Brennan H's Guide to Writing Formal Reports

Formal reports are very common in the work place. Most associates know about these kind of reports, but have never categorized them as a formal report. You want to be able to recognize any formal report in the work place, especially if you are in management. The three main kinds of formal reports in the work place are recommendation reports, feasible reports, and evaluation reports.

Recommendation reports are reports that are basically based around a decision, like, “should this wall be placed here, or will it look better over there”.

Feasible reports are based on if a projector situation is workable and is not out of any limitation the company has. Evaluation reports

Evaluation reports are basically written on an observation of something, or based around someone’s opinion. An example of this would be a six month performance review for hired associates.

Like most written works, formal reports have a guideline to follow. There are four basic guidelines to follow when writing a perfect formal report.

Conducted Your Research

Make sure all research is done before writing your report. That even means that all your sources are correctly addressed and nothing that is being used it plagiarized. Research can be conducted on the computer or even in a book. Interviews and surveys are also reliable sources of research for reports.

Visuals are Important

Including visuals in a formal report is what defines it as formal. Providing graphs, charts, and even pictures will help a report flow professionally. Make sure not to over do a report with to many visuals. Too many visuals will make a report look unprofessional.

Draft, Write, and Revise

Make sure everything that is supposed to be in the report is clearly drafted. Formal reports can be lengthy, so plan some time doing it. Make sure all grammatical errors and spelling is correct before proceeding to the final draft. Often formal reports go to high up employees so make it sound professional.

Pass out the final copy

When distributing a formal report is a good idea to hand deliver the report. Another good way to distribute a report is to mail it out to the person that requested the report. Emails are also a good way to hand out a report. Make sure when you email it that the email is correctly label for the person who will be receiving the final copy

Ref:

Dobrin, Sidney, Christopher Keller and Christian Weisser. Technical Communication. Upper Saddle River : Prentice Hall, 2008.