English Business & Report Writing Skills

English Business & Report Writing Skills

:Program Objectives

By the end of the course, you will know how to:

1. Analyse your audience and tailor the content to their specific needs
2. Gather data efficiently and select the relevant information for your readers
3. Use best practice in structuring your document
4. Choose words that support your message and don’t distract your reader
5. Assess the best places to use graphics, and choose the right image to support your content
6. Edit your draft for maximum impact

:Course Outline

Clarifying your purpose:

• Do you have what it takes? The skills needed to write reports
• Why do you do it? What’s the purpose of a business or technical report?
• Why you won’t get anywhere without a clear objective
• All right, I’m sold – how do I set a clear objective?

Analysing your audience:

• Do you know who you’re writing for?
• What will they want out of your report? The first step to making sure you deliver!
• How do you satisfy a mixed readership with multiple requirements?

Designing your structure:

• Structuring before you start writing – you wouldn’t build without good foundations
• Using mind mapping or Word™ Outline View to sequence and structure your material
• How to structure the beginning, middle and end of your report
• Organising your content to achieve your purpose
• How to give bad news
• How to structure the Executive Summary
• Ideas for structuring sections
• Organising your content – are you trying to persuade, inform, explain or discuss?

Selecting your information:

• Collecting and evaluating information – how to make it easy for people to help you
• Deciding what information is relevant – the payoff for having a clear objective
• Deciding the level of detail to include is easier when you’ve analysed your audience

Developing your style:

• Crafting short, simple sentences to increase readability
• Choosing familiar words that make your meaning clear
• Getting rid of the waffle that bores readers
• Putting action in your verbs for direct, concise writing
• Writing in terms your reader can relate to
• Some pointers on British vs American text

Drafting and laying out your text:

• The importance of the right mindset – how to avoid getting sidetracked
• The process – prepare, draft, relax, polish
• How to break up text – headings, bulleted or numbered lists, tables, diagrams, questions and answers, etc.

When and how to use graphics:

• Why use graphics?
• When to use graphics – pictures, screen shots, diagrams, flow charts, tables, graphs, etc.
• The best places for your graphics, in order of preference
• Things to check when including graphics

Editing and proofing your draft:

• A top-down approach to improving your text – see it the way your readers do
• Ensuring that you achieve maximum impact – things to check when editing your draft
• Removing commonly confused words, ‘poppycock’, poor punctuation and grammar
• Getting the most out of the spelling and grammar checkers
• Some common punctuation errors and how to avoid them
• Hints on proofreading to help you avoid a red face
• Report polishing checklist – that last once-over to save your sanity

Exploiting the tools

• Getting the most out of Word™
• On-line style guides for instant answers to annoying quibbles
• Metadata can be your undoing – what it is and how to hide it
• Handling version control
• Using Word™ templates
• Using titles, section headings and footnotes
• Including references and a bibliography