Initial Criteria for Writing Reports

Writing Conventions:

These are the basic parts of your writing: the spelling, punctuation, grammar, and
sentence structure. Do errors make it hard to understand your writing?

Logic:

Logic determines the order of your writing and how easy it is to follow your ideas. Proper logic determines how well your introduction, body, and conclusion work together and how logical your order of ideas are inside each paragraph.

Style:

Here, your sentence variety and use of idioms and vocabulary are very important. How fluent is your language? Are your sentences precise? Good reports exhibit a varied repertoire of sentence types, along with an extensive vocabulary.

Meaning:

Is the topic and ideas specific to your own experience and have they been conveyed well. Did you show with details exactly what you mean? Did you save your assertions for the topic and “statement making” sentences? Are your ideas convincing? Are they explained logically or systematically?

Originality

Originality can dramatically improve the reader’s experience but can be an unnecessary distraction for some topics. Is there a balance between accuracy, statements for effect and originality based on the topic?

Titles

A title should be an exciting and accurate label of the contents of your report.

Simple, short and clear so it is understood quickly.

Directly connected to the reports main ideas.

Interesting, to make the reader want to read the report.

Capitalize all words except the small words (a, the, an, for and so on) or, capitalize the whole word.

Remember a topic is not a title!

Introduction

An introduction contains a topic sentence that conveys the main idea or statement of the report. This is the most important sentence of your whole report and needs to be the most carefully written.

Introductions are general compared to the ideas in the report, but related directly to the ideas in the report. Don’t give away too much. Save the details for the body.

Body Paragraphs (3)

The body is the center of the sandwich. Body paragraphs are a standard design: topic sentence, detailed examples with a concluding sentence. The body paragraphs support the topic and provides supportive examples with descriptions, and details.

Make it easy for the reader to follow from sentence to sentence and from paragraph to paragraph. Keep to one idea in one paragraph. Each of these ideas relates directly to the topic.

Put your best paragraph first, weakest in the middle and your second best paragraph last.

Conclusion

The conclusion is usually larger than the introduction.

Restate your topic as the first sentence of the conclusion.

Summarize the ideas of the body paragraphs without repeating everything point-by-point.

Conclusions often contains a final opinion, suggestion or prediction related to the topic that ends the report.

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