Reports: What they do and how to write them

Reports and Other Longer Documents

Define: Report is a generic term for a variety of documents that vary in form and
purpose.
Ex: Check lists, interoffice memos, e-mails, letters to clients, and full blown documents

Main purpose of a formal report is to present the results of a detailed project. A detailed project often involves considerable capital, time, and effort.

Different types of audiences:
(1) the layperson
(2) the executive
(3) the expert
(4) the technician
(5) the operator

Personal examples: Senior Project
Internship in Mexico

Every communication situation involves three fundamental components: a writer, a message, and an audience.
Do not assume different things for the report.
The report is more important than the investigation to the writer’s career.

Draw an Egocentric Organization Chart with four degrees
Ex: (1) you
(2) audiences in own group
(3) audiences in close proximity to your group
(4) audiences elsewhere in the organization
(5) audiences outside the organization

Know your audience: A systematic characterization is made in terms of operational (daily concerns and attitudes, his role within the organization, etc), objective (education), and personal characteristics (age, attitude, etc)

Ex. Dad writing down information after having a talk with a coworker

IMPORTANT: Write report without “stepping on anybody’s toes” or without embarrassing anyone

Operation characteristics example: Senior Project – stripping post (loss of jobs)

Primary audiences – who makes decisions or act on the basis of the information a report contains
Secondary audiences – who are affected by the decisions and actions
Immediate audiences – who route the report or transmit the information it contains
Roles rather than individuals provide continuity.
Ex. Senior Project (Old head industrial engineer and plant floor manager moved/promoted so had to present my project and what I was doing to new ones)

What Management Looks For In Engineering Reports
(1) What’s the report about and who wrote it
(2) What does it contribute?
(3) What are the conclusions and recommendations?
(4) What are their importance and significance?
(5) What’s the implication to the Company?
(6) What actions are suggested? Short range? Long range?
(7) Why? By whom? When? How?

Five broad technological areas
(1) Technical problems
(2) New projects and products
(3) Experiments and tests
(4) Materials and processes
(5) Field troubles

NOTE: The writer of a report for management should write at a technical level suitable for a reader whose educational and experience background is in a field different from his own.

Management Responsibilities
(1) Define the project and the required reports
(2) Provide proper perspective for the project and the required reporting
(3) See that effective reports are submitted on time
(4) See that the reports are properly distributed

Abstract has two purposes:
(1) it provides the specialist in the field with enough information about the report to permit him to decide whether he could read it with profit
(2) it provides the administrator or executive with enough knowledge about what has been done in the study or project and with what results to satisfy most of his administrative needs

General rules for writing the abstract
(1) Your abstract must include enough specific information about the project or study to satisfy most of the administrative needs of a busy executive.
(2) Your abstract must be a self-contained unit, a complete report-in-miniature.
(3) Your abstract must be short.
(4) Your abstract must be written in fluent, easy-to-read prose.
(5) Your abstract must be consistent in tone and emphases with report paper, but it does not need to follow the arrangement, wording, or proportion of the original.
(6) Your abstract should make the widest possible use of abbreviations and numerals, but it must not contain any tables or illustrations

Ten Report Writing Pitfalls:
(1) Ignoring your audience
(2) Writing to impress
(3) Having more than one aim
(4) Being inconsistent
(5) Overqualifying
(6) Not defining
(7) Misintroducing
(8) Dazzling with data
(9) Not highlighting
(10) Not rewriting