Chapter 20- Preparing Reports
McCabe and Larson
Objects and Outcomes:
*Explore and manage important characteristics of reports you will read and write
*Understand and use different types of reports
*Select components of report formats that are useful to your intended readers
*Critique and recommend adjustments to reports that others write
Planning Reports:
5 key things to ask-
*Purpose- What is the purpose of the report?
* Formality- What is the appropriate tone or approach?
*Audience- Who is going to read this paper?
*Organization- How should this report be organized?
*Genre-What genres will be most suitable for topic?
Research Reports and Articles:
Research is about finding new knowledge about a subject rather than applying knowledge that you already know. Research can be found in multiple ways, Experiments, observations, analysis or records. RESEARCH SHOULD BE ACCESSIBLE, CLEAR, AND TRANSFERABLE.
Task Reports:
Recommended or Justification Report: makes suggestions and relays why one should pick that suggestion or other solutions for a particular situation.
Inspection or Examination Report: focuses on observable information, often followed by recommendations of what to do.
Information or Investigation Report: collects and evaluates information about an existing situation, but the writer need not always include a recommendation.
Periodic Activity Reports:
Some organizations have these kinds of reports to help them keep track of activities they have done. Some reports may be filed daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly. Reports are made up of 3 main points.
*Overview: Name projects
*Activities: Specify project activities that are completed, in process and planned.
*Recommendations: Name needed changes in scheduling, personnel and budget.
Progress Reports:
These reports are done on a regular basis. This report answers questions like:
How is the project going? What has been done so far? How much time, money, and effort has been put into the project or task? Where are we now and what do we have planned for the future?
Do any plans need to be altered and if so what one’s?
Progress reports follow a sequence of information:
Overview: Introduce the project or task.
Progress: Summarize the progress to date
Recommendation: Identify major recommended schedule changes
Evidence: Provide reasons for changes
Discussion: Discuss impart the changes will have on task
Meeting Minutes:
The record of the proceedings of any deliberative group is usually called the minutes, or sometimes the journal. Minutes provide a record of the discussion and decisions that occur at meetings. Unless the minutes are going to be published, they should mainly record what was done at the meeting not what was said at the meeting.
Trip and Conference Reports:
They force the traveler to review and assess the activities of the trip or conference and differentiate the major accomplishments from those less important. A two-tiered approach is given:
*Give an overview and then summarize the preferred recommendation or solution.
*Cite evidence or support for the recommendation or solution in descending order of importance, dealing with both positive and negative points
Front Matter of a Report:
The front matter in a report is all the sections that come before the body of the document. This includes but is not limited to: Letter of Transmittal, Cover, Title Page, Table of Contents, List of Tables and Figures, List of Appendixes, and Abstract or Executive Summary. Some ways to differentiate levels of a document is to use INDENTATION, TYPE SIZE AND TYPE STYLE.
Body of a Report:
The Body of a report basically consists of 2 parts. Part 1 talks about the problem, findings and recommendations. Part 2 talks about the background to the problem, the approach, method and materials, available options, results, discussions, recommendations, and conclusions. Since there is two parts to the body, it does need to have some kind of order to it, whether it is chronological order, spatial order, cause and effect, or compare and contrast.
End Matter of a Report:
This part comes after the body. Appendixes, cited sources or a glossary may be a part of the End Matter.
Design Elements:
When writing a formal report be attentive to several aspects of the design:
*Headings and subheadings
*Pagination
*Figures and Tables
*Accessibility, comprehensibility and usability
Penultimate drafts, next to final drafts, will have to be done and revised. When revising one has to look at the following:
*Identifying the content and context
* Anticipating the reader’s needs
*Establishing Connections
*Using effective design and visuals
*Making the Text accessible
*Reflect professional standards
21 comments:
Chapter 20 is about preparing a variety of technical reports. I have not had to do anything like this so I really have nothing to relate it to. I know my dad writes reports on occasion so I guess this information would be relevant to him. I know this is the chapter that we have to use as a guildeline for our final report - which is an unsettling six to eight pages. I plan on using this information given in the chapter to plan and prepare my final report.
This chapter is good in that reports are very useful. One thing that is important is keeping reports of what you are doing such as the one we are doing in class for our main big project. This is when we document all we have done and keep track that we are making progress and getting everything done. Gantt charts are very useful in this way as well which we are also using. Some reports might need to be a little more in depth or verbal such as when you have daily or weekly meetings in the morning to discuss your progress or what has been new.
We have been dealing a lot with reports in our project in dealing with Kids Against Hunger. We have had to progress reports and other things to keep our class informed of our group’s progress. I think this not only keeps everyone else informed, but also keeps us on schedule. I never really thought there was a certain method that should be followed when writing a report. This chapter outlined this well. I know our group will reference this chapter when writing future reports for this project.
This chapter described many different types of reports, some I have heard of a some I did not. I think this chapter is very useful because I am sure that in all of our professional careers we will use at least a few of the types of examples the chapter gave on a regular basis. As I was reading this chapter I kept in mind the final report that we have to do for this class. It gave a lot of helpful tips for doing the project and I think the project will be easier after reading this chapter.
This chapter does a great job laying out how a report should be written. Chapter 20 will be very beneficial when it comes time to writing our fianl report for this class. I have written quite a few reports during school and this information would have been very helpful back then and would have enabled me to write better reports because writing papers is not my favorite thing to do. In the construction buisiness I don't know exactly how many reports I will write but it will still help me to know how.
Chapter 20 gave me a good overview of things to take into consideration when prepareing for a report. A type of report that is used in Manufacturing is a A3 report. This type of report is to show progress and things that need to be fixed and things that are going well. An A3 is a great way to relay information about a process or operation that needs attention to anually monetor things going on in a Manufacturing Plant.
I think this chapter is very important because alot of people don't think about what type of report they are preparing. Whenever I've done a research paper or project in the past I always forget about what the main purpose is supposed to be. A lot of times I do projects on things that I already have previous knowledge about. I have to deal with progress reports all the time at chipotle. I'm working on being the kitchen manager and I have to go over a journal with other managers on my progress. At work this type of report I feel like is too repetetive, but I do understand the importance of it a little bit better now. The purpose is to make sure that I don't have any problems and that I get so used to being perfect I won't do anything wrong.
Chapter 20 was focusing on preparing reports in the professional field. I thought the 5 key things to ask was very helpful when planning a report. Researching articles is a key concept on making a report making sure the information is creditable. In this chapter it talks about different reports and in my future job I will end up doing a couple or all of these types of reports. I think this chapter will help in writing are final 6-8 page paper.
This chapter will be helpful in the future because I will need to know how to present reports and make them quick and efficient if I need to give them in short amounts of time. It is also helpful to read about how you can gear your report correctly towards your audience and different ways you can put the information you want to share into a type of report.
Chapter 20 is a very important chapter to me. As an IT major I will need to write reports on certain tasks I would perform. Another example of where chapter 20 will be used is when we write our final paper for this class. It needs to be 6-8 pages in length and it needs to be heavily informative. We have also been working on Gantt charts over the semester which also rely on being accurate.
This year has been real busy, since it was my senior year and have many projects and presentations to complete by the end of the year. One thing that is important to complete by the end of the year is the technical report we have to write up about our project. We have to display information involving our research, design, and all other resources we used in completing the project in a timely manner.
Technical reports will become an everyday thing when we get into our careers. I know that when I work at bath and body our registers print out documents at the end of the day and they are sent to our main offices. I see those as a form of a technical document. The gantt chart is very useful because it is keeping everything together for our final report.
Progress reports are nice to have because this is something that will raise the questions of how a project is going. These reports will make it easier for people and supervisors to be able to see what is happening around the projects. This will be something that in the construction field I will have to do quite often with reports to my superiors to make sure that things are going good and that nothing is going to go wrong.
The progress reports we have done in class for our documentation project will help us out a lot in the work place. It was an educational experience to write a report stating what our group had completed, and what we still needed to complete. In addition to being helpful to the instructor, it is helpful to us to outline on paper exactly what we need to do to finish the project.
I have been referring back to this chapter when I have been working on my final paper for this class. This chapter should really be highlighted as it is really a big reference chapter. There is not one job, that I can think of, where you would not have to deal with a report in one aspect of it or another. When I worked at Best Buy I had to deal with a form of a report every morning when I was opening up the computer department.
Chapter 20 is very important because in class we have to create a report as our final project, and it has to be perfectly done. Chapter 20 is design to guide us in the process of creating our own final project. Since our final project has alot information to put in, I need to make sure how to orginized and place everything in a way is easy to report everything I did throughout the semester.I'm pretty sure that when Im working in my field of study i will be ask to make many reports ....proabably from patients. Reporting the state of health, eating plans they followed, reactions to the diet...all these details would be essential to report in a report for a patient.
Chapter 20 is about technical reports and this will be a part of our everyday life when we are in our profession. As of now, I am using this chapter to help me plan and structure my technical report in this class. I can use this chapter as guidelines to write my paper. This report will help me practice when I get into the IT industry and have to write reports. I know that I will have to write lots of progressive report to my superior and other teams working on the same project. Progressive report is essential in large project.
I think the Gantt Charts are a good example of this chapter when it comes talks about progress reoprts. That's what the Gantt Chart is, minus the body text. We have written a few reports this year but none will compare in length to the final report that we'll write.
Technical reports are very important when it comes to using the right format and writing for the correct audience. Using the proper tone and writing in terms for the auidence is very important. Chapter 20 does a good job of showing several formats to follow when writing technial reports. In class i have used chapter 20 to find the correct format for the cover page, and the proper format for the technical body of the paper.
This chapter was a good chapter for me for a few reasons. 1 it gives me an idea of how to format my final paper in this class but also because I'm possibly going to be the temporary secretary for my sorority while our normal secretary is unable too next year. This chapter will also help me with my speech comm senior research paper because it helps me learn ways to format my paper and know what goes where.
This chapter is important when writing reports. It mentions diffrents types of reports that written depending on the project. This is very helpful in the final report. It describes the techniques and the organization of information one should consider when writing reports.
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