Typical Courses
Reports
We sometimes need heavyweight written documents - especially when a mass of data and detail must be reported and recorded to support a basic message. Nothing else can do the job of complex communication, often to a wide and varied readership, as effectively as the written report.
Many reports are poor - hard work to read, dull, at worst incomprehensible. They risk being misunderstood or ignored and they do little for their writers' reputations and credibility.
People who must produce heavyweight documents - technical reports, project reports, management proposals - need to know how to approach the task of shaping and writing them.
Typical course objectives
- The function of reports: what they can and can't reasonably be expected to do.
- Shaping reports - giving them a structure that works for both readers and writer.
- How to approach the job: the stages of preparation, writing and production of a heavyweight document.
- Producing a single definitive document that still meets the different needs of a wide variety of readers.
- Producing different kinds of reports.
- Incorporating charts, diagrams and illustrations of all kinds to take the pressure off the reading of the written word.
- Writing clear English - layout, sentence length, punctuation, grammar and such other tactical matters of writing as particular groups of participants need.
- Catering for print or screen presentation.
Results
- Confident, readable reports.
- Time-saving for the readers. Reports which give them quick, clear access to the facts and justifying evidence that they need to see and judge.
- Consequently: properly-informed decision-making and better decision-making.
- Time-saving for the writers, knowing how to approach the task of producing good, effective reports.
- Reports which do justice to the knowledge, experience and expertise of their originators.