Report Writing

1-Day Course on Business Writing, Technical Documents and How to Write Clearly for Maximum Impact

Course Notes	Slides	Workbook

Training Course Description

“Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you shall write.”

William Cobbett

The ability to communicate clearly is an important skill. Many of today’s inter-personal communication take place through writing. Targeted, concise and persuasive text can make all the difference when trying to convince someone of your ideas, services or products. Achieving results through proposals, reports, technical texts, emails, memos, etc. depends on your ability to successfully persuade your readers and help them understand your ideas and act on them.

This comprehensive course focuses on all aspects of writing business texts, documents, reports, etc. that are used regularly in most jobs and professions. It covers the full life cycle of writing, starting from understanding the audience, collecting material, planning the structure, organising, writing clearly, styling, presentation and the general strategy required to make the text more convincing and targeted.

Packed with carefully constructed examples of good and bad text that illustrate clear, targeted and concise writing guidelines

The course contains a variety of detailed sessions, each focusing on different aspects of this life cycle. Each session provides step-by-step guidelines on how to approach the subject and is followed by exercises where delegates can immediately practice the skill.

Research shows that the best way to learn is by example. All sessions contain specific examples that show exactly how recommended guidelines can be implemented in practice. Examples of good and bad text are carefully constructed to show what works and what doesn’t, so delegates can quickly apply those guidelines while participating in training exercises and later to real-world scenarios.

In this highly practical course delegates will learn:

Report Writing Strategy

• How people read and what are the implications for an author?
• What do you need to consider before writing?
• What is the ideal structure of a technical writing or report?
• How to think of your purpose to make your writing activity easier?
• What is the ideal tense to use in report writing?
• When should you write in first-person, second-person or third-person?

Persuading Readers

• What are the common persuasion tactics employed by authors?
• What are the differences between direct and indirect approaches to persuasion?
• When should you go for global view in contrast with the details?
• When should you explain complex content in contrast with simple content?
• How to sequence your content based on common dimensions, such as urgency, importance and chronology?

Collecting and Organising Content

• What is the most effective way to prepare content for writing reports? 
• How to exploit the visual power of your brain through mind maps and organise your content?
• How to increase your creativity using simple yet powerful tools and techniques?

Styling and Presentation

• How to use headings?
• How to increase the visual impact of your presentation to get maximum effect?
• How to use tables, graphs, bullet points, margins, etc. to enhance your message?
• What are the most effective styles such as fonts, font sizes, effects, paginations and line spacing? How to use these styles to make your message clearer, without distracting the reader through overuse of these effects?

Increasing the Impact through Language

• How to deliver your message as quickly and clearly as possible?
• What are the common techniques employed by professional writers in delivering an engaging text?
• How to make your message viral?
• How to avoid vague writing that can lead to misunderstanding?
• How to use technical terms to serve your message?
• What is an ideal tone to convince a reader and keep him engaged?
• How to sequence your statements to make them more convincing?

Using Clear English

• How to increase the clarity of your English using simpler sentence structures?
• How to use action verbs?
• How to warm up the reader before explaining potentially complex topics?

High Impact Summaries

• How to structure executive summaries?
• How to plan summaries to get best results?
• Which areas need more focus and are read more frequently?

Writing Titles that Gab Attention

• How to use proven formulas used by mass media to create engaging titles?
• How to create catchy or descriptive headlines?

Selling Your Ideas

• How to write to sell?
• How to structure your text to convince your audience of your cause?
• How to appeal to emotions?

Audience: Anyone

Prerequisites: None

Course Duration: 1 day.

Course Level: Intermediate

Many people find writing difficult. Some will do anything to avoid writing reports. This could largely be due to bad approach. Many people believe that writing starts from a blank page. Although possible, this is not an ideal approach as it is quite difficult to think of the whole material in your head and organise it before dumping it on paper.

The solution is to use a systematic approach. Deal with the subject using tools that allow you to divide it into smaller, more manageable chunks. Research shows that once people are able to structure their thoughts and imagine the desired flow of their text, they find writing vastly easier. This course aims to make writing easier for delegates by helping them focus on each of these smaller tasks individually and master them. The collection of these skills would then allow the delegate to write any text of any length with ease while increasing its impact and persuasiveness. Examples, in particular bad examples, are a great a source to help people understand what works and how specific techniques are used in practice.

The course relies on these examples along with their associated exercises in line with accelerated learning principles to teach delegates as many related topics as possible in the given time.