Mastering Report Writing: Structure, Content and Language Essentials

welcome back in the previous lecture ah we talked about the structure of report and while discussing the structure we discussed the first part of the report structure that is prefatorial material of front matter having understood the front matter it is time now

we understood the main parts of the report when you start the building you lay the foundation and then you start making it brick by brick so when the foundation is over we want to see how the wall comes up so the discussion of the report is actually the mirror of the

report now what are the elements of discussion and what should be the part of discussion as we said earlier that the main elements of the report are introduction then discussion then conclusions and recommendations meaning thereby

that the main body of the report has got four parts and the first part is introduction suppose you are going to write a report on a particular topic on a particular subject your readers would like to know what the problem is about because the front part of the report is nothing

but the structure the real report begins with the main body and with the introduction so in introduction there are certain parts which have to be taken into consideration every problem before the problem is to be analyzed the reader is actually interested

to know what is the background of the problem what is actually going to happen and then if something is going to happen how it is going to happen because while discussing the data collection we talked about and then the data has to be analyzed and that will be done

in the discussion part now the introductory part of a report or the main body of the report has certain items which actually require proper understanding first is a historical background you need to understand the historical background of

the problem and through this statement of authorization as we have been saying that while you go through the terms of reference the problem is mentioned in the terms of reference and in the light of the terms of reference and in the light of the authorization you

actually start your report so first you are going to provide your readers with the background of the matter suppose you are going to ah talk about pollution ah air pollution suppose you are going to talk about a a particular organization where

you are going to talk about the absenteeism or in a particular observation ah organization you are going to talk about ah the use of technology and all naturally you need to prove because you know no reports can be written unless and until there is a problem because

every report say for that matter a technical report is a solution to a problem or will provide a solution to a problem so while you provide the background in the background itself you are going to talk about not only about the organization but also about the problem

suppose somebody is going to write a report on unemployment problem in such and such sector so he will have to provide the brief introduction about that sector say in a technology sector or say ah in some other sector in automobile industry whatsoever so you will provide a

background of the matter and then the hypothesis i mean the concept the problem why this how this problem occurred and now what actually needs to be done all these have been provided to you in the ah terms of reference by the person who has assigned you the task of writing

the report then you also need to mention the scope of the problem suppose you are talking about a problem you also need to talk about how it is going to affect the people of that locality the employees of that organization or the

particular community because you are going to talk about a problem in a particular organization or in a community naturally you also need to talk about this scope moreover remember since you are going to give a solution to the problem in the report and while you are

collecting the data do you think that the data that you have collected and the report that ah you have prepared can be applied to everyone or does it have certain limitations so while you are collecting the data maybe you came across certain hindrances or challenges

or whatsoever so in introduction itself in the introduction of the report itself you are going to talk about not only the methodology of the data but then you will also i mean whatever way you ah had the method of data collection or the way you collected the data

but in every method there is some amount of limitation like that in every solution there may be some amount of limitation so you will also talk about the limitations of the report because maybe the findings that you have made cannot be applicable to all

ah so hence you need to mention the limitations then comes the sources and the methods of data collection you remember while we are discussing the a methods of data collection we had talked about ah observation as one of the method then we also talked about the

telephonic interview we also talked about personal interview and then the questionnaire but ah what is of a main significance is that not every method of data collection is a a one way which suits every audience or every problem because you cannot say ah that this

is the final solution maybe because of certain limitations or had there been no limitations the report could have been somehow different hence you not only mention ah the sources by which ah and through which you collected the data and the method you applied for the

data collection ah then when you write the report you will find ah that you will come across certain technical terms and when ah the report is complete and if ah you are going to revise it and read it you will find that certain technical terms may be difficult for

people who do not belong to that particular area or field for which you have written the report but then since your report can be read by anyone and everyone wisdom says that you should provide the definition of certain terms because the person who is going to take an

action or the boss who ultimately understands the solution that you have provided may not be a person having the experience in the area in which you have written the report so if some amount of explanation is provided through definition of certain terms perhaps

it will become easier the task of reading the report will become easier and then finally ah the report preview so if you keep into consideration all these elements in certain reports a people also mentioned even in the introduction ah the division of the report

the report is divided into ah these sections ah the first section talks about this the second talks about this and this so when ah introduction ah formulates the first part of your a um main body of the report next to the introduction ah what is of utmost

importance is discussion now if introduction paves the way to the reading of the report it is actually the discussion where the entire drama takes place meaning is the entire data which you have collected now there is an analysis of the data that is why when you make an analysis

and ah if it is a technical report you will find ah the data collected by you requires proper analysis because unless and until you analyze it you interpret it people will not understand because it is your interpretation and your analysis which will help you in a

very sequential manner in a very logical manner reach the conclusion of your report so it is here in the discussion part but remember as i had said earlier that your report begins with and you have to number ah the items of the report so your introduction will be a

number one and from discussion it will be you can you can put to discussion and in discussion there will be further divisions every item you know because there will be a several sections in the discussion itself so you will ah divide them and you will follow the decimal numbering

here you have the liberty to analyze your data the data has been gathered and presented but a proper analysis of the data you actually want to make your readers understand the real problem and then why this problem ah came up ah what do the data ah say about this ah

how you can also show through your data by interpreting and evaluating how a particular trend emerges all these are very important so you are going to provide a proper analysis and in a very clear manner you know ah why when i say clear manner i am also aware of

the language that you will use of course we will talk about language use in a separate section and then in the discussion itself you will be talking about the findings ah the research problem ah their relations ah with the sort of discussion which you are

making and when when you are analyzing the data you are actually because it is a sort of interpretation and it is a sort of analysis which is actually paving you to reach any conclusion because your conclusion the conclusion of your report will totally be based on the

analysis that you have made say for example you are talking about ah the problem of absenteeism in an organization or in an institute imagine there may be several regions but unless and until you have the data you cannot analyze that ah people may

very casually say that since ah they are not sincere they become absent but then when you analyze it and when the data with you are available you may understand that some people may have a personal problem then you may also understand that some people actually ah do

not ah like ah the unit in which they are working again you may also find that some people do not go well with their bosses because of the a sort of communication pattern in his unit or her unit again there may be variety of regions but all these regions you will

only be able to understand when you will have the data and you have ah ah a chance to interpret them so once you have interpreted the data and analyzed that you are nearing a sort of inference or you are nearing a sort of conclusion so

you have to state the findings and describe so when you are describing you may also feel at times that they can be done in a tabular manner actually they can also be done through the use of illustration for example suppose you are working on the data of ten years so

in order to show the comparative trend in order to show a comparative analysis through graphs through charts or through a some some other drawings you can show that and moreover it is beneficial ah for those people who actually ah run short of time

they will simply look at the graph and the chart and they will try to understand because you know visuals work more than the verbals and that is why it is but remember when you are putting those visuals they should actually be ah in line or in sync with the discussion

that you are making now the way you are interpreting and analyzing your data of course in ah informative report ah this is ah not ah that possible but when it is an analytical report or a report which actually requires a lot of interpretation ah then ah you not only raise questions but

you also answer but how do you answer you answer with the help of the data available so you ah answer the problem statements and finally ah by making a lot of interpretation and analysis you are actually trying to bring the discussion to

a close so but before you bring it to a close you actually see that it is not something that is imagined or not something that ah has come out of a proposition rather it is actually based on a logic or based on a fact otherwise your conclusion may appear to be

lopsided and it will simply ah show that you have not ah done any interpretation or any finding rather you have simply come ah concluded but when you conclude please see draw the logical inferences and judgments based on the analysis it is here ah some people simply

understand that they have to write the conclusion but the conclusion that they feel no the conclusion should be totally based on the analysis which has been made no new information should be there in the conclusion the conclusion actually should provide what you have gathered from

the data after a lot of your interpretation evaluation reasoning and whatsoever and when when you are doing all these and when you have reached the conclusion now you have one thing to take into consideration as is how to write the conclusion you see if your report

is ah say of a thirty pages but conclusion that you are writing going to write is conclusion should be very brief maybe it is of one page may be conclusion either of two pages but ah it has been seen that since people are running sort of time

ah they have a so many commitments they many busy professionals ah have often said that they simply want to see the conclusions and they say ah they also want to see the illustrations which are there in the report so when you are going to conclude ah you can also ah prefer

to write the conclusion ah in a in a very succinct manner but then let all these conclusions be mocked maybe it is not possible to provide the conclusion in a paragraph the conclusions can be numbered also but when you are giving the conclusion see to it that your conclusion

is totally based on the analysis which has been made now again one thing that you can ask after you have provided the conclusion is it actually required that you should provide the recommendation now once again ah go back to the definition

of ah the report where we said that it is a formal statement it is actually a formal piece of writing where an analysis of data is done to come to the conclusion but in order to write the recommendation you cannot give the recommendation on your own unless and

until you have been asked to give the recommendation it is better not to give the recommendation but even if you feel or even if you are asked to give the recommendation there are three ways you can write the recommendation i mean tentative tentative means that based on this

ah a conclusion you are providing a recommendation which may appear to be feasible sometimes there are people who give the recommendations which are not feasible so do not go to recommend such action which cannot be completed ah some people give the recommendation where they

say that this can be the only solution you know while writing the recommendation of course there is a no you know personality should not come in and between both in the conclusion as well as in the recommendation you are recommending an action based on what has happened in that

report so it provides a solution it provides a sort of conciliation to the recommendation but there are some people who actually give the recommendation which appears to be very aggressive maybe ah they can ah when they suggest an

action ah they say that it is very important it is actually ah without this it cannot be done so you are of course you have the liberty to give the recommendation but see to it that when you recommend your recommendation should have some amount of feasibility because based

on your recommendation some action will be taken and if you simply jump to the conclusion and to the recommendation which is which is a which is an invention of your own naturally ah the report as a communication will fail so while recommending an action please see

ah that ah you maintain a sort of equilibrium ah where you are providing the truth but you are recommending action that are feasible also now having done ah the main body of the ah report what is of importance is to understand that a report does not have only the front

matter and the main body but a report also has back matter now the question is what exactly should come in the back matter and what are the various items that should formulate back matter when you are ah um writing the report you will find because when you write the report

you write ah ah in a way where you want to provide all sorts of analysis all sorts of interpretation and evaluation and all but there are certain points which you may feel that that can block the flow of the readers thoughts say for example you have collected

the data and you have collected the the data with the help either of a questionnaire or a personal interview and so when you are discussing and it you if you provide ah the interview seat or the questionnaire in the midst of the discussion that will appear to be very

cumbersome so while deciding which matter should go to the back matter because there are certain a pieces of information which are of course ah ah important but not as important that they should be put in the discussion they actually can be put

because they are the supporting materials so these supporting materials ah you can put towards the back and for that ah if if you feel that there are lots of pieces of information which actually a reader would like to know and understand how they support and how they

justify you can put them in a several sections and every section has to be named for that you you need ah some some sort of appendices if pieces of such information are longer and their numbers are so many you can divide them into appendices a appendices b and appendices

c it is only the a very sincere and and say a very interested a readers who would like to know how the report writer has come to such a solution and later on they will consult or ah they will consult the back matter where

all these pieces ah interview seats ah then then ah these ah graphs the charts ah this ah ah questionnaire all these things can be put in this back matter next comes the list of references now whenever you write a report ah your report is based

on the data but then in order to prove your point you also take the help of a some other observations ah by some other experts in that area ah and as i have said earlier while you are culling out the information and while you are making notes ah if you are going to

quote from somebody else you had to put that into quotes but now here is ah a one place ah in the list of references ah if you feel that your references or your supporting materials ah justify what you are saying you can actually put that either

in the bibliography or in the list of references we also have to understand the difference between the two and then we have a glossary and then index also now the first thing that is ah of utmost ah importance is to understand how to document your report now when you document

your report what do you do is you actually provide ah the list of books list of ah say ah papers a list of journals from which you gathered information pieces of information for that you document your report your report or your conclusions and recommendations

may not be understood true unless and until they have some justification and for that you should ah mention you should provide a bibliography as well as a list of references you need to understand the difference between the two what actually is a bibliography bibliography

is actually the list of books that you have consulted they they are not data as such but then they are secondary data and these secondary data requires to be put in the bibliography section when you are in the bibliography section ah the books that you have listed there maybe

you have not quoted from all the books but as a reader even if it is i or even if it is you you would like to know because if your interest ah is sustained throughout you would like to have some further information also so when you are going to mention ah the

names of the books ah in the bibliography section it will actually help other researchers other readers other people interested in that sphere so there has to be a proper entry and that has to be followed by a proper formatting and style bibliography is provided in the

alphabetical manner whereas you know if if you find that ah ah the a codes or the references are very less ah then the references can be used as footnotes i mean if you are putting something on one page ah and and if you if the number is less you can put that in the

footnote on the same page but if you feel that there are so many then you can number it towards the end of the report either in the works cited or in the bibliography or list of references the basic difference between list of references and bibliography

is that while the list of references are very particular i mean if you have quoted something ah it is mandatory ah that you make a mention of that whereas in bibliography it is the complete list where you feel ah that this ah can ah be used for further reading a bibliography

ah ah lists both textual references and other works which you might have come across and which you feel ah that as a reader ah other people also would like to be interested though the list is comprehensive ah maybe that you have not ah mentioned all of them

or quoted from all of them but as readers they would of course be interested in going through that a list of references as i said earlier are only those which you have cited in the text of your study or in the text of your report but then while doing so there

are ah several ways a much depends upon which style you are going to follow ah there are several a citation styles ah especially ah in science people follow the apa style whereas ah in a social sciences they follow the mla documentation style

but then you ought to understand the order of making the entries ah in the bibliography as well as in the list of references so the first is the authors name but when you provide the authors name ah if you write it in the footnotes it is the complete one whereas if

you write it in the bibliography it starts with the surname you know if if the name of the author is a a a henry williams so the william williams will come first comma and then ah come will come henry moreover if you are following it in the apa style ah the year

comes just after the name of the author whereas in mla ah the ah year is mentioned towards the end and then the name of the editor or name of the book and then the name of the series name of the a place of publication then year of

publication and then the page numbers and and then there can be several types suppose sometimes you quote from one book which is by one author whereas on another occasion you quote from a book which is by two authors sometimes ah um from a book which is by three

authors sometimes it is by a corporate author sometimes it is ah through an email entry sometimes it is the newspaper article sometimes it is ah say an essay in a book sometimes it is from an edited book sometimes it is ah from some a research from sometimes it

is from an abstract so the there are different sorts of a information that you call from and that you are going to cite it from ah let us ah ah see an example of how we can write a bibliography ah depending upon ah um as i said depending upon the style

that you are following suppose you are following the mla style seat ah then you have to follow ah ah like this for example if we are talking about a something that you have a cited from mla handbook for writers of research papers see that the name of the author is joseph

gibaldi ah so ah the first name is joseph but it will begin with the surname and then will come the joseph and then the name of the book will be in italics then the addition and then the place suppose it is ah from the new york we will

write new york and then ah the name of the press if it is prentice hall prentice hall or oup and then the year but in terms of apa this two thousand four will come just after gibaldi joseph like that ah if it is an article from the newspaper naturally we will write

the name of the ah contributor or the author and then we will right the title of the article and then ah we will also write the name of the a journal or the name of ah the newspaper sometimes ah people like that as italics sometimes they underline it depending upon the practice

whatever is feasible and whatever is a practicable in your organization you are to follow that next is glossary it is actually a glossary provides you a list of all the technical terms but then this also is provided ah in an alphabetical manner say if i am interested in one particular

word naturally i will go to the glossary and if ah there are ah but but see if the number is less it is not ah feasible to provide a glossary if the number is more than ten twenty or say hundreds it is ah actually mandatory to provide a a glossary ah in case of glossary

there is another ah thing that also can be added to a report this is index in index extremely long reports only can have index ah suppose ah you want to go to a particular part particular part so in index you will find ah it is index is

also arranged in a alphabetical manner but it is ah ah given ah as a main topic and then a subtopic now once you come to know all these structural elements of the report you are in a proper frame of mind ah to get ready to write the report but remember having a

lot of information and also knowing about the structural part of report what is of utmost importance also to know about the sort of language you will apply or you will use while you are going to draft a report dear friends as writers of report you need to be extra

careful and vigilant because your report is the representation not only of you as an individual but also as a member of your organization because the entire ah reputation of your organization also depends on the sort of reports that are being drafted or written by the professionals

of that organization so care has to be taken while drafting the report but it is not only the information alone rather how this information is going to be supplied or going to be provided in ah by by making subtle use of language so

that everyone can understand what the report is about and ah everyone can be helped in knowing the solution to a problem i am quite hopeful ah that by understanding both these strategies and the structure of the report you are now in a proper frame of mind ah to

start thinking of a report but before thinking of writing the report let us also try to understand what sort of language can we use we shall be talking about ah the report language in the next lecture till then thank you very much have a nice day