How to write a successful report

How to Write a Report

Formatting
Before you begin writing your report, you need to understand that the way the report looks is very important.  Report writing has a specific format to it, whether the report is for science, English, social studies, a foreign language, etc. It should look very similar to everyone else’s report.  The formatting of a report is almost as important as the contents of the report. 

Reports are expected to look similar no matter who is writing it.  That way, the reader or teacher can focus on the content of the report and not be distracted by various fonts & font sizes, different margins, various headers and footers and so on. 

When approaching a report, you must understand what the teacher is looking for.  This can come in several different forms.  The teacher may be very specific in his/her instructions, the teacher may say to follow a certain style of writing, or the teacher may have a combination of the two.  If the teacher gives very specific instructions as to how he/she wants the paper formatted, make sure that you pay close attention to their instructions.  Most of the time your teacher will tell you to follow a formatting style that is used throughout the world.  Two popular ones are MLA (Modern Language Association), APA (American Psychological Association).

The APA style of writing is usually used in science papers, such as biology, sociology, economics, psychology and more.  MLA style is more often used in reports in the humanities such as English and foreign languages and reports in the arts such as art history.  These formatting guidelines tells you how to do the title page, format the header and footer, how to quote someone else in your work, and how to properly give credit to that person you quoted as well.

A very good online resource for APA, MLA and Chicago Style is the Purdue OWL or Online Writing Lab. 

The Purdue OWL is very user friendly and can guide you in how an assignment should be formatted, how to do the cover page, how you should format your quotations and how you would cite your quotations, etc.  It gives a condensed but complete instruction on the various ways to format a paper. 

Another good online resource are the websites for APA (www.apastyle.org), MLA (www.mla.org) themselves.

Research
Writing a report will involve some research, investigation and discovery as well as your interpretation of what you’ve learned.  Whether you are writing a report about your science experiment or you are writing a report about a foreign country, you will have to conduct research and incorporate that research into your report.  The rules and guidelines of how to incorporate the research into your report is explained in the formatting guidelines of APA or MLA. 

Plagiarism
Avoiding plagiarism is a very important part of report writing.  Because it is expected that you do research and borrow other’s ideas for your report, you must make sure that you always give that person credit.  This is a technique that takes practice and time to learn, but your teachers will work with you.  Whenever you paraphrase-to say, write, use something that someone else has said or written using different words-, quote, or summarize another person’s words & ideas you must give that person credit.  Otherwise it is considered plagiarism.  How you give credit to that person is explained in the formatting guidelines, APA or MLA, that you are using. More information regarding avoiding plagiarism can be found on the web. 

 

Spelling, Punctuation & Grammar
Always be sure to turn in a report that has correct spelling, grammar & punctuation.  If those skills are difficult for you, there are many resources available to help you in and out of the classroom.   Only a human being, reviewing all of your work, can do so.  Your teacher is one resource, there are several online editing tools, and possibly use your friends or family.  If you type in a search such as: “online editing for writing” you will get multiple websites that will edit your work for free.  Be sure to remember that electronic editing tools, even the editing tools Microsoft, Apple, & Google give you in your documents, are not enough to ensure you’ve done a complete job.  Electronics will not know if you are using the word principle or principal correctly.  Poor spelling, grammar and punctuation will negatively affect your grade.