Introductions and Conclusions for Reports

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This month’s blog post is on introductions and conclusions to help those of you who write reports feel more confident about how you are starting and ending those documents. Most writing guide books will tell you that the introduction sets the stage for the report, and the conclusion summarizes. You might have heard the idea “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.” Conceptually, that’s about right. More specifically, we will give you the concrete elements that should appear in both your introduction and conclusion to create the strongest frame for your report and the best reading experience for your audience.

Report writing is primarily about sharing information with an audience. The goal of the report is to present that information in a logical and organized way that helps the reader digest the content and understand how the content could be applied or what it might mean.

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Mimicry: One Tool to Build Trust

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Recently, a few videos on “psychological tricks” have been popping up in my social media feed. One of the tricks that gets a fair amount of attention is that of mirroring. The idea is that if you mirror people’s body language, they are more likely to trust you. For example, if a person reaches for their drink, and then you reach for your drink, the similarity of the action subconsciously suggests that you are alike, which can build trust. So, if the person leans forward, you lean forward; if the person crosses their legs, you cross your legs.

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Are you reading this? Or have you already skipped to the next line?

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Professionals use writing to communicate. That means, when I write a message, I want the person on the other end to read it and then take some action like write me back. And when I read, I’m skimming the person’s writing trying to figure out what the writer wants me to do.
How does this affect you, as the author? How can you adjust your writing with this knowledge?

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Helping Your Reader Read: 3 Ways To Make Your Writing Easier To Read

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Research shows that people are more likely to read things that are written in easy or familiar fonts. As professionals who write, we are most concerned with efficiently communicating information in order to generate new business, maintain business relationships, or just get work done. Most of us focus on what we need to say in order to accomplish those goals. But communication is a process that requires a message to be created and received. When we focus on creating the message, sometimes we forget to consider how that same message will be read by the person on the other end.

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Made you look! The art of using color to get people to read.

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We all know that food motivates people. Whether it’s training a toddler to use the potty, or a 57-year-old telling herself that she can have a snack as soon as she finishes prepping tomorrow’s presentation, food operates on our brain as a reward.

At the same time, we know that most people do not want to read everything we write for work. Professionals skip over words, sentences, whole paragraphs, skimming our messages to read as little as possible and still be able to carry out whatever task the message assigns. We don’t want to read messages at work; we have to read messages at work. What this means is that most of us need external rewards in order to read.

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Paragraphs

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With our new technologies, twitter, facebook, text messaging, we have learned to cherish the shortest messages, and while the increasing value of the clear and concise 160 character message has improved our ability to communicate quickly, it hasn't helped our ability to communicate substantively.

We are losing the art of the paragraph.

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