Business Report Writing: With Sample Report and Style Guide

Business Report Writing: With Sample Report and Style Guide

New in 2023 and over 200 pages long, Business Report Writing, helps to remove the pain and struggle that so many experience when writing reports. Full of practical guidance and principles, and with a demonstration of writing a full sample report from the beginning to the end, it will help you to write shorter and better reports, and write them faster. The included Style Guide answers over 200 awkward questions that can puzzle you as your write. (How do I do this, how do I do that?) It refers to both British and American English. The book is based on report writing courses that the author has presented for 25 years. A thoroughly down-to-earth book, it provides guidance on: Three principles, three phases. - Agreeing the aims, objectives, scope, terms of reference. - Methods or Methodology? - Designing/planning the report. - Using the Three Rhetorical Appeals . - Focussing on the all-important readers. What do they want? What do they need? - Who reads what? Some only read the Executive Summary. - Coping with readers with different levels of knowledge and skills. - How much detail to include. - Facts v Opinions. - Structuring your message logically. - The conventional format, from the Title to the Appendices and Annexes. - Other formats including the 1:3:25. - Sequencing: sections, subsections and sub-subsections. - Structuring paragraphs and sentences. - Using topic paragraphs and topic sentences. - Writing the draft: getting a rough diamond. - Improving your style: active and passive verbs, preferring verbs to nouns (sometimes), plain English. - Cutting waffle. - Four grammatical misconceptions. - Writing and punctuating lists: bullets, numbers and lists in sentences. - Headings and subheadings. - Financial terms. - Latin terms. - Illustrations (charts, graphs and maps) and tables: importance, captions. - Writing numbers, dates and times. - Using symmetry in writing. - Adding emphasis. - Harvard and Vancouver reference styles. - The importance of consistency. - Treating punctuation as a customer service, not a set of rules. - The Microsoft grammar checker and readability statistics. - Editing: cut and polish, from rough diamond to sparkling gem. - Making it clear, concise and correct. - Proofreading. - Style Guide with over 200 entries from a/an to X-rays . - US and UK style differences. - Sample report: developed from a request to the finished report. As careers progress, more and more people find they have to write more and more reports. Many hate it and even more see it as a time-consuming struggle that they definitely do not enjoy. Sadly, that can be true for their readers too. It does not have to be that way. Although it will never become quick and easy to write a good report, it can be quicker and easier - and it certainly does not have to be agony. Over 6000 delegates have benefitted from Tony Atherton's business writing courses. Their comments include: 'I keep the course workbook on my desk'; 'Just what I wanted'; 'It's given me confidence'; and ' There's more to report writing than meets the eye'. For engineering and technical reports, see the sister book, Technical Report Writing . Tony has written four other books published by the traditional publishers, Kogan Page, Macmillan Press and San Francisco Press.