How to Correct 5 Common Errors in Technical Papers and Reports

When familiarity with a topic makes you unaware of content gaps or lack of clarity in a paper or report, the following checklist will help you locate and correct five common errors:

  • Faulty organization
  • Insufficient context to orient readers
  • Failure to guide readers through the content
  • Insufficient description and detail
  • Poor use of illustrations

1. Faulty organization. Why is logical organization so important? A well-chosen structure for a paper or report guides readers comfortably through the content and increases readers’ understanding. Within standard paper and report templates, use familiar organizational patterns such as the following:

  • Order of importance for readers who are apt to agree with your conclusions and recommendations. Begin the paper or report with the information of greatest interest to readers. Provide an informative abstract or summary for busy decision makers.
  • Reverse order of importance for readers who may at first disagree with your conclusions or recommendations. In persuasive documents, create common ground and present your rationale before your recommendation.
  • Chronological order for site visit reports and trip reports. Since methodical time order can bury critical information, preface your chronology with a summary that captures your most important findings and recommendations.
  • Spatial or sequential order for process and procedure descriptions. Before taking readers into the details of your spatial description (moving north to south, left to right, or clockwise, for example) or of your process or procedure, orient your readers with an overview. Also, ensure that the process or procedure is described in absolute sequential order.
  • Comparisons to juxtapose the advantages and disadvantages of two or more solutions. In order of importance to decision makers, present the criteria for successfully resolving the problem and evaluating the solution.

Read more ›

Share


10 Steps for Writing Team Business Plans

January is a great time to lay out your plan for your team’s success—to establish your vision for the year and your strategy for achieving that vision. Business plans help you define your goals and stay on track to achieve them. A good business plan answers these questions:

  1. Where am I now?
  2. Where am I going?
  3. How am I going to get there?
  4. How will I know I got there?

Follow these 10 steps to write a business plan for your team:

1. Develop a standard business plan format and reuse it. For example, divide the plan into sections: (1) An overview of existing conditions including opportunities and obstacles. (2) Where you would like your team to be in three to five years as well as by the end of the year. (3) Your action plan including goals/objectives, target dates for completing action items, and measures of success. Use headings, lists, and charts to increase readability.

2. Identify the overall mission or central purpose of your team. Describe the overarching mission of your organization and the value your team brings to your organization. Read more ›

Share


Abstract, Executive Summary, or Introduction? A 3-Question Method for Writing Introductions

The instructions for submitting a paper to your professional organization require that you write a 200-word abstract. Your team’s template for technical reports requires an executive summary. You would like to write an introduction for a paper or report. But what is the difference between an abstract, an executive summary, and an introduction? And how do you write each? In previous blogs, we reviewed a 5-Question Method for Writing Abstracts and a 5-Question Method for Writing Executive Summaries.  Now let’s explore the introduction.

While a short paper/report may require only a one or two-sentence purpose statement, longer papers/reports may require an Introduction—an expanded purpose statement.

A purpose statement describes the paper’s or report’s purpose and scope. For example, “This paper provides an overview of recent online articles and fact sheets about the Ebola virus.”  

In addition to defining purpose and scope, a well-written introduction motivates readers to read the paper/report. By providing context, the introduction prepares readers to focus on, fully understand, and assess the significance of the findings, conclusions, and recommendations you present in the body of the paper/report. To provide context, you clearly explain information such as the following: Read more ›

Share


Abstract, Summary, or Introduction? A 5-Question Method for Writing Executive Summaries

The instructions for submitting a paper to your professional organization require that you write a 200-word abstract. Your team’s template for technical reports requires an executive summary. You would like to write an introduction for a paper or report. But what is the difference between an abstract, an executive summary, and an introduction? And how do you write each? In the previous blog, we reviewed a 5-Question Method for Writing Abstracts.  Now let’s explore the executive summary.

A well-written executive summary (or simply summary) is a succinct, cohesive overview of a business, technical, or scientific investigation, situation, task, or proposal. A summary can serve as the basis for an oral briefing on the findings, situation, or proposed work and as the basis for an abstract.  A summary is written so that interested readers, regardless of technical knowledge, can understand the contents of the paper/report and the relevance of the findings and recommendations. Read more ›

Share


Abstract, Summary, or Introduction? A 5-Question Method for Writing Abstracts

The instructions for submitting a paper to your professional organization require that you write a 200-word abstract. Your team’s template for technical reports requires an executive summary. Or you would like to write an introduction to a paper or report. But what is the difference between an abstract, an executive summary, and an introduction? And how do you write each? Let’s explore the answers to those questions, beginning with the abstract.

A well-written abstract is a succinct, cohesive stand-alone overview or preview of a formal paper or report that allows readers to quickly determine whether the paper/report’s topic and scope are of interest and suit their purposes. The title and abstract differentiate the paper/report from all other papers/reports on the same topic. An abstract is usually one paragraph and contains neither illustrations nor footnotes.

The abstract may be published in a list of papers for a formal professional conference, on a web page to attract readers, or in a database to allow archiving and retrieval. The publishing or archiving organization will typically stipulate the length and style of their abstracts. Their writer’s guide and website will provide examples. A common length is from 150 to 300 words. The style will be informative or indicative: Read more ›

Share


CLARITY CLINIC—2 Tips to Sharpen Pronoun Use

Top-level writers edit carefully before sending email or submitting documents. One area of attention—that the spelling and grammar checker may miss—is effective pronoun use. Using pronouns (such as he/him, she/her, it, we/us, and they/them) can improve sentence flow and cohesion. But careless pronoun use can weaken a message and confuse readers. So that your sentences communicate the emphasis and meaning you intend and can be read once and immediately understood, let’s explore two tips for effective pronoun use:

1.    Use a precise noun to name a person, place, thing, or idea  before replacing the noun with a pronoun.  Repeat nouns you want to emphasize, and re-introduce nouns when you begin a new paragraph. Find a nice balance between never using pronouns (which sounds stilted) and using too many pronouns (which sounds weak). Read more ›

Share


How to Use Your Computer’s Readability Statistics Scores—Grade Level

You’ve enabled your Readability Statistics feature in Microsoft Word’s Spelling and Grammar Checker and evaluated a sample document. But based on your Grade Level scores, what action should you take?

Readability scores are helpful editing tools for writers of too-long sentences. Recall from the Clarity Clinic that our goal is to write sentences that can be read once and immediately understood. Readable documents are more apt to be read in their entirety, and their content is more apt to be remembered. Readability indictors include:

  1. The number of sentences in each paragraph.
  2. The number of words in each sentence.
  3. The number of syllables in each word.

The Spelling and Grammar Checker’s Readability Statistics feature provides Passive Sentences, Reading Ease, and Grade Level scores, which help you gauge the readability level of your documents. A high Passive Sentences or Grade Level score and a low Reading Ease score signal opportunities to edit sentences. Let’s explore the difference between grade/reading level and education level and how to use the Grade Level score: Read more ›

Share


How to Use Your Computer’s Readability Statistics Scores—Reading Ease

You’ve enabled your Readability Statistics feature  in Microsoft Word’s Spelling and Grammar Checker and evaluated a sample document. But based on your Readability scores, what action should you take?

The Spelling and Grammar Checker’s Readability Statistics feature provides Passive Sentences, Reading Ease, and Grade Level scores, which help you gauge the readability level of your documents. Readability scores are especially helpful editing tools for writers of too-long or run-on sentences. Recall from the Clarity Clinic that our goal is to write sentences that can be read once and immediately understood. Readable documents are more apt to be read in their entirety, and their content is more apt to be remembered. Readability indictors include:

  1. The number of sentences in each paragraph.
  2. The number of words in each sentence.
  3. The number of syllables in each word.

The Reading Ease score is on a scale of 0-100%. The higher the score, the easier a document is to read. Let’s explore how to use the Reading Ease score:  Read more ›

Share


How to Use Your Computer’s Readability Statistics Scores—Passive Sentences

You’ve enabled your Readability Statistics feature in Microsoft Word’s Spelling and Grammar Checker and evaluated a sample document. But based on your Readability scores, what action should you take?

Readability scores are especially helpful editing tools for writers of too-long and passive sentences. Recall from the Clarity Clinic that our goal is to write sentences that can be read once and immediately understood. Readable documents are more apt to be read in their entirety, and their content is more apt to be remembered. Readability indictors include:

  1. The number of sentences in each paragraph.
  2. The number of words in each sentence.
  3. The number of syllables in each word.

The Readability Statistics feature provides Passive Sentences, Reading Ease, and Grade Level scores, which help you gauge the readability level of your documents. With this Blog as our case study, let’s explore how to use the Passive Sentences score: Read more ›

Share


CLARITY CLINIC—4 More Steps to Eliminate Wordiness

As we continue our Clarity Clinic with 4 More Steps to Eliminate Wordiness, recall that our goal is to write sentences that can be read once and immediately understood.

 1.  Compress phrases with unnecessary words. Many of us remember school assignments requiring us to write 500-word essays, which, as we grew older, became 10-page papers. An unintended consequence of those assignments is our repertoire of wordy phrases:  For example, Regardless of the fact that can be reduced to although; a sufficient number of can become enough; and during the time that can become while. Watch for opportunities to tighten similar wordy phrases that may appear in your own sentences. Read more ›

Share