation skills.