Report Writing
Dr. Tanvir Mohammad Hayder Arif
An Academic and Talent Management Coach
PhD (Entrepreneurial Finance), MBA & BBA (Finance) (CU)
MSc. International Business Management (UK)
Professor of International Business Management and Finance, University of Chittagong
Ex-Assistant Professor, USTC; Ex-Lecturer AUB
Ex-Regional Head, NITOL-TATA Group
Trainer & Talent Management Coach (Since 2000) of More Than 10,000 Executives and
Professionals in the field of Talent Management, Leadership, Intensive Interaction &
Communication, Management & Administration, Etiquette & Manner, National Integrity
Strategy, Professional Ethics, Project Management, Workplace Motivation & Many More
President & Talent Management Coach: Green Society Bangladesh & Uddokta Forum
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1
What is a report?
An orderly and objective communication of
factual information that serves a business
purpose.
How to Write a Good Report
• What makes a good report?
• Clarity and Structure
• Figures and Tables (floats)
• Technical Issues
• Further reading
• Conclusions
Determine the Report Purpose
• Conduct a preliminary investigation
– Gather facts to better understand the problem
– Consult many sources
• State the problem in writing
– To serve as a record
– To allow others to review it
– To force yourself to get the problem clearly in
mind
To succeed...
The report must be
– Clear
• Well structured, clear, concise, suitable for the intended
audience
– Professional
• statistically correct, correctly spelled, produced with a
decent word processor
– Well illustrated
• illustrations that aid understanding, integrated with text
The audience
Often 3 different audiences
– The casual reader/big boss who wants the main
message as painlessly as possible
– The interested reader who wants more detail but
doesn’t want to grapple with all the gory technical
details
– The guru who wants the whole story
What to do?
To address all 3 audiences effectively,
– Include an abstract for the big boss
– A main body for the interested non-specialist
– A technical appendix for the guru
Thus, a structure emerges!
Structure
• Good structure enhances and encourages
clarity
• Gives signposts
• implements the vital principle
– tell them what you are going to say
– Say it!
– tell them what you have said
Structure: details
A good report has the following parts
– Title
– Table of Contents
– Abstract/executive summary
– Introduction
– Main sections
– Conclusions
– References
– Technical appendix
Title
Should be informative, “punchy”, can include puns,
humour
Good
– The perfidious polynomial (punchy, alliterative)
– Diagnosing diabetes mellitus: how to test, who to test, when to
test (dramatic, informative)
Bad
– Some bounds on the distribution of certain quadratic forms in
normal random variables (boring, vague)
– Performing roundoff analyses of statistical algorithms (boring,
vague)
Table of Contents
• Shows the structure of the document and lets
the reader navigate through the sections
• Include for documents more than a few pages
long.
Abstract/executive summary
Describes the problem and the solution in a few
sentences. It will be all the big boss reads!
Remember the 2 rules
– Keep it short
– State problem and solution
The Introduction
• State the question, background the problem
• Describe similar work
• Outline the approach
• Describe the contents of the rest of the paper
– in Section 2 we ...
– in Section 3 we ...
Further sections
• Describe
– Data
– Methods
– Analyses
– Findings
• Don’t include too much technical detail
• Divide up into sections, subsections
Conclusions/summary
• Summarize what has been discovered
• Repeat the question
• Give the answer
Appendix
• This is where the technical details go
• Be as technical as you like
• Document your analysis so it can be
reproduced by others
• Include the data set if feasible
References
• Always cite (i.e. give a reference) to other
related work or facts/opinions that you quote
• Never pass off the work of others as your own
– this is plagiarism and is a very big academic
crime!!
How to cite
• In the text
Seber and Wild (1989) state that…..
• In the references
Seber, G.A.F and C.J. Wild. (1989).
Nonlinear Regression. New York: Wiley.
For More: Please See APA Referencing
System.
Writing clearly
• Structure alone is not enough for clarity – you
must also write clear sentences.
• Rules:
– Write complete short sentences
– Avoid jargon and cliché, strive for simplicity
– One theme per paragraph
– If a sentence contains maths, it still must make sense!
Maths
• Good
From the equation y ax b it follows that
x ( y b) / a.
• Bad
y ax b x ( y b) / a
Figures and Tables (Floats)
Golden rules for Figures and Tables:
• Describe float in text (integration), make sure it
matches description
• Place after the first mention in the text
• Make sure float conveys the desired message clearly:
keep it simple!
• Provide informative captions
Figures
• Always label and give a caption under the figure
• Be aware of good graphics principles: avoid
– chart junk
– low data/ink ratio
– unlabelled axes
– broken axes
– Misleading scales
• See Cleveland, “The Elements of Graphing Data”,
“Visualising Data”
• Using a good graphics package (R!) helps enforce good
practice
Tables
• Always label and give a caption over the
table
• Be aware of rules for good tables:
– avoid vertical lines
– don’t have too many decimal places
– compare columns not rows
Multiple Prefix Symbol
1012 tera T
109 giga G Too busy
106 mega M
103 kilo K
10-1 deci d
Multiple Prefix Symbol
1012 tera T
Better
109 giga G
106 mega M
103 kilo K
10-1 deci d
Multiple 1012 109 106 103 10-1 Horizontal
Prefix tera giga mega kilo deci hard to read
Symbol T G M K d
Multiple Prefix Symbol
1012 tera T
Vertical
109 giga G
easier to read
106 mega M
103 kilo K
10-1 deci d
Number of
Time (secs)
Processors
Busy – too
1 28.35221
many DP’s
4 7.218812
8 3.634951
16 1.929347
Number of
Time (secs)
Processors
Better
1 28.35
4 7.21
8 3.63
16 1.92
Technical Issues
• Sectioning
• Table of Contents
• Spelling and Grammar
• Choice of word processor
Sectioning
• Proper division of your work into sections and
subsections makes the structure clear and the
document easy to follow
• Use styles in word/ sectioning commands in
Latex
\begin{section}….\end{section}
Table of contents
• Provides “navigation aid”
• If you use styles (Word) and sectioning
commands (Latex) this will happen
automatically
Spelling and Grammar
• Use a style manual/dictionary if in doubt
• Spell check!!!!
• Proofread!!!!
He meant…
– This technique can also be applied to the analysis of
golf balls
He typed….
– This technique cam also by applies to the analysis or
gold bills
Choice of word processor
• Word or Latex?
• My spin…..
– Use Word for a short document with few figures
and tables and little mathematics
– Use Latex for a longer document with many
figures and tables and lots of complicated maths.
Further reading
• There are many excellent books giving good advice
on technical writing.
• Two I like are
Higham, Nicholas (1993) Handbook of writing for the
Mathematical Sciences, Philadelphia, SIAM.
Silyn-Roberts, Heather (2000). Writing for Science and
Engineering: Papers Presentations and Reports. Oxford:
Butterworth-Heinmann.
Both discuss writing reports and giving verbal
presentations.
Conclusions
• Structure is vital
• Write clearly
• Good clear simple illustrations
• Spellcheck and proofread
• Reference all material used or quoted