The first section of this section is "Creating Visuals." Having visuals in long documents is a great tool to keep your audience's attention. Visuals are great to help illustrate abstract concepts, depict numerical information, show a process, or for many other informative purposes. Just with any other portion of a professional document, visuals should serve a purpose. They should also be easily readable and have clear captions describing contents. Tables, graphs, flowcharts, maps, and photographs are the most common types of visuals used in reports and longer documents. In my business writing course, we had to create a report on a traffic survey. For this document, it was imperative that I include a map. Without the map, the reader would not be able to visualize the areas that the traffic surveys were being taken at and might not be able to decide if they were efficient.
Persuasion is often a large factor in report writing. There are several rules to help with this goal:
1. Consider whether your views will make problems for reader.
2. Don’t Offer New Ideas, Directives, or Recommendations for Change until Your Readers are Prepared for Them.
3. Credibility
4. If your audience is uncertain about your ideas, present both sides.
5. Win respect by making your opinion clear.
6. Put your strongest arguments first if your audiences uninterested and last if they are interested.
7. Don’t count of changing attitudes by offering info alone.
8. Testimonials are most likely to be persuasive if drawn from people with whom readers associate.
9. Be wary of using extreme or sensational claim and facts.
10. Tailor Your Presentation to the reasons for readers’ attitudes
11. Never mention other people without considering their possible effect on the reader.
