Letter and Report Writing
By Shirley Robbins
Learn the secrets of writing good minutes, and how to update your CV. Probably no successful job application has ever owed its success entirely to a good CV, but it certainly helps!
Reports allow an entire organisation to be kept informed of the progress made regarding problems being encountered in different areas of their organisation, and are also important factors in the decision- making process. But they are frequently a pain to write – so, take the pain out of writing any report! Too many business documents still contain old-fashioned, pompous language. We introduce you to Plain Language and how this will make your documents shorter, clearer and more effective.
Information isn’t the same as understanding.Many courses are designed to just share information. In some cases, that’s fine. But, there are some courses that are performance-based and in those cases we need to change how the reader thinks, reacts, and uses the information, rather than simply regurgitate facts.
When we teach others we’re not looking for them to just know information. Instead, we want them to use information in context to make good decisions.
Introduction: The aim is to use clear Plain Language in order to produce communication that can be understood at first reading. This is important because ‘Time is Money’.
As English has become the global language of business, pressure has increased for the language to be clear and simple. We present the basic principles of Plain Language and how to introduce it in your organisation.
Chapters 1-2: In spite of modern methods of communication, the business letter still holds a unique position. It is often the only direct link between you and another organisation, so every letter written will affect the image and goodwill of your company. We stress the need to ‘Plan before you Write’, and offer a scale of effectiveness to use as a guideline. Other aspects covered are: your purpose; audience; situation; style and tone.
Planning sheets and other methods to use in preparing your correspondence are presented.
Chapter 3: Setting out good letters – this deals with the standard format of a business letter, and the various parts of a letter are explained using examples. Would you start a letter with: ‘Dear Sir’ and end it with ‘Yours affectionately’? Like many other forms of writing, a letter has an introduction or opening paragraph; a body; and a concluding or closing paragraph.
Chapter 4: When you have to write a letter of refusal, saying ‘No’ to a client should not result in losing their business! Learn the art of writing letters such as sales and promotional material; inquiries and requests; claims and complaints. Every business should welcome a letter of complaint as it offers an opportunity to trace and put right problems within their organisation.
Chapter 5: Curriculum Vitae – CV. A letter of application means a CV will be needed to accompany it. When did you last update your CV? We give you the tools to create an impressive CV using the latest format, and examples of letters of application; asking someone to be a referee; letters of appointment; acceptance; resignation and how to tell an applicant that they were unsuccessful.
Chapter 6: Report Writing. Writing a report is an important business skill. As a member of staff you may be asked to report on a meeting, a seminar, or to research a certain topic and present a report on your findings. When writing a report it is important to plan carefully, and to consider layout, objectivity, as well as tense and writing style, which includes using plain, clear language.
Chapter 7: Types of reports. We give points on the format as well as examples of Progress, Accident, Feedback, Proposal and Evaluative reports. An example of an Investigative report presents the formal layout; each section with its own heading; the material arranged logically, and with a consistent numbering system.
Chapter 8: Have you ever been delegated to take minutes at a meeting? And have you done it before? Probably not! Unless you have been trained to take core notes and how to transcribe them into minutes – this could be a painful experience. At the end of this chapter you will feel confident of taking core notes and producing a good set of minutes. On the other hand, you may need to summarise a long document – this is a knack that you can learn.
Chapter 9: Check your writing. There is a checklist of some of the points to help you improve the clarity of your sentences, and to improve your choice of words.
Chapter 10: Simplifying Legal Language. Redrafting poorly written documents does not entail simply changing a few words and shortening a few sentences. It involves an assessment of the entire document and then looking at different aspects such as: sentence structure; plain language; paragraphing; grammatical constructions and so on.
Chapter 11: Aren’t you lucky – the answers to the exercises!
Remember to us ‘Letter and Report Writing’ together with the other books in the series: ‘Using Plain Language’ – ‘Business Communication’, ‘Language Skills’, and ‘Your Total Image’ – by Shirley Robbins.
About the author:
Shirley Robbins has 35 year's teaching experience and 14 years of consulting and training all aspects of Business Communication in Plain Language to government, municipalities, corporate business, as well as facilitating Public Seminars. She has trained German students in Cape Town and also in Berlin (Germany); trained throughout South Africa as well as in Swaziland.
