Business
Report
Writing
Presented by
The British Council
Trainer:
Date:
The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
Workshop outline
Day 1
Day 2
The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
Workshop objectives
The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
5 How do you feel about writing reports, compared with giving a verbal
report, and why?
The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
Reports are a vital part of the communication process. They can be used to
record actions already taken, proposals or just suggestions. All too often we
are terrified to commit our ideas to paper, especially if it is a report where we
have to 'make recommendations'. The 'fear' leads us to writing too much, or
not enough or simply writing nonsense, when in fact all that is needed is an
accurate interpretation of what we are thinking. In other words a well
structured report.
The skills of good report writing can be learnt like any other, and the principles
apply whatever the purpose. It could be:
• a proposal to a client
With every report, the objective is for the reader to understand something he
or she didn't know before, and usually to persuade them to agree a particular
course of action. There is no guarantee that by presenting a well-written
report your case will automatically be accepted, but at least if it has been
understood it will stand a better chance.
The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
Look at the list of contents of a typical report below. In your groups decide on
a logical order.
Findings
Appendix (Appendices)
Table of contents
Conclusions
Title page
Recommendations
Summary (Abstract)
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Are there any other sections that you include in your reports?
The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
1. Consider the importance of the report: who it is for, why they want it, how
will they use it?
2. Write the body of the report
3. Write the introduction
4. State the aim and emphasis of the report briefly
5. Collect all the materials
6. Check readability, clarity, consistency; then your grammar, spelling,
punctuation, and style
7. Read the text aloud to someone else
8. Decide what information is important and what is irrelevant
9. Arrange the points of information in a logical sequence and in order of
importance
10.Finally if possible, let someone (qualified to give constructive criticism) look
at the draft
11.Decide where you might need illustrations or diagrams
12.Write the conclusions & recommendations
13.Check your illustrations
14.Summarise the report
15.Examine the draft. Does it do what the report is expected to do?
Now divide these tasks into categories to show the 4 different stages of the
writing process.
The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
The way we write is very personal, but most people agree that it is important
to go through each of these stages when you are writing something, especially
a business document. It is particularly important that you have the aim or
objective of whatever you are writing very clear – to help you do this we will be
discussing aims and objectives throughout the workshop.
If you look back at the answers you gave to the questions, would you
say you’re writing habits are generally
Good
Generally acceptable
Poor
The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
Workshop assignment
During this workshop you will write a report specific to your job or department.
It must be a REAL report in that it can be one which you need to write now or it
can be based on one which you have written in the past.
You do NOT have to complete the report as a piece of homework. Instead you
will work on it slowly and by the end of the workshop have produced a full
report which reflects what you have learned on the workshop.
Stage one:
_______________________________________________________________________
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
Collecting information
There are two essential skills in collecting information:
Practice 1
Practice 2
You are in an electronic manufacturing company and have been told by your
new director to explore the possibility of launching a digital camera. Read the
article on the next page and decide:
Practice Three
Now decide where you will collect information for YOUR report
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
Snap Happy
That number may seem surprising, since the picture quality still doesn’t match
that of the old 35 millimetre point-and-shoot. But unlike film cameras, digitals
don’t require film; they produce pictures that can be transferred onto computers
for instant viewing.
Fun with digital cameras clicked in Japan a couple of years ago and is now
beginning to spread. Although around 60% of the 6.5 million digital cameras
estimated to be sold globally in 1998 were bought in Japan - where most
manufacturers are based - they have started registering double and triple digit
annual growth in Europe and the United States. By 2001, some 10 million digital
cameras will be sold annually. And eventually they’re likely to replace film
cameras in all but specialist uses.
The digital camera concept is simple: A lens focuses an image onto a layer of
light-sensitive circuitry known as a charge-coupled device, or CCD. The CCD
“sees” the images as composites of tiny colour dots known as pixels. Current
cameras take pictures between 850,000 and 1.4 million pixels. More pixels
generally means a higher definition image. When a picture is taken, the camera
freezes the image and stores it digitally. This can be transferred to a PC by either
connecting a cable or by reading the picture data from removable storage data
media on the camera. This might be a floppy disk or a removable card of memory
chips. When digital cameras first became available, they were awkward and slow,
requiring a gap of 20 seconds between shots. Now, an image can be stored within
1.5 seconds.
There are 10 major digital camera makers. The leading own-brand manufacturer
is Fujifilm. Olympus, a leading film-camera maker comes a close second. Another
Japanese company, Sanyo Electric comes third. This company actually builds up
to 30% of the worlds digital cameras. It also assembles five of the top 10 best
sellers. Sanyo’s latest model, the DSC-X100-N sells in stores for just over $400. It
is a small compact camera and weighs only 200 grams. It’s easy to use and
features the ability to take a one-minute video clip.
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
2. Suppose you were writing a report about a proposed staff pension scheme.
How would it differ if you were writing it:
i. for the board to decide on whether or not to adopt the new scheme?
or
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Business & IT Unit
a) Verbs
give evaluate
b) Linking words
c) Nouns
recommendations
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
You have been asked to produce each of the following reports. In each case,
write down a sentence that you might use as your objective (you can supply
your own conditions where they aren't implied in the questions):
1. A report to your boss on staff use of company telephones for personal use
(after your boss has just received a very
large phone bill for your office).
Objective:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Objective:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My Objective:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terms of reference
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
Practice One
Look at these badly written terms of references. Divide them into Purpose,
Background and Scope. Then re-write them so they give a better impression.
I’ve got to look at the work of Mr X (he’s the assistant finance manager) and
see if he’s been doing a good job or not. If the report is negative then he’ll
probably get the sack.
Practice Two
Now write terms of reference for a report you might write at work.
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
Organising points
Discuss
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
Ordering points
Importance
• the reader will not be misled or confused about the document’s purpose
• the busy reader will get the most important information, even if s/he cannot
read every word
• the busy reader will know immediately whether this document must be read
Chronology
Sequence
Comparison
Spatial Organisation
In some situations the most effective way to organise material is spatially. For
example, if you are describing a complex tool, you can describe its parts based
on how they are actually attached to each other, starting from the left, and
working to the right. You show the parts as they exist spatially, one after the
other.
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
Organising ideas
1. Organise the following ideas - which focus on a venue for a proposed
cosmetics promotion - into groups which have a similar topic. There may
be only one idea in some of the groups.
2. Give each of the groups a heading, which summarises the main idea of the
group.
3. Order the groups within the document, so that they are in a logical order.
4. Give the whole piece a heading that summarises the main idea of all the
groups.
The advantages of holding the event at the Marriott Hotel would seem to
justify the higher cost of 8%.
The Nile Hilton Hotel - Dining accommodation would consist of a section of the
main restaurant, partitioned off if necessary.
The cost of staging the event at the Marriott Hotel would be 8% higher than at
the Nile Hilton.
The Nile Hilton Hotel - A suitable reception lounge is available and also a
lecture room (capacity 60 people) for the address by the Managing Director
and the launch of the new line.
The Nile Hilton Hotel - The hotel is located in the business centre of the city.
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
The Marriott Hotel - The reception would be held on the terrace and a suitable
lecture hall is available for the address and the launch of the line.
The Marriott Hotel - The exhibits would be housed in two connecting rooms
Delegates should be provided with a map indicating the exact location of the
Hotel.
The Marriott Hotel - A private dining room is available, leading to the terrace.
The Marriott Hotel - All sporting facilities would be made available to delegates
at no extra cost.
The Nile Hilton Hotel - Our twenty stands of exhibits could be housed in one
large hall.
A detailed plan of the location of the exhibition stands in the two rooms should
be provided.
After a brief discussion a shortlist of two possible venues was drawn up:
The Marriott Hotel
The Nile Hilton Hotel
The purpose of this report is to evaluate the suitability of the two venues and
to recommend the best option.
The Nile Hilton Hotel - Sporting facilities are available at a cost of LE100 per
delegate.
The Marriott Hotel - The hotel is located in the upper class area of Zamalek
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
Main body
This section must be presented as clearly as possible. This can be
done by using headings.
1 Terms of reference
2 Procedure
3 Findings
3.1 The Nile Hilton Hotel
3.2 The Marriott
3.3 Cost
4 Conclusions
5 Recommendations
Practice
Now write the sections and headings for your report. Number them if you feel
this is appropriate.
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
Though separate stages, these sections are related. Conclusions are drawn
when findings are analysed and represent the major learning points from the
study. Recommendations are practical courses of action based on the
conclusions.
Making Conclusions
These are the findings of a study into the courses run at the English Language
Centre. What conclusions can you make from this data?
700
600
500
Public
400
Corporate
300
200 Govt.
100
0
1994 1996 1998 2000
Years
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
9. There has been a falling off in the government funded training programmes
because of the shift of focus away from English Language training in the
government.
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
Recommending Language
These recommendations differ in their strength. Number them in order of their
strength (1 should be the strongest, and 6 will be the least strong)
Then underline the specific phrase which is used to indicate the strength of
each recommendation.
Conclusions:
1.
2.
Recommendations
1.
2.
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
Summarising
Practice One
Look at the summary below, break it into different parts of the report: Terms of
reference, findings, conclusions, and recommendations.
In brief, the report sets out to list the present problems in out sales centre. It
draws attention to such features such as customer waiting time, seating
facilities, and obstacles outside the centre. Particular emphasis is placed on
the problems of manoeuvring around the centre. It concludes that, although
our service standards are generally above average, they still leave a lot to be
desired. As such, a major examination of our service system should be
conducted
Practice Two
• Feasibility study
• Incident report
• Project or sales proposal
• Field trip report
• Annual report
• Progress report
• Situation analysis
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
Discuss
2. What do you think makes a report attractive and interesting? (think about
colour, spacing, font, diagrams)
3. What features could you include to make a report look more readable?
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
Whatever your feelings, it is important that documents which more than one
writer contribute to (such as newsletters) are consistent. This is why a style
sheet, distributed to all writers, is important.
It will take time to compile, but it will save much more time in the future because
you will have to do less editing for consistency.
Practice
On the next page are two versions of the same passage. What differences are
there? List them in the box below:
Text 1 Text 2
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
Are the following statements good or bad advice on report layout and design?
1 Your readers probably only spend five minutes looking at your reports. So
it is not worth spending much time over the layout.
2 Your report front page should mention your organisation's name and
intended readership.
6 Boxes and rules (lines) help to organise your material. So use lots of
them.
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
1. How much has your company spent on training, leisure facilities and
pension schemes?
2. Introduce the three divisions in your company, and the eight departments
they are subdivided into, and explain the work of each.
3. What are your division’s profit/loss for the recently ended quarter in
contrast to the two previous quarters and your projections for the next
quarter?
4. What is the ratio of men to women in your company?
5. What is the procedure for handling complaints in your company?
6. How do you spend your time? A management Review of your department
is being carried out, and you have to justify your existence!
7. What was your company’s overall sales for the year ?
8. Can you compare the average starting salaries for graduates in
engineering, law, medicine and commerce?
9. What is your company’s procedure for dismissing employees ?
Referring to data
True of False?
Practice
Think about your workshop assignment report. What visual aids, if any, can
you include that will be meaningful and informative?
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
Is it concise? - Omit any information, phrases and words that are not
absolutely necessary.
True or false?
Checking for all these points at once is too complex and ineffective.
NOTE: An external editor should only need to make very minor changes, if any
to your report.
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
With practice it is a skill you can acquire. Get into the habit of reading the
work you have typed or written. Concentrate on the text and you should
notice when a word is incorrect. Read each word, don’t skim through it as it is
easy to miss a word that is spelt wrong. Lastly, always have a dictionary to
hand because spell checks on computers are great but they do not pick up
every mistake. Therefore if you are not sure how to spell a word, look it up.
Study the list for 5 minutes. Your trainer will then give you a short spelling
‘test’. The purpose of this test is so that YOU know your own weaknesses.
If you do discover you are a ‘poor speller’ (which even native speakers can
be!), we suggest you put this list on your notice board close to your desk so
you remember to check when you are writing.
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
1. Apostrophe’
The most common mistakes in punctuation involve the apostrophe. It
has two main uses:
a. To show possession:
e.g. Dickens’ novel
the people’s choice
b. To show that a letter (or letters) have been missed out of a word:
e.g. I can’t come to the meeting tomorrow. We’re having a training
session.
NOTE: It’s raining.
The car has just failed its MOT
2. (Brackets)
Avoid using them too much. Only put words in brackets if they are really
less important than the surrounding text. If a whole sentence is in within
brackets, put the full stop inside the brackets.
e.g. She decided not to buy the car this year (because of the
recession).
She decided not to buy the car this year. (She said it was because
of the recession.)
3. Capital Letters
These are straightforward but remember:
4. Colon:
Use a colon before an example or a list.
e.g. Here are the books you asked for: “Gone with the Wind”, “Pride
and Prejudice”, “The Deptford Trilogy” and “The Daughter of Time”.
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
5. Comma,
These are used to show minor breaks or “breaths” in sentences. The
trend is to use as few as possible, while keeping the meaning of the
sentence clear. You must use a comma after clauses beginning
‘although’, ‘if’, ‘despite’, etc.
Also use a comma for lists (but there is no need to use it before the
“and” at the end of the list):
Use two commas, or none at all, if you insert a clause in the middle of a
sentence.
6. Dash-
Avoid using them. People tend to use a dash to join to parts of a
sentence when really they should simply have written two separate
sentences.
7. Full stop.
Use these at the end of sentences. Use lots of them. They keep
sentences short. Also use them for some abbreviations, although this is
happening less and less.
NOTE: Do not use a full stop after: ‘Ms’, ‘Mrs’, ‘Ms’, ‘Miss’, ‘Dr’
8. Hyphen-
It is becoming increasingly acceptable to miss out hyphens, except in
phrases which would otherwise be ambiguous or difficult to understand:
9. “Inverted commas”
Inverted commas can be either single(‘) or double (“). It does not matter
but you must be consistent.
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
England as a charity.
Business & IT Unit
Punctuation practice
1. before leaving the office mr bondino reviewed the next days programme
3. the head of administration had wanted to interview mashud but was unable
to keep the appointment
5. abc textiles and its subsidiaries have been absorbed by the growtex group
6. she asked is she could have the holiday before she got married
7. while many people are concerned about minor pollutants such as solid
waste the more serious problem of toxic waste has surfaced
8. production costs have risen to an all time high said the managing director.
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
To calculate the Fog Index, you choose a passage of more than a hundred
words and then find the average number of words in each sentence by dividing
the number of complete sentences into the number of words in those
sentences.
Next you count the number of words with /// three or more syllables. Words
beginning with a capital letter, those ending with -es or -ed and compound
words like ‘traffic-lights’ are left out. The average number of words in the
sentences is added to the number of words of three or more syllables, and the
result is then multiplied by 0.4.
In these paragraphs, up to the oblique lines (///), there are 100 words.
Calculate its Fog Index (FI). The analysis is below:
• scores of 14 and upwards: only those with a good university education can
read it.
Alternatively:
The resulting number can be taken to signify the number of years education
needed by the reader to understand the passage, i.e. the Fog Index.
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
Almost all audiences prefer to read well below their education levels and so
when there is a serious intention to communicate the calculation of the fog
index is worthwhile.
Popular magazines in the UK are said to have a Fog Index of about six.
Newspapers in the UK have Fog Indexes varying from about 10 to 14. There is
evidence to suggest that even those with a PhD will not spend prolonged time
reading material with a fog index of over 13! Analysis of business
communication, however, show them to be frequently in the range of 17 to 20.
1. Achieving a low Fog Index does not itself mean that documentation is
readable, as the effective removal of communication barriers is not simply a
matter of using simple words and short sentences. Jargon, for example, can
prevent communication and will not necessarily create a high Fog Index when
included in a text.
4. Sometimes a high Fog Index cannot be easily avoided, when writing about
“auditing organisational communications” for example.
• Avoiding jargon
• Using plain English
• Using short words
• Using short sentences
• Using short paragraphs
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
baby food admit (such as Kinda, Hovis) is best for mother and baby. In this
connection, in the first place the milk come raedy-mixed germ-free and at the
and large inexpensive and finally the quality and quantity of the milk adjust
automatically to the babys needs, as long as the mother eat and sleeps well.
Mothers may sometimes feel side-effects. Moreover, both mother and baby
generally derives great satisfaction from this shared pleasure, and it also
builds up the babys defences against disaease. Let us look at each of the
points in some deatil. Starting with the health factors ……… Then there is
convinience....
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
If you can answer yes to all the questions then you have probably written an
effective report.
4 Have you assembled the relevant information from the available sources?
4 Have you been able to draw conclusions and make recommendations based
on your findings?
4 Have you made a plan of your report and are you happy with the plan?
4 Have you edited your draft, checking such things as spelling, punctuation,
line spacing, headings, numbering etc?
4 Have you checked the grammar in your report, remember the mistakes
that you commonly make?
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
Recap
From this workshop you should realise that writing a document – no matter
how short – is not finished with one draft. The process is quite extensive:
Collect ideas
Focus on objectives
Draft
Evaluate
Re-draft
Re-evaluate
Proof Read
.....
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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Business & IT Unit
Appendix 1
The standard format of some common style reports.
1. A project proposal
Position
Problem
Possibilities
Proposal
Appendix
2. An incident report
Background
Incident detail
Conclusion
Action
Introduction
Background to project
Current Situation
Conclusion
Recommendation (next stages for project)
Appendix (if necessary)
4. A feasibility study
Terms of reference
Description of product or service
Analysis of main findings (eg costs, market surveys etc)
Conclusion
Recommendations for implementation
Appendix
5. An appraisal report
(some may also including a rating system after the overall comments)
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Business & IT Unit
6. Trip report
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The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations. Registered in
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