To set yourself up for a successful report, start by asking three fundamental questions before writing.
Who’s reading it?
What do I want my readers to do?
Why are they reading it?
If your report has come back to you full of edits, it’s likely your well-intentioned efforts were undermined by an ambiguous brief or a muddled commission. To fully understand your brief, your readers, and your report’s purpose, seek answers to the following questions before you write.
Effective writers know their readers
And I mean, really get to know your readers—research the following about your readers before you write:
What might my readers already know about my topic?
What expectations do my readers have?
Are my readers biased, or do they hold strong opinions about my topic?
What level of education and socio-economic status do my readers have?
What cultural backgrounds do my readers have?
What are the age ranges and genders of my readers?
Ask yourself, 'What do I want my readers to do?'
Asking this question shifts the focus away from your needs and onto your readers’ needs. A cascade of further questions will then follow. For example, if you want your readers to do X, you then need to ask yourself what level of formality, style, and tone will get your readers to do X? These style, tone, and level of formality choices will then drive your report’s structure, formatting, and layout choices. Check out my post on reader-centric design for detailed support on report writing structure and design.
Ask yourself, 'Why are they reading my report?'
Answering this question will help you better understand your purpose and drive decisions about the way you would like your readers to view you. Are you: informing, persuading, instructing, requesting or motivating? These answers will give you a clearer idea of the tone you need to adopt and your word and sentence structure choices. For support with sentence structure, you can download The Secret’s in the Sentence.
Seeking answers to these three fundamental questions will give you direction and clarity. You can then seek further information from your manager or boss or spend more time researching to understand your brief fully. Taking time at the beginning of your report’s life cycle to get to know your readers and your commission will save time in the long run.