Writing a Report (Chapter 3)

The key to writing a successful report is to organise your facts dearly. A report
concentrates primarily on information, though it may well be leading to a particular
conclusion or opinion.
• Use headings to make it clear what your main points are: start with one major
heading, and use others to divide your writing into short sections.
• Before you start writing, decide on the headings you want to use and make lists
under these headings; this will help to ensure that in your final piece the facts are
presented in an organised way.
• The sections or paragraphs of a report should be shorter than they usually arc
when you are writing stories or compositions. This helps the reader to assess the
information quickly.
• A report is written for a particular readership. Make sure you know who the
readership is before you start.

Writing a journalistic report

The key points given above about report-writing also apply to the writing of
journalistic (news or magazine) reports. However, journalistic reports have a few
special features.

• They usually start with a headline. Choose one which sets the tone for what comes
after — arc you reporting a tragic or shocking event, or a funny or surprising event,
or are you giving a straightforward account of a recent political decision, for
example?
• A journalistic report often contains transcripts (written records) of interviews, or
extracted quotes from those, which are reported verbatim (word for word). If you
choose to use this technique, you must either use speech marks correctly or turn
the interview into reported speech.
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Imagine that you are a member of the committee of senior students and teachers in your
school responsible for making a shortlist of candidates for the position of School Captain.
You have been asked to consider the merits of Morgan and Leigh.

Write a report for the other members of the committee in which you explain your views
on these two candidates. You may:
• prefer one candidate to the other
• decide that neither is suitable
• urge the committee to consider both of them.