A report or account is any informational work (usually of writing, speech, television, or film) made with the specific intention of relaying information or recounting certain events in a widely presentable form.
Written reports are documents which present focused, salient content to a specific audience. Reports are often used to display the result of an experiment, investigation, or inquiry. The audience may be public or private, an individual or the public in general. Reports are used in government, business, education, science, and other fields.
Reports use features such as graphics, images, voice, or specialized vocabulary in order to persuade that specific audience to undertake an action. One of the most common formats for presenting reports is IMRAD: Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. This structure is standard for the genre because it mirrors the traditional publication of scientific research and summons the ethos and credibility of that discipline. Reports are not required to follow this pattern, and may use alternative patterns like the problem-solution format.
Additional elements often used to persuade readers include: headings to indicate topics, to more complex formats including charts, tables, figures, pictures, tables of contents, abstracts,and nouns summaries, appendices, footnotes, hyperlinks, and references.
Some examples of reports are: scientific reports, recommendation reports, white papers, annual reports, auditor's reports, workplace reports, census reports, trip reports, progress reports, investigative reports, budget reports, policy reports, demographic reports, credit reports, appraisal reports, inspection reports, military reports, bound reports, etc.
Reports are very important in all their various forms along with the usual evidences like in a crimes scene people usually leave behind evidences. . They fill a vast array of critical needs for many of society's important organizations. Police reports are extremely important to society for a number of reasons. They help to prosecute criminals while also helping the innocent become free. Reports are a very useful method for keeping track of important information. The information contained in reports can be used to make very important decisions that affect our lives daily.
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Famous quotes containing the word report:
“If he had been sent to check out Bluebeard’s castle, he would have come back with a glowing report about the admirable condition of the cutlery.”
—Mary McGrory (b. 1918)
“In clear weather the laziest may look across the Bay as far as Plymouth at a glance, or over the Atlantic as far as human vision reaches, merely raising his eyelids; or if he is too lazy to look after all, he can hardly help hearing the ceaseless dash and roar of the breakers. The restless ocean may at any moment cast up a whale or a wrecked vessel at your feet. All the reporters in the world, the most rapid stenographers, could not report the news it brings.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Men are born to write. The gardener saves every slip, and seed, and peach-stone: his vocation is to be a planter of plants. Not less does the writer attend his affair. Whatever he beholds or experiences, comes to him as a model, and sits for its picture. He counts it all nonsense that they say, that some things are undescribable. He believes that all that can be thought can be written, first or last; and he would report the Holy Ghost, or attempt it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)