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When Cho (30), who works in the planning department of a web agency firm, has to write a report, he infallibly stays up all night. Even after five years, he still finds it difficult to compress the piles of data and numbers and write a report that his superiors and staff can look at and make quick judgments. ¡°It¡¯s tough, but I always experience the pain of not being able to express in writing the things I know well,¡± he says.
Cho is not alone. A recent survey of 872 working people by the website Bizmon (www.bizmon.com) reveals that 72.1 percent -- 629 -- find it difficult to compose work-related documents. Of these, 59.2 percent said their superiors have told them to rewrite documents.
So how to write reports that meet with your boss¡¯ approval? We listened to some advice from business writing specialists.
¡ß Do all your research first
¡°Many of the people who are afraid of writing are those who first type on their computer and think about what they¡¯ll write without doing any prior preparation,¡± ¡°Business Writing¡± author Lim Eun-ryeong says. ¡°Thinking just makes time pass. It doesn¡¯t resolve anything.¡±
When writing a report or proposal, the first thing you need to do is find material and research by asking other people their opinions about the material. Just sitting in front of your computer without preparation and writing the first line over and over again is doing things in reverse.
¡ß Keep reports to one page
Kim Ik-su, president of Writers, a business writing service, says, ¡°No matter how much material you cover, the principle is to condense everything to fit on one A4 page so that superiors can make a judgment quickly. Long reports not only waste your bosses¡¯ time, but they also lead to annoyed phone calls from them asking what the heck your conclusion is.¡±
Kim says any supplementary explanations that don¡¯t fit on one page should be in the form of attachments so that your superiors can look at them later. ¡°Make a habit of summarizing a report in a few lines in the top portion, regardless of how short it is.¡±
¡ß Write from the position of the reader
Consultant Choi Eun-yeong runs a program on writing one-page reports at Samsung SDS Multicampus. ¡°Always check to see if you are writing for your clients (bosses, employees),¡± she says. The primary reason why reports get needlessly long and the point unclear is that writers include a lot of personal discussion that has little to do with the nature of the report. She also recommends visual aids that cut down on text. ¡°If you use charts and graphs, you cut down on redundancy and allow readers to understand the content in one glance.¡±
¡ß The title is everything
Prof. Chae Byeong-gwang of Mokwon University, who teaches working people how to write, says, ¡°The value of the entire documents depends on whether the title grabs the attention of the readers.¡± ¡°Managers who get tons of reports and plans make their initial judgment of the value of the report based on the title,¡± says Chae, who has a second job as a copywriter. ¡°Only if the title shows a new approach to a particular matter will a superior read the content thoroughly and make an active judgment.¡±
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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