ENG201 Final Term Handouts by Aarish Ali

LESSON 23 · PLANNING LONG REPORTS · Outline

Steps in Planning a Report

1. Define the outline and purpose
2. Outline the issue for investigation
3. Prepare a work plan
4. Conduct research

Defining the Questions

1. Developing the Statement of Purpose
2. Outlining and organizing of reports

Writing Outline: The Rules of Division

1. Preparing a Work Plan
2. Conduct Research

Surveys Analyze and interpret data, draw conclusions and develop recommendations

Steps of Planning a Report

When you gather facts, you need to arrange them in a suitable format. Before putting a single word on the page, follow the following series of steps that form the foundations of any report: a. Define the outline and purpose b. Outline the issue for investigation c. Prepare a work plan d. Conduct research

Defining the Questions

The person, who authorizes the report, defines the questions. Such as:

• What needs to be determined?
• Why is this issue important?
• Who is involved in the situation?
• Where is the trouble actually located?

How did the situation originate?

1. Developing the Statement of Purpose

A purpose statement is a declarative sentence which summarizes the specific topic and goals of a document. It is typically included in the introduction to give the reader an accurate and concrete understanding what the document will cover and what he/she can gain from reading it. An effective statement of purpose should be:

Specific and precise - not general, broad or obscure Concise - one or two sentences Clear - not vague, ambiguous or confusing Goal-oriented - stated in terms of desired outcomes

For informational report, you might phrase the statement of purpose by saying:

Purpose: To summarize the extent of substance abuse among plant employees. However for your analytical report, your statement of purpose might be: Purpose: To analyze the effects of employee substance abuse on productivity and product quality, and recommend ways to counteract these effects.

b. Outlining and Organizing of Report

These reports offer data, facts, feedback, and other types of information, without analysis of situation or recommendation. In these types of reports, reporting of facts may be factored by subtopics:

If you are reviewing five product lines, you might organize your study in the increasing order of the amount of revenue, they generate.

If you are studying a process, present your information step by step - 1, 2, 3.

When investigating a chain of events, organize the study according to the event that happens first.

If you are studying a physical object, study it left to right, top to bottom, inside to outside.

If the location is important, factor your study geographically.

If you are asked to review several distinct aspects of a subject, you need to look at one category at a time, for example sales, profit, or investment.

These reports offer both information and analysis, and they can also purpose recommendations. For example, an analytical report on “Why are we having trouble in hiring secretaries?” will look into following aspects:

• Salaries are too low
• What do we pay our secretaries?
• How important is pay in influencing secretaries’ job choices?

The said topic can be broken into following parts to start analytical procedure:

• Our location is poor
• Decreased trend of opting profession of secretary

The Rules of Division

You can divide the topic into at least two parts. Choose a significant and useful basis or guiding principle for the division. When dividing a whole into its parts; restrict yourself to one basis at a time and make sure that each group is separate and distinct. Be thorough when listing all the components of a whole.

The Preliminary Outline is the first step of planning reports. It is basically a plan for organizing the elements of a report. Following are different ways to create and to present a preliminary outline:

It contains letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and mathematical and other conventional symbols. e.g. I. __________________________________ A. ____________________________ B. ____________________________ 1. ____________________

Q2. ____________________

1. ____________________________

II. _________________________________ A. ____________________________

Q1. _____________________

1. _____________
2. _____________

Q2. _____________________

1. _____________________________

Decimal system is a way of writing numbers. Any number, from huge quantities to tiny fractions, can be written in the decimal system using only the ten basic symbols 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and

1. The value of any of these symbols depends on the place it occupies in the number. The decimal system is also known as a place-value system.
2. 0. _________________________________ 1.1. ____________________________ 1.2. ____________________________ 1.21. ___________________