Module 23

Module 23 discusses short reports.  There are three different kinds short reports, informative, feasibility, and justification reports.  Informative reports summarize the completed work but does not result in an action or recommendation.  Feasibility reports evaluate several alternatives and recommend one of them as an action to fix the problem.  Justification reports are used to recommend or justify a purchase, investment, hiring, or change in a policy.  When giving a problem, you should give specific examples to prove how serious a problem is. 

There are seven patterns for organizing information.  One is comparison/contrast, where you give the pro's and con's of a situation to weigh which alternative is the best.  Elimination of alternatives is another, which is the process of weaving out the impractical solutions that will not work.  Another important one is chronological, where events are recorded in order of the time period that they happen in.  Blueprints are good to give a preview to your reader of what you will discuss in a section or in the entire report.  Make sure the blueprint is easy to read by telling the reader how many points there are and numbering them.

One important thing that I learned from this module is that you have to say what you mean, and make it clear so that everyone knows exactly what you mean.  Not everyone that is reading your document may know a lot about the subject matter, so it is important to make sure that you use the right verbs in your writing to help you say exactly what you mean.

Another important aspect of this module is the use of topic sentences and headings.  Both of these make it easy for a reader to quickly find a section that they want to read, and then get the general point quickly if they are a scanner and cannot read the entire document.