The body of your report is the major chunk of writing you’ll be doing. Most of your heads and subheads will come from this copy in your content page.
The main body of the business report is the meat of your report. All the important data and information that needs to be mentioned should be covered in the main body.
There are different ways you can organize this material: by the process you used in your investigation, by the nature of the topic, or by its importance to your audience.
The first method, by the process you used in your investigation, works best for strictly scientific or technical readers. Record the steps in the experiment and the results, in stages, as it happens. The order in which things happen is important in this strategy especially for clarity. Emphasize chronology and cause and effect. It’s a good idea to keep paragraphs short, organized around each stage in the process.
You can also arrange your material by the subject of you’re report. Sometimes this strategy is called analysis, breaking the larger subject into it parts and looking closely at each part, then explaining the relationship of the parts. This method works well for reports on organizations and their characteristics. For example, there are three main parts to selling vitamins on line: education, marketing and networking. The writer discusses each individually and then how they combine to make a whole business.
The third strategy of writing by the topics importany to the reader, works well when writing to a group that needs to be persuaded. Arrange your report by importance, starting with a strong statement from your least important point to your most important. For instance if you’re trying to convince a group of young mothers to market their vitamin business through social networking, report first on the added sales, second on the added available tools they can use, and lastly on satisfying their need for increased business.
In other words always write for your audience but decide how you want to organize the information so that the audience will find it clear and persuasive.
Keep the reader in mind when you show the relationship of the topics and subtopics from paragraph to paragraph. I always outline my content before I write so that this relationship is absolutely clear to me. You may want to try using the same approach.
Another way to keep the reader on track is by repeating the same key words several time from paragraph to paragraph.
Here are a few other tips:
- To indicate cause and effect try as a result, consequently or therefore. Avoid hence or thus.
- If you’re giving examples make it clear to the reader by using for example, to illustrate or in particular.
Writing a business report is not like writing a romance or mystery novel. You don’t want to keep your readers in suspense. Provide the information and give them the conclusion. You may also want to include recommendations with your conclusions. That is a great way to show you have some expertise in the topic.
Much success in writing business reports.
Ruthan
Ruthan Brodsky
Business Writer
Content Creator
Health Writer
