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Friday Lessons with Uncle Jay
A report is a non-fiction account that presents and/or summarises the facts about a particular event, topic, or issue.
The idea is that people who are unfamiliar with the subject can find everything they need to know from a good report.
Reports make it easy to catch someone up to speed on a subject, but actually writing a report is anything but easy.
So to help you understand what to do, below we present a little report of our own, all about report writing.
What is a report?
In technical terms, the definition of a report is pretty vague: any account, spoken or written, of the matters concerning a particular topic.
This could refer to anything from a courtroom testimony to a grade schooler’s book report.
Although all facts are welcome, reports, in particular, tend to feature these types of content:
Details of an event or situation
The consequences or ongoing effect of an event or situation
Evaluation of statistical data or analytics
Interpretations from the information in the report
Predictions or recommendations based on the information in the report
How the information relates to other events or reports
Reports are closely related to essay writing, although there are some clear distinctions.
While both rely on facts, essays add the personal opinions and arguments of the authors.
Reports typically stick only to the facts, although they may include some of the author’s interpretation of these facts, most likely in the conclusion.
Moreover, reports are heavily organised, commonly with tables of contents and copious headings and subheadings.
This makes it easier for readers to scan reports for the information they’re looking for.
Essays, on the other hand, are meant to be read from start to finish, not browsed for specific insights.
What is the structure of a report?
The structure of a report depends on the type of report and the requirements of the assignment.
While reports can use their own unique structure, most follow this basic template:
Executive summary:
Just like an abstract in an academic paper, an executive summary is a stand-alone section that summarizes the findings in your report so readers know what to expect.
These are mostly for official reports and less so for school reports.
Introduction:
Setting up the body of the report, your introduction explains the overall topic that you’re about to discuss, with your thesis statement and any need-to-know background information before you get into your own findings.
Body:
The body of the report explains all your major discoveries, broken up into headings and subheadings.
The body makes up the majority of the entire report; whereas the introduction and conclusion are just a few paragraphs each, the body can go on for pages.
Conclusion:
The conclusion is where you bring together all the information in your report and come to a definitive interpretation or judgment.
This is usually where the author inputs their own personal opinions or inferences.
If you’re familiar with how to write a research paper, you will notice that report writing follows the same introduction-body-conclusion structure, sometimes adding an executive summary.
Reports usually have their own additional requirements as well, such as title pages and tables of content, which we explain in the next section. — www.grammarly.com.
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