Book: Sense of Style — Steven Pinker (Business Human Resources Focus)
While various businesses and industries use different types of writing and reports–all workplaces rely on written communication and some kinds of reports.
During this project, you will investigate the types of writing and specifically reports that are typically used in an area of industry (or a particular business) that is of interest to you. You’ll collect your research together and present it in a report that has informational sections as well as analytical sections.
In your report you will…
Describe the types of writing and reports your chosen industry/workplace uses.
Make sure to elaborate on the work each type of report accomplishes, the tone each type of report is written in, and how each type is used (upwards/downwards/lateral…internal/external…informational/analytical).
Describe how modern digital technologies have/haven’t impacted how writing and reports function in your chosen industry/workplace.
Describe what skills/knowledge/techniques you’ll need to continue developing to create the types of writing and reports your field of interest relies upon.
Analyze/describe the intersections you see between your research and what you read in either Microstyle or Sense of Style
Analyze/describe how having done this research and the knowledge you are gaining of workplace communication will/could be beneficial to you.
Report Format Guidelines
Your completed report will be divided into several sections and should be written in a tone appropriate to the writing situation. In the report, not only must you evaluate, organize, and present data or information, but also you must draw conclusions—and perhaps offer recommendations.
Conclusions are drawn by inference from research findings.
Recommendations are the writer’s reasoned opinion of what action(s) should be taken based on the conclusions.
Use the expectations of the career area/job/discourse community (Links to an external site.) you are focusing on to decide how to organize and format your report.
You can decide on an organizational strategy that you determine is appropriate for the material you have to include. The outline and report structure described below are guidelines not firm requirements (except where specified). If you’d like to discuss your planned organizational strategy, please contact me!
Required Prefatory Parts (Preceding the Body of the Report)
Title Page
Table of Contents
List of Figures (if you include any charts and graphs this is required)
Executive Summary (Review Canavor’s advise on the ES on pages 213 to 217)
The ES should be on its own page. Anything you say in the ES needs to be said elsewhere in the paper. In other words, while the ES does provide an introduction to your report, your report needs to work just fine if this page were removed.
Do you have Executive Summary questions? See Canavor pages 213 to 217 (Chapter 9 under the heading “The Executive Summary: Techniques and Options”). You can use outline style or narrative style.
Sections for the Body of the Report
Introduction (remember this needs to function independently of your ES)
Discussion of Findings (Organized at your discretion using headings and subheadings)
This is where you talk about everything you learned organized however you decide is best.
Describe the types of writing and reports your chosen industry/workplace uses.
Make sure to elaborate on the work each type of report accomplishes, the tone each type of report is written in, and how each type is used (upwards/downwards/lateral…internal/external…informational/analytical).
Describe how modern digital technologies have/haven’t impacted how writing and reports function in your chosen industry/workplace.
Describe what skills/knowledge/techniques you’ll need to continue developing to create the types of writing and reports your field of interest relies upon.
Analyze/describe the intersections you see between your research and what you read in either Microstyle or Sense of Style
Analyze/describe how having done this research and the knowledge you are gaining of workplace communication will/could be beneficial to you.
Report Close: Summary (recapping what you covered) , Conclusions (what have you learned based on your research), Recommendations (what will you do based on your conclusions). You might find yourself combining some of these three concluding sections, which is fine. Just make sure that the work of these three sections is accomplished in some manner. For example you might analyze and describe how having done this research and the knowledge you are gaining of workplace communication will/could be beneficial to you.
