Structuring & Writing Reports – Training Course Outline

Business reports are your company’s main tool to enable and support critical decision-making. If you are proposing a course of action – either within your company or to a client – the report you write will be its best advocate.

It takes a lot of skill to communicate technical or commercial information efficiently and accurately. This course has been designed specifically for people who are required to write business reports. It concentrates exclusively on the skills you need to make the writing process easier and the resulting document more effective.

What you will learn on this course

By the end of the course, you will know how to:

• Analyse your audience and tailor the content to their specific needs
• Gather data efficiently and select the relevant information for your readers
• Use best practice in structuring your document
• Choose words that support your message and don’t distract your reader
• Assess the best places to use graphics, and choose the right image to support your content
• Edit your draft for maximum impact

What our customers say

“A very interesting and thorough course. It has been interactive and fun. I have learnt new skills and am looking forward to putting them into practice. Thank you.”

EC, CAPS Solutions

“Fantastic course, well supported by in class exercises. Well worth attending!”

BB, Microsoft

“Very useful course – hopefully it will teach me not to be so wordy. Course very well given considering the fairly dry subject.”

BW, Oil Spill Response Ltd.

“I was very impressed with the overall session. I have learnt new skills and I am confident what I have learnt today can be transferred into good report writing.”

JT, London South Bank University

Course Duration

We provide both a one-day intensive course and a more interactive two-day workshop.

One-day Intensive

This course is available both as a public or private course. It concentrates on showing you, step-by-step, the process of structuring and writing reports. Exercises are used to illustrate various points throughout the day.

Two-day Workshop

This workshop is only available as a private course. Over the two-day workshop, delegates practise report writing skills, learning the techniques through group discussion, exercises and working on real examples of reports you bring to the workshop.

If you’re unsure which course is best for you, give us a call for more details or email

Exercises

• Identifying your readers and their priorities
• Choosing clear, simple words
• Cutting out the waffle
• Writing direct, active sentences
• Recognising jargon and management-speak
• Mind-mapping a report
• Drafting an executive summary

Course Contents

1. Clarifying your purpose

• Do you have what it takes? The skills needed to write reports
• Why do you do it? What’s the purpose of a business or technical report?
• Why you won’t get anywhere without a clear objective
• All right, I’m sold – how do I set a clear objective?

2. Analysing your audience

• Do you know who you’re writing for?
• What will they want out of your report? The first step to making sure you deliver!
• How do you satisfy a mixed readership with multiple requirements?

3. Designing your structure

• Structuring before you start writing – you wouldn’t build without good foundations
• Using mind mapping or Word™ Outline View to sequence and structure your material
• How to structure the beginning, middle and end of your report
• Organising your content to achieve your purpose
• How to give bad news
• How to structure the Executive Summary
• Ideas for structuring sections
• Organising your content – are you trying to persuade, inform, explain or discuss?

4. Selecting your information

• Collecting and evaluating information – how to make it easy for people to help you
• Deciding what information is relevant – the payoff for having a clear objective
• Deciding the level of detail to include is easier when you’ve analysed your audience

5. Developing your style

• Crafting short, simple sentences to increase readability
• Choosing familiar words that make your meaning clear
• Getting rid of the waffle that bores readers
• Putting action in your verbs for direct, concise writing
• Writing in terms your reader can relate to
• Some pointers on British vs American text

6. Drafting and laying out your text

• The importance of the right mindset – how to avoid getting sidetracked
• The process – prepare, draft, relax, polish
• How to break up text – headings, bulleted or numbered lists, tables, diagrams, questions and answers, etc.

7. When and how to use graphics

• Why use graphics?
• When to use graphics – pictures, screen shots, diagrams, flow charts, tables, graphs, etc.
• The best places for your graphics, in order of preference
• Things to check when including graphics

8. Editing and proofing your draft

• A top-down approach to improving your text – see it the way your readers do
• Ensuring that you achieve maximum impact – things to check when editing your draft
• Removing commonly confused words, ‘poppycock’, poor punctuation and grammar
• Getting the most out of the spelling and grammar checkers
• Some common punctuation errors and how to avoid them
• Hints on proofreading to help you avoid a red face
• Report polishing checklist – that last once-over to save your sanity

9. Exploiting the tools

• Getting the most out of Word™
• On-line style guides for instant answers to annoying quibbles
• Metadata can be your undoing – what it is and how to hide it
• Handling version control
• Using Word™ templates
• Using titles, section headings and footnotes
• Including references and a bibliography

Book Now!

For details of timetabled courses, see the schedule.

To reserve your places you can book on-line, book a private course or call us on +44 (0)844 445 7743.