Summary Statement

Focusing Your Message for the Summary Statement

Earlier in this course, we learned how to determine the main message for a report. However, now it's time to develop that main message into a summary statement. For a lot of people, this is the most difficult part of writing a report, because they find themselves staring at a blank screen, trying to figure out how to begin.

Let's make it really easy, shall we?

Write these six words:

"I want to tell you that…"

Now complete the sentence by writing down what you want to tell your audience.

Perhaps, it's this:

"I want to tell you that our department went 15 percent over budget last quarter because of an increase in expenses by our outside sales force; however, sales increased 45 percent over the same quarter."

Of course, the summary statement we wrote above is a little long winded and abrupt; however, we now have something to work with. It beats a blank screen.

We can now delete "I want to tell you that…" and re-work our summary statement.

The sales department went 15 percent over budget last quarter for a total of $350,000 in increased spending. This increased spending was due to an increase in travel expenses for our outside sales team, whose sales increased by 45 percent during this same quarter."

You can keep refining your summary statement until it has the exact impact that you want.

Developing Your Supporting Information

Every journalist knows that every article they write must answer the following questions:

• Who


• What


• When


• Where


• Why


• How

The same holds true when you write a report. You will use the who, what, when, why, where, and how to give all the detailed information that supports your main message and that you need to include in your report. This is the bottom part of the pyramid. The bottom part of the pyramid answers all the questions your audience will have.

To make the report even easier to organize and write, we can now divide the pyramid into compartments. The compartments may have a different name or purpose for different types of reports, but each report will always contain four compartments, as illustrated:

1. The Summary Compartment contains the main message. It's at the top part of the triangle.


2. The Background Compartment contains the details that answer the questions who, why, where, and when.


3. The Facts & Events Compartment contains what happened. It answers the questions what and how.


4. The Outcome Compartment contains the results.