Caldwell - Spring 2023 - Business Communications - Chapter 9 Video Lecture

So we were talking about the writing styles that we

should use in preparing informal and formal business reports and

we talked about the informal writing style and we said

that informal writing style is appropriate for many informal reports,

A more formal writing style though is

appropriate for more formal business reports,

such as the final report, that you will be writing.

That

those reports

should be prepared in a formal writing style,

objectivity, authority impartiality,

use of primarily the third person, no first person,

no second person in writing a formal report.

We'll talk more about the formal writing style in chapter 10.

But I introduce it here so that you can

start drawing the distinctions between what goes into a

an informal report and what would go into a more formal report.

So that brings us to the end of that first part of our discussion and now we're going

to try talking about issues relating to formats and

heading levels and heading levels are very important,

very important in our um in the preparation of

reports and in our study and analysis of reports,

the overall design of a business report needs to make,

it needs to make the report visually appealing.

I stress this over and over again to the lawyers with whom I work in my firm and

I have stressed this over and over

again with my classes in business communications.

If the document, if the report doesn't look good,

it is going to be harder for the

audience for the receiver to believe

in the credibility and professionalism of the author.

Any report needs to be formatted properly needs

to be visually appealing and professional looking.

If the report doesn't look professional, if

there are inconsistent fonts, if there are big gaps in the presentation of the text,

if the material doesn't look good on the page,

then it is generally not going to have that same level

of authority that it would have if it looked good.

So it is essential that the document look good, that the report look good

when you are designing your document,

you need to think about using headings.

Now in a small report, a short report, an informal report,

the one page summary that you're going to do for your, for your article summaries,

you don't necessarily need to have headings

that's short enough. But once your report moves over into more than two pages,

then you need to think about headings

And you think need to think about the hierarchy of those headings.

Now we're gonna talk more about the hierarchy of headings, the heading levels.

When we talk about formal reports in chapter 10

but the goal of

providing the headings is that they provide something of a road map.

They give your receiver some idea about where you are going with your report

and that is what you want to do in your report.

You want to be able to give your receiver some guide posts

along the way so that the receiver knows what will follow next,

when, when reading the report

and headings are important, They help build comprehension. They help maintain

receiver

attention and they help make the report look good on the page.

Now

you don't have to worry about formatting reports in

many circumstances in in even medium sized business organizations

because business organizations often have templates

for certain routine reports,

certain types of reports that are going to be delivered over and over again.

Maybe an expense report, a travel report.

Those reports they want the businesses want presented in

a way that is uniform so that anyone in the

organization can open up that report and know what

is what to expect to see in that report.

When you get into a business organization,

you need to learn the required report formats.

It's not going to look good for you if you go

ahead and prepare a report and then you find out,

oh, there's a format. I was supposed to follow a format,

make sure that when you get into a

business organization that you learn the templates and learn

the report writing software that that organization has because

that will help make the process a whole lot

easier for you and will make it easier for you to prepare reports that are going to

get a that are going to get strong attention

from the business people with whom you work.

Now, the typical report formats

are

similar to what we talked about earlier in the chapter.

Now your textbook authors present a number of types

of formats for using for preparing informal business reports,

a pdf document again, a slide deck

and an infographic

even documents that are prepared in the pdf format. They often start

in M. S. Word or google docs and then they are converted.

So we need to know how to use

the available formatting in M. S.

Word or in google docs to be able to get the document the report into the

format that we that is generally uh that

is generally preferred in for business reports.

And the good thing about putting a document into pdf as we've talked about with

respect to your resumes is that once you have formatted the document in word or in

in google docs or maybe even in Excel and then you convert it into pdf.

All of your formatting is preserved and your formatting and graphics,

Anything that you might have built into that report

will be preserved and will not be affected even if

someone else opens the document and they might have

their Microsoft word formatted in a somewhat different way.

Some reports can be prepared

in power point or google slides.

Some reports are not appropriate for that.

A lot of it will depend on the nature of the report,

infographics are not much used in the professions.

So if you're preparing a report in a in the law

firm in an accounting firm in some type of consulting firm,

you probably are not going to put your report into an infographic.

Remember we talked about infographics When we talked about short messages,

We're going well actually we'll talk more about infographics

when we talk about short messages in Chapter five.

But infographics are generally

pictures that convey a fair amount of data or information.

They are visual representations of data

and they can be very helpful

in getting large amounts of data across without needing

a fair number without needing a large amount of words.

Now, what are some of the other ways in which

business reports, particularly informal reports can be prepared?

Well, they could be in a they could be in a memo.

We are going to use um you use a memo format for each submission,

written submission that you do for for me in the

class with the the two from the date the subject.

That's memo format and memo format can be used.

And then the memo could be converted into

pdf if it has to be distributed electronically.

Again,

many businesses have templates and some organizations require

that certain types of reports be prepared on

the templates that they've, that the businesses prepared.

These are usually for recurring reports, monthly reports, Weekly reports,

Progress reports.

Certain types of

of data analysis that comes in a regular. That comes on a regular basis.

Reports can be prepared and letter format.

Now, those are usually reports that go outside the organization.

Memo format usually stays inside the organization. Letter format. Reports.

Generally go outside the organization.

You generally wouldn't write a letter to someone in your business,

but you would send a memo to someone in your business,

just as you would not likely send a memo to someone

outside your business because you want to bring into the report,

delivery, the letterhead, all of the, the contact information,

all that comes with putting a report into letter format.

So, remember, memo format, primarily internal letter format,

primarily external.

Now, most people today don't do manuscript format reports.

They're very, very rare in business today, almost everybody would prepare a report

electronically in some way, whether it's typed out in a word processing program,

whether it is entered as a text entry into a template,

whether it's prepared as a letter on a word processing program.

Handwritten reports are generally not done unless it's a very, very small,

um short to the point uh report that needs to be delivered fairly quickly.

And information can be written on a piece of paper

and then turned into the person to the receiver.

But for the most part, we don't do reports in manuscript format anymore.

Now, there are

Headings,

types of headings that we need to talk about because

we need to begin to become comfortable with report headings.

Now again,

we're gonna talk in much more detail about report headings

in Chapter 10 because headings are much more commonly used in

informal informal reports rather than informal reports.

In informal reports,

you might use one or two headings,

You're generally not going to work through

the hierarchy of headings.

Now,

the first thing that we need to to learn

about headings are the three types of headings.

There are functional headings,

there are talking headings and there are combination headings,

functional headings are one or two word labels that show where the

this text fits in the outline of the report,

but they don't provide much detail about the content that follows.

So,

functional headings are more commonly used for more

routine reports for more straightforward presentation of data,

when you don't have to try to maintain a lot of receiver

interest when the receiver's interest is probably not going to wane.

Over the course of reviewing a short um one or two page report.

Now, talking headings are headings that provide more information.

They talk about what is going to follow. They are very brief summaries

of what text, the text that will follow.

They are designed to bring the audience along to spark

the audience's interest to let the audience know what will fight

Caldwell - Spring 2023 - Business Communications - Chapter 9 Video Lecture - Part 2

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