Julie Tagg

January 25, 2024

Report

A report is a collection of information on a specific subject or topic. It is an account of an event, incident, or problem. It is aimed at a particular audience and serves a specific purpose.

Purpose of a Report:

Reports are written:

1. To present information on a subject or topic.
2. To relate an experience.
3. To give detailed information about a situation, an event, or an incident.

General facts about the report:

1. Reports should be written as factual and continuous prose. 
2. It should be about 250 words long. NB the length of the report depends on the question that you are answering.
3. Do not include personal views or opinions.
4. Used reported speech if the information is in the form of a dialogue.

Types of Report:

1. Newspaper reports
2. Information reports (statistics/surveys)
3. Eye- witness reports
4. Simple Reports

Newspaper Report

The major features of a newspaper report are:

• It contains facts.
• It is written in the past tense and passive voice.
• It considers the variety of people as its audience.
• It gives concrete details so that readers can visualize an incident.
• It has a catchy phrase or title and a by-line which identifies the person who wrote the article.

The newspaper report is written in an unbiased way and therefore uses words such as:

alleged,

said,

reported,

claimed,

denied,

suspected,

reiterated,

confirmed,

agreed,

when contacted, and

refused.

Information reports (statistics/surveys)

These reports look at trends where readers get an opportunity to view information as a whole and assess the evidence of a general pattern. The trends include:

• Increases – goes up
• Decreases – goes down
• Consistency – follows a set pattern
• Fluctuation – not consistent, up and down

Some adjectives that are used to describe the trends include:

Verbs: rise, increase, grow, go up to, climb, boom, peak, fall, decline, decrease, drop, dip, go down, reduce, level up, remain stable, no change, remain steady, stay constant, stay, maintain the same level, crash, collapse, plunge, plummet.

Adjectives: sharp, rapid, huge, dramatic, substantial, considerable, significant, slight, small, minimal, massive.

Adverbs: dramatically, rapidly, hugely, massive, sharply, steeply, considerably, substantially, significantly, slightly, minimally, markedly, quickly, swiftly, suddenly, steadily, gradually, slowly.

Some ways to explain your conclusions include:

• Based on the graph, one can conclude that…
• The chart shows that…
• Clearly, user growth has increased in the past year. This means that one expects to see more users in the next six months.

Eye – Witness Report

This type of report focuses on what a person remembers as important during an incident. The most common eye-witness reports are scenes of an accident or award ceremony, and so on. The report contains:

• Facts

Please exclude:

• Opinions                                  
• Impressions

Eye- witness Reports responds to these questions:

• Where did the incident occur?
• When did the incident happen?
• What important details do I need to mention?

Simple Report

The simple takes the following considerations:

• Generally, it is not used for more than an audience of two or three.
• It is usually directed at a particular person.
• It is used as reminders – in the form of a memorandum – to peers or others in a lower position in an organization.
• This format is very informal because it is only used when writing to persons of equal status or persons of a lower position.
• The business format is used ONLY IF INSTRUCTED TO DO SO and only if the report is being sent to a person of a higher status.