Report Writing Tips: Things to Consider and Things to Avoid

Report writing is a specific type of academic writing that has certain peculiarities. The following report writing tips will help you to cope with your report writing. The report writing tips below include things to consider and things to avoid.

Report Writing Tips: What to Consider

Pay attention to the following report writing tips when working on your report:

Report Writing Tips: 1. Consider Guidelines

Make sure you did not miss something important in your guidelines. It will be a pity if you spend so much time on fulfilling your assignment inappropriately.

Report Writing Tips: 2. Consider a Reader

Remember that you are writing a report not just for the process of writing, but for presenting the information to a reader. Make your writing clear and structured. Use subheadings and lists.

Report Writing Tips: 3. Consider the Purpose

Do not forget why you do an investigation and write a report. Necessary data, research methods – all this is defined by the question: what do you want to know?

Report Writing Tips: What to Avoid

At the same time, there are some common mistakes that students make while writing academic reports. The report writing tips offered below will help you to avoid them.

Report Writing Tips. Things to Avoid: 1. Emotionality

Even if the results of investigation have impressed you very much, you should keep unemotional, formal writing style.

Report Writing Tips. Things to Avoid: 2. Complicated writing style

This includes:

• Sentence length. Avoid using long sentences. Just vary sentence structure and make sentences linked to each other.
• Tenses. In case of report writing, it is better to avoid using all those “will have been being…” 
• Too much linking and insignificant words. Your report writing should be very concise.

Report Writing Tips. Things to Avoid: 3. Using “I”, “we”, “our”

Though today avoiding the usage of “we” has become a doubtful issue and some scholars state that it is appropriate for report writing, it is better to follow the traditional approach in order to avoid mistakes. Instead, you can use Passive Voice if necessary.