Writing the Report

Using Abbreviations

In this lesson, we're going to learn the five steps involved in the actual writing process. This is the final lesson before we begin actually learning to structure and create various types of reports, and it will teach you the rest of what you need to know to make writing the reports in the upcoming lessons a lot easier.

You are going to learn how to:

Prepare to write the report

Organize the report

Create a draft

Edit information

Revise text in your report

You will want to use these five steps each and every time you write a report. Skipping just one step can affect the quality. Anything that affects the quality will also affect the effectiveness of the report you write.

Preparing to Write a Report

It's safe to say that in this day in age, you will write your report using a word processing program. Even if you're the type of person who prefers to first jot things down using pen and paper, at some point you will move to a word processing program to write your report.

That said, whenever you open a new document in your word processor program, you will be provided with some default settings for margins, font, font size, margins, line spacing, etc. Unless you're using a plain text editor, such as Notepad, your report will automatically be formatted using the word processing program's default settings.

Nonetheless, those default settings aren't always going to be the best settings for your report. You may require a different font type or size. Your company may require your report be single-spaced – or even double-spaced. The default margins simply may not give your report the look and feel you want to achieve.

Listed below are some of the settings that you may need to adjust before writing your report. Some of these settings may be required by your company. Others just may be your personal preference.

Font. Stick to simple well-known fonts, such as Times New Roman, Verdana, Calibri, and Arial. It's also best to stick to a black font color.

Margins. Margins are the white space that appears on the left and right side of your page, as well as at the top and bottom. They are typically measured in inches, and the default setting for these usually makes it so all four margins are the same size. If your report will be bound in a folder, though, you may need a wider left margin on odd-numbered pages, and a larger right margin on even-numbered pages.

Line Spacing. Line spacing refers to the amount of white space between each line of text. Popular settings are single-space or double-space.

Hyphenation. Most word processing programs hyphenate words by default when there's not enough space on a line to include the entire word. If you're writing a technical report, the computer may put the hyphen in odd places. For this reason, you can choose if you, or the computer, will add hyphens.

Page Numbers. Establish where you want page numbers to appear. Generally, you can place them at the bottom or top of the page, then choose if you want them centered on the page or on one side of the page.

Headings. Headings help to break up the paragraphs into your report and group your report into sections. A heading is larger than the text in the body of the report. They're often boldfaced or have a different color font. Below is an example:

Indentations. You can also choose if you want to indent the first line of every paragraph. This is typically not done in today's correspondence and reports. Instead, it's more common to leave a space between paragraphs.

Number of lines between paragraphs. For short reports that are single-spaced, it's best to leave one line between paragraphs. If you're writing a formal report or a proposal, you'll want to leave 1½ or 2. If your report is double-spaced, leave two lines between paragraphs.

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