In this lecture you will learn:
•Varieties of report-writing situations
•How your readers want to use the information you provide
•The questions readers ask most often
•Sample outlines
•Planning guide
•Sample reports
•General superstructure for reports
–Introduction
–Method of obtaining facts
–Facts
–Discussion
–Conclusions
–Recommendations
Varieties of report-writing situations:
•Reports come in many varieties such as
–A hone-hundred-page report on a seventh-month project to
test a special method of
venting high-speed engines for use in space vehicles
–A twelve-page report based on research to determine
which long-distance
telephone company provides the most reliable service
–A two-paragraph report based upon a manufacturing
engineer’s visit to a new plant that is
about to be put into service
–A two-hundred-page report addressed to the general public
concerning the environmental
impact of mining certain portions of public land in
Balauchistan
How readers want to use the information you provide:
•Example: Your readers may want to use your information to
solve
– An
organizational problem: Where
typical goals are to increase efficiency and profit
– A social
problem: Where typical goals are
to improve the general health and welfare of
groups of people
– A
personal problem: Where typical
goals are to satisfy individual preferences and values
The questions that readers ask most often:
• What will
we gain from your report?
• Are your
facts reliable?
• What do
you know that is useful to us?
• How do
you interpret those facts from our point of view?
• How are
those facts significant to us?
• What do
you think we should do?
General superstructure of reports:
•The general superstructure of reports contains six
elements, one for each of the six basic
questions.
–Introduction
–Method of obtaining facts
–Facts
–Discussion
–Conclusions,
–Recommendations
Introduction:
•In the introduction of a report, you answer your readers’
question, “What will we
gain by reading your report?”
•In longer reports, your explanation of the relevance of
your report to your readers may take
many pages, in which you tell such things as
–What problem your report will help sole
–What activities you performed toward solving that problem
–How your audience can apply your information in their own
efforts towards solving the
problem
Method of Obtaining Facts:
•It also suggests to your readers how they can gain
additional information on the same
subject.
•If you obtained your information through reading, for
example, you direct your readers to
those sources, if you obtained your information through an
experiment, survey or other
special technique, your account of your method may help
others design similar projects.
Facts:
•Your facts are the individual pieces of evidence that
underlie and support your conclusions
and recommendations.
•If your report, like Ayesha’s, is based upon interviews,
your facts are the things people told
you.
•If your report is based upon laboratory, field, or
research, your facts are the verifiable
pieces of information that you gathered.
Discussion:
•Sometimes, writers have trouble distinguishing between a
presentation of the facts and
discussion of them.
•The following example may help you to make the distinction
clear:
–Imagine that you observed that when the temperature on the
floor of your factory is 65°F,
workers produce 3 percent rejected parts; when it is 70°F,
they produce 3 percent rejected
parts; when it is 75°F, they produce 4.5 percent rejected
parts, and when it is 80°F, they
produce 7 percent rejected parts.
Conclusions:
•Like interpretations, conclusions are general statements
based on your facts.
•However, conclusions focus not simply on interpreting the
facts but on answering the
readers’ question, “How are those facts significant to us?”
Recommendations:
•Just as conclusions grow out of interpretations of the
facts, recommendations grow out of
conclusions.
•They answer the reader’s question, “If your conclusions are
valid, what should we do?”
•Depending on many factors, including the number and
complexity of the things you are
recommending, you may state your recommendations in a single
sentence or in many
pages.
A note about summaries:
•The preceding discussion concentrates on the elements found
in most reports written on
the job.
•Many longer reports share another feature: they are
preceded by a separate summary of
the report overall.
•Such summaries are often called executive summaries because
they usually are addressed
to decision-makers.
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