A ‘DUMMY’S GUIDE’ TO WRITING AN EFFECTIVE REPORT

“I didn’t have time to write a short report, so I wrote a long one instead.” Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Report is a good way to documents the research or study done on a subject, but writing one is both difficult and time consuming. One needs to remember certain rules to become good at report writing. An effective report needs to be readable, credible and understandable.

First of all a report that is not readable become irritating for the reader and dissuade him to ‘carry on’ reading. Readability means an appealing and welcoming effect the text has on the reader. We all have experienced it in advertisement that catches our attention. Similarly this can be achieved in reports by using simple tools like headings and attractive presentation. But readability is just one block of the puzzle.

In addition to that, a piece of work that lacks credibility has little to no worth and cannot be considered effective. We all assume the role of a critic especially when obtaining information from a new source, in order to obtain our interest the source whether a person or a text needs to have some credibility. Credibility could be due to an authority, a title, an award or a simply a perception the source holds in our mind.

Furthermore, a document that is both readable and credible would fail achieve its purpose and have the desired effect if the reader cannot even understand it. To be understandable first a document needs to be in ‘layman’s terms’ second and most importantly it should not be offensive and prejudicial towards a particular person or group. Anyone who has been in a fight or hot argument would agree that the moment the other person starts shouting is the time when situation starts to get worse.

Writing a creative report would be so much easy if one remembers the three essentials of report writing, namely RCU (readability, credibility and understandability). This report attempts to simplify the process of report writing by providing some standardized guidelines along with related examples. These guidelines will help everyone facing difficulty in writing reports whether ‘he be a student or a professional’.