Forms of Business Writing

There are numerous forms of what we might informally call business writing. These include: major reports, business plans, research studies, and memos. Some of these business writings may be rather long (20 to 30 pages), such as business plans; other business documents, such as memos, may be one or two pages. Regardless of length, you should strive to be concise, clear, and organized. Therefore, a longer report should not be longer because it contains more padding and fluff; rather, a long report may be warranted in instances where there is an enormous amount of material that needs to be covered. For example, an involved research study may require a long report with numerous tables and graphs. A simple analysis of some data related to a specific question may best be reported in a two to three pages memo.

The major reason why business writing should be concise, clear, and organized is that business decision makers have an enormous amount of paper cross their desks (or across their computer screens nowadays). They have to quickly read something, or the most relevant parts, and move on to the next thing.

Large Reports and Business Plans

 We cannot cover all forms of large business reports here, but we can make a few comments about them. Although organization is always important in writing, it is particularly important when a document is relatively long. You should make sure that the report or plan is well organized and the flow has logical consistency. Headings and subheadings for sections will aid in this. Headings not only help you organize the document, but they allow the reader to quickly locate a section of particular-interest.

An important element of a longer document is an executive summary. An executive summary is the abstract of the entire report or plan. In the normal course of business, a decision maker may only read the executive summary (for such reports done in academic classes, your professor will read the entire document). Since a decision maker may only read the executive summary, you should make sure that it highlights the important points of the entire document. You should be sure that it includes the implications of any analyses and important recommendations that you are making. Write the summary with the assumption that it may be the only part of the document that a decision maker will read. Executive summaries are typically two to five pages long.