Report Writing Essentials: Formal Communication for Professional Decisions

good morning welcome once again to the online lecture on soft skills as we remember presently we are dealing with the writing section and in previous lectures we have discussed on various types of writing that an individual as a professional comes across in his day

to day lives today we are going to discuss one very important segment of writing skills and that is report writing the question that may often wonder you is as a professional why exactly do you need to know the art of report writing what actually are reports and

how should one plan to write a report the word report you may come across everyday in your lives whenever the word report you come across you start thinking of so many reports that you have either heard or you have come across imagine you are going to

buy a car you are going to join a course or some of you who are professionals in an organization they are actually waiting either for their promotion or for a new increment some of them who have applied for jobs and they are waiting for their interview calls all of you will

come to know that all these discussions actually help in enabling people to come to a decision whether it is to get a get an interview call or to get a promotion or to launch a new product all these are based on the reports now what exactly are reports how this term

has been derived and what are the various specifications of a report we shall be discussing very minutely and in a very elaborate manner now the word report derives from the latin word reportare let us try to analyze this word reportare and once you come to know the

meaning of this term you will also be able to understand what ah report can be the word report had its origin in the latin term reportare which is a combination of two words re and portare re actually means to send and portare comes from the word porter so the exact meaning

of this word is to carry something to a person who is not prisoned at the particular time so report actually means a sort of information or carrying a sort of information to somebody by someone and that is why report is a sort of communication we have already discussed

a lot about communication and thus a report can be considered a communication from someone who has information and this information he passes to someone who wants to use that information now all of us are leaving in a world of information things keep on changing policies keep changing

there are new policies new products being launched in the market sometimes certain things which are already in the market and we want some new changes in that that also will be based on actually the recommendations of a report imagine any new policy even today which

actually comes into force that comes only after much consideration by a committee by a team and what does that team do the team actually takes into consideration all important pieces of information and then finally the team members look at all the pros and cons

and then they come to a conclusion now this is what ah are the specifications of a report now another thing that you may attain ask yourself is how then can a report can be defined suppose somebody in your family is ill and you go to a doctor because you

want to know ah what caused that illness so what the doctor does the doctor actually sends you for a medical examination and these are either in the forms of an x ray or in the forms of certain tests and when the reports come the doctor ah tells you ah that this

is actually the reason that you are suffering from such an element so what i intend to say is that a report is actually a sort of investigation it is a sort of examination and based on that examination the result that we come across that enables

us to take some decision or take some solution hence a report can be defined as a formal communication written for a specific purpose now here when somebody is ill you actually want to know what caused that element so that is the specific purpose and for that purpose

you go to a specific personnel maybe he is a doctor sometimes it is the nurse that also can tell you so all these people what they do is they actually look at the various processes various pieces of information and then they finally arrive

at a solution so it is written for a specific purpose it includes a description of procedures so all these procedures i mean suppose there are certain tests certain tests the doctor recommends ah not only in the case of doctors but even in some other cases also i mean you

see ah the course that you are undergoing the lectures that you are listening that also might have been the result which might have come out of a series of procedures i mean that is why after such a report a recommendation might have been there that let there be online

lectures and now you all listening to it so any action that is taken for specific purpose and then for a specific audience even it includes description of procedures followed for collection and analysis of data so when you when you take a test when you

gave a test so what are there are various procedures and all these procedures they actually help you gather or collect the data and that data is interpreted the doctor will interpret the various ah sorts of data and then finally you will arrive at a solution you will reach

a conclusion and the conclusion drawn from them and recommendation see if required suppose the doctor is not satisfied with the result or the doctor wants to have a sort of comparative result or comparative analysis he may also refer you or refer the patient to some another

doctor or sometimes for some other you know expertise even in that case also he will rely on the data that he gets so ultimately something that is very important of a report is data so there is certain keywords that we come across which also will tell us the salient

features or the attributes of a report and an now we can see that a report is a formal piece of writing now here some point of caution is very important that whenever you communicate you communicate not only formally but you communicate even informally for example two

friends talking to each other that may be informal but an employee discussing certain things with his boss that will come under formal category and if that is written specifically for a purpose that will become a formal piece of writing suppose a new product is going

to be launched so for that first you want to understand the needs of the customer the satisfaction level of the customer ah there are other products in the market the qualities of the other product and then you also would like to know why are

the deficiencies in your product you would also ah try to ensure that you can provide something new but all these will be based on the result that you come across or that you reach after doing a lot of analysis so all these will be written in a very formal

manner so the first attribute of a report is that it is a formal piece of writing moreover it is factual when a test is recommended ah either with the help of machines or with the help of ah say ah talking to people ah understanding

your market trends whatsoever but then it is a factual writing a report is a factual writing data makes it factual you you cannot supply ah the wrong data you cannot provide the wrong information because it is said that a report is actually the hallmark or the report

is the bread and butter of an organization in so far as when the organization has to take a decision so when somebody is going to write a report what he or she is supposed to do is to make everything very specific so that the decision

that will be taken it may either make or the fortune both of the organization as well as of an individual so the data has to be very objective and audience also when you write the report everyone cannot enjoy a report everyone cannot understand a report that is

why when somebody is going to write a report he or she should know who will be the audience when you know the audience it is often said ah that if two people they know each other the communication level ah between the two will become very smooth it will become you

know very easy to understand but then when there are two people who are strangers to each other they do not know ah each other s background hence when something is written specifically ah for a business purpose specifically for official purpose

what happens is it is actually the language that matters so two two people in the same organization they understand each others background and they are also familiar with the sort of vocabulary with the sort of language that is being used that is why we have at times

repeatedly said that a communication between two doctors can become very smooth but a communication between ah an engineer and a doctor because you know both of them will be using the terms which are familiar or which are often used in their day to day

work place or in their day to day work style so naturally when you know your audience the task becomes easier you you do not need to explain everything to a computer professionals so if you are also computer professional and you are talking about the certain problem

naturally some of the words that you will peak and choose and select and write will be known by the other person but suppose you are writing it for a non computer person for a non technical person naturally he would expect a lot of description because there

are certain terms which he may not know then the specific purpose when you write a report you have a purpose we will discuss later how because you do not write report all of a sudden you know it is not like that you got up and you decided you should write

a report it it never happens like this of course in some other forms ah of writing you may suppose you have to write a letter even there also you want to understand the purpose why you are writing this so likewise when you are going to write a report moreover at

times when you are writing an informal letter you may think of writing a letter to your friend so that you may decide but you cannot decide writing a report by yourself unless and until the need be that is why what makes it quite important here is that a report is

written only when it is required next is that whenever you write a report a report is not like ah something you know a piece of paper it is it is not a confined to a piece of paper or only to one page writing maybe depending upon ah the nature of the

report depending upon the need of the also depending upon the frequency of report the lens of the reports may vary but then it has to be well organized it is not like ah that you will start from anywhere and you will end anywhere it that is why it is it is systematic

it is well organized there has to be procedure as to what should come first what should come next where should the discussion be when to conclude whether to give the recommendation or not fine then whenever somebody writes a report or keep yourself in the position

of a reader who is going to read a report so as a reader you feel when you start reading the report you will find that when you start reading after one or two pages you find that suddenly ah the topic has changed so what happens you will find it is it is not worth

readable because it has already blocked your flow of reading it has it actually blocks ah the ah flow of thinking of the reader as well so there needs to be a sort of unity and a sort of coherence by unity and coherence what i mean is if you start with one particular

topic you are actually suppose the sentence begins with a topic sentence the other sentences should also be linked to the first sentence so i mean there has to be a sort of united effort and then one paragraph should cohere

with the other paragraph otherwise it will ah appear like fragmented we do not want nobody wants to read a fragmented piece of writing because when you are reading something specifically a report you know that a report is a solution to a problem a report is written in response

to a problem so naturally ah you would like as a reader you would like that there should be a smooth flow and at times when the information appears to be a bit say complex appears to be a bit cumbersome ah it appears to be a little bit

difficult naturally ah what the report writer can do is in order to so in order to explain in order to make things more explicit he will provide some illustrations these illustrations will be in various shapes as we shall discuss ah when we discuss about discuss the ah structure

of the report how a chart or a graph or a pie chart or a or a table how it these illustrations can make things ah very clear i mean the graphic details they actually ah make things more explanatory that is why it is very important to provide illustrations in the report and

then all of you will find that a report has to be bound properly i mean its not the pages which are scattered ah which are just flattering so since it is systematic it will follow a proper sequence we will we will discuss in this structure

how you know ah first you would expect that there should be a cover page and on the cover page you would also expect that it should have the proper title of the report and then naturally ah depending upon the sequence all the other items of the report should be properly

followed so these are some of the these are the salient attributes of the report these are the special features of the report now another question that you that may occur in your mind is what actually are the objectives of the report

what can a report do all of you who are either working in an organization or a you are trying to get into an organization will come to know suppose you are applying for a particular organization so before you go for the interview ah you want to know a lot about the organization

but how do you come to know about it you actually go to their website and on their website you have all sorts of details so now all these details they are actually put there in the form of a report in the form of a communication now what did this report

or this piece of information ah do to you benefit to you it actually updated it told you about the progress so the main objective of a report is to update the progress of the organization update the progress you know even even you know it is not confined only

to organizations even for yourselves also if you want to see your own progress that also can be done through a report i mean you can evaluate yourself so another task of a report is to evaluate suppose you take the data of five years and you want to know that

in two thousand eleven this was the progress and you want to know it today so how will you come to know you have to look at the data and the progress of all these four years so that will provide you not only ah a sort of ah say comparative analysis which

will help you provide you a comparative analysis but then you can also understand the trends suppose trends of employment trends of people living a particular organization and that is why if any organization wants to bring certain things new or change certain policies

that also will result on the basis of these evaluations moreover things may go wrong in organizations things also go wrong in our own lives so in order ah to bring the organization to the right path or certain certain deadlines

are there so again in order that such a deadline may not occur time and again what the organization does is the organization will formulate a committee of several people and these people will be asked to understand the problem so in order to understand the problem what these

people will do they will actually look at the data and then finally they will come up with certain conclusions and based on these conclusions the organization will also take some action so another attribute or another objective

of a report is to guide the organization to a corrective path i mean as i said earlier that during critical hours it becomes quite mandatory to understand the problem and take certain steps that may help us avoid some untoward incidents moreover it is actually

a report that spreads information ah working in an organization as an internal member you know so many things but there are other things also you need to understand and moreover it is only through a report that other people will come to know about your organization

about a particular organization so one of the main ingredients of a report is to spread information not only internally but also externally you will find that every organization will have certain stake holders share holder so many and all these people

from time to time they would like to know the progress and this is possible only with the help of report moreover when the reports are written you also come to know how ideas are cross fertilize sometimes suppose a fire broke out in an organization and or a company

met a severe loss again there will be a committee we will try to understand what maybe the adequate remedies based on the regions and for that in order to find out all these a report has to be written so with the help of the report they will also

come to know there were certain gaps in regioning sometimes it so happens ah that we do not understand the gaps in regioning in thought process we actually fell to analyze the needs and expectations of our customers and that is why we take such a decision that may affect

the working of an organization hence a report s main objective is also to understand cross fertilization of ideas to compare the progress and all these reports because repots are in the written form we will also discuss how there can be variety of reports the types

of reports so but then in a written form a report actually records the findings and then recommends action while discussing ah while taking about the definition of the report we have said that a report is based on the data and what that data does

the data actually is analyzed in order to reach the conclusion but then this conclusion maybe based only on the data available an intelligent report writer a diligent report writer a subtle report writer a careful report writer he will also if they need be i mean

if he f you are asked to recommend you know some ah to give certain recommendations so in the recommendations you can mention what can be done in order to avoid or in order to avoid such a catastrophe or such a deadlock report also helps in creating awareness you

will find that in your organization ah there are some colleagues who get very fast promotions and you do not get a promotion now here is the time to make an analysis of yourself and also you can make an analysis based on the comparison of yours with your

fellow colleague and when you compare the progress of both of yours you will find that there were certain things which you lacked in and the other person had it and that is perhaps the reason of his being promoted so it not only ensures awareness among people

but it also ensures self awareness you can make your own appraisal also and based on that i mean based on the result you can based on the findings you can also take certain steps that will help you in making yourself eligible for a promotion for a hike

now is there any difference between report writing that we are giving so much emphasis to because there are other forms of writing also we have talked about ah letter writings previously now let us see how is report writing different from literary writing you know somebody

reads a book by chethan bhagat or somebody reads a book by somebody reads a book by some other writer so if you compare a literary writing with a report writing you will come across several differences as we have discussed a report cannot be written because you feel

like writing it a report can only be written based on the demand so a report is written on the in response to a demand but a literary writing is written on one s own initiative ah you you get up in the morning and you see the clouds ah beautiful

clouds blue clouds ah maybe they are going to bring rains so this actually makes you feel literary and you feel like writing it but this is not the case with report writing moreover a literary writing doesnt have fixed audience the same book may be read by you

it maybe ready by your friends by your relatives even by your fathers forefathers the same book i mean there is no categorization of audience but when you are writing a report you will find ah it is written for a specific audience since it is need best it has got

a specific purpose that is why not only the audiences vary but the purposes also vary there is no fixed structure of any literary writing a poem maybe of fourteen lines another poem maybe of twenty lines a book may go up to hundred pages another book may go up to

two hundred pages but for a report you actually have a fixed structure when i say fixed structure what i mean is it should have a proper beginning it should have a proper ah discussion it should have a proper end moreover the findings that

you have come across that should also have something to support because your report and the results of your report has to be logical because there has to be some conclusion that is why a report writing is very objective in approach whereas a literary writing is

very subjective in terms of its approach as regards language also you have to be very particular the language of a report has to be very plain very simple you cannot make use of say all the literary devices and and making your ah language very cumbersome ah

putting a lot of figures of speech ah putting a lot of exaggerations no since it is objective it has to be straight to the point written in a very matter of facts style when you read a report the basic aim is to derive some information but when you read a literary piece of word

the main aim is to derive pleasure so when you ah watch a play when you read a play watch a movie and when you read a novel so you feel a sort of satisfaction i mean this satisfaction is not expected of a report there only you need information as to how

it happen what action can be taken but based on a literary writing you are not supposed to do all these things so the purposes are varied so it is quite mandatory to understand the differences between the two forms of writing because you know report writing ah in some

way or the other it has to be confined to certain rules and regulations whereas a literary writing has a sort of autonomy i mean a literary writing has got a sort of spontaneity it actually flows but you will find in a report writing you have certain things where and and there

are several sections in it when we talk about the report structure we will find how these structures ah differentiate a report from other forms of writing and the element of formality that is also very mandatory ah before we conclude let us say let us see

this observation where it is said that a report is a professionals only tangible product now why tangible product because a report writing involves not only investigation and testing but it also in involves a persons evaluation of a particular problem a comparison of problem

and then it presents his investigation his testing and experimentation if his efforts are to count in the judgment of his superiors we will we will discuss in a later lectures how ah your report read by different people may have different reactions because the ah

audience of your report or the people to whom your report will go may react at differently now there also comes into question how the relationship between the two people is because when an action is going to take place on the basis of the findings and the results of your

report it is quite important that this action is going to affect some people some people in the organization and moreover particularly ah an organization so a report writer must describe clearly what he has done clarity not only of a report but

of all business communications is the hallmark is the secret he must so i mean the report writer must show the significance of his work and often the engineer s or say for that matter any professionals written report is his only contact with the management so when you write

a report you are not only showing your linguistic ability rather you are also showing your faculty of regioning your scientific attitude your grasp over the subject your intelligence and your initiative dear friends in the lecture that we will follow

we will talk about the types of reports and i do hope that this introductory lecture on report will prepare you to write reports in a very careful manner because a report not only makes but marks the fortune of an individual as well as of an organization

thank you