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Writing Reports
“Inventing” a Report
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Gathering information
Choosing a topic. Reporters are frequently assigned their topics. If you choose your own topic, find one that provokes your curiosity and that makes you feel like a curator, wanting to gather, understand, preserve, and share valuable information. Time limits, your knowledge, or the complexity of a topic may require you to focus on one interesting part. At the beginning, before beginning your investigation, freewrite to discover what you know about your topic, what you don't, your feelings, and opinions. This freewriting will establish your perspective as you gather information.
Writing questions. To begin your investigation, pose questions to answer. But don't be surprised if, in response to your growing understanding, they change during your research. These questions may come from readers, the assignment, or a request for information. Or they may be more pointed versions of the questions in the "How to Think Critically" box, p. 8 of The Ready Reference Handbook, that you've adapted to your topic.
After you've formulated questions, rewrite to make them clear and precise. Computer experts have an acronym, GIGO, relevant to reporters: "Garbage in--garbage out." The answers to your questions will be only as good as the questions themselves. A good research question is clear, precise in wording, unbiased, single rather than multiple, and well focused. If you can do so, avoid asking "yes/no" questions; their answers may short-circuit your investigation or prevent you from considering alternatives.
Answering questions. Answer your questions by reading, observing, experimenting, interviewing, and sampling with surveys or questionnaires. Record your information in carefully prepared notes. As you investigate your topic, use the guidelines for evaluating information sources in The Ready Reference Handbook, 49a and b; for note-taking guidelines, see 49c, d, and e. Your notes will probably include the following kinds of information:
- Facts, figures, and definitions of important terms.
- Explanations of whatever information may be unclear.
- Step-by-step descriptions of events or processes.
- Descriptions of people, places, and things to make your report interesting, especially details readers might have difficulty imagining or understanding.
- Figurative comparisons, especially analogies, to help readers see and understand your subject (see The Ready Reference Handbook, 6b7 and 26c).
- Quotations of experts or eyewitnesses to illustrate, explain, or dramatize.
- Careful and complete information about your sources so that you can acknowledge where you've borrowed information, quotations, or others' opinions. List author names, titles, dates, and publication information.
Focusing your report
You won't get far in your investigation before you begin taking stock of what you're finding and draw conclusions to focus and unify your report. Your conclusions may be:
- summaries that sum up or give the gist of the information
- generalizations that compare, classify, or estimate the size, number, or amount of groups of things
- cause-effect statements
- value judgments evaluating the morality, usefulness, or pleasures of a subject
- predictions
- proposals recommending specific actions or policy
To write conclusions, try one of these formulas:
- What my information seems to show is . . .
- What I want my readers to know about ___________ is that . . .
- My subject is important because . . .
- The causes/effects of my subject are . . .
- The actions these facts require are . . .
Choose the most appropriate formula; combine them if necessary. Write several versions until you find one that says what you want it to say. Good conclusions are:
- Complete, accounting for all relevant information.
- Sound, supported by the information you've gathered.
- Clear, precise, and unambiguous in wording.
- Qualified, containing words such as "some," "may," "possibly," "many," "rarely," 'often," "seldom." Seldom do conclusions contain categorical words like "all," "never," "no," "every." Good conclusions never claim more than the information allows.
- Grammatically complete. Conclusions are declarative sentences that make statements, not questions.
Here, for example, is the conclusion to a student's formal report investigating reduced tax funding of state colleges in Illinois. Note how thoroughly the conclusion responds to all of the information the student has gathered: the causes and consequences of reduced taxes, the problems and their solution.
As a result of reduced state taxes, public funding of state colleges has been reduced. In response to shrinking payroll budgets, faculty have begun leaving for better-paying positions in business or at colleges in other states. Class sizes have been increased, preventing many students from taking required courses and delaying their graduation. Some colleges have even been forced to reduce enrollment, thus denying students access to higher education. Ultimately, budgetary reductions for higher education will affect not only faculty, staff, and students; it will diminish the state's overall economic competitiveness. The solution is an increase of state taxes, an action that surveys show a majority of citizens support.
--Kevin Kravitz
Foward to Planning a Report
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