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Direct: stick to the point, do not digress unless it serves a real purpose, only introduce
material which is relevant to the theme being discussed;
Vigorous: write in a manner which sustains the readers interest; present arguments
with conviction and, if warranted, conclusions with confidence;
Brief: above all, keep the length of writing on a particular topic to the minimum
needed to cover the essential points to which the readers attention should be drawn.
What constitutes an appropriate amount of detail will depend on the part of the report
concerned (i.e. Summary, Main Report or Annex). However, while brevity is generally
a desirable feature of reports, it is important not to sacrifice important material just for
the sake of limiting the length of a section of text. A complex development situation
may require a lot of analysis and the serious reader should be expected to have to keep
reading for as long as is necessary for arguments and explanations to be adequately
presented.
subsequently. It should convince the reader that the arrangements proposed are workable and
acceptable to all main parties concerned. The purpose of the markets and prices section is to
show how the inputs and outputs of the project will be traded and to indicate what is expected
to happen to critical prices and price structures in the future. This leads naturally into the
section on financial and/or economic implications while other aspects of the expected
impact of the project and the main risks it faces are part of the broader discussion in the
following section which is concerned with presenting an overall justification of the project.
The section on justification and risks is often the first part of the Main Report to be read by
the busy decision maker (or possibly the second after the project description and rationale). It
is here that implicit objections to the proposals must be acknowledged but shown to be
outweighed by the arguments in favour of going ahead with the recommended design. It is
important to concentrate on the particular benefits of the project in question rather than list a
string of results which could be expected from almost any development project.
The last section of the Main Report should draw attention to any major outstanding issues
which must be cleared up before project implementation can proceed. It is helpful if the report
itself suggests what steps should he taken to hasten progress.
Writing the Summary
The Summary should not attempt to precise or condense all the information contained in the
Main Report. The purpose of a Summary is to highlight the key findings and conclusions
arising from the formulation study, clearly showing the essential options (investigated,
rejected and preferred) which follow therefrom and upon which the investment authorities
must base their decisions. Such summaries are sometimes referred to as executive
summaries to distinguish them from the ordinary type of summary which simply seeks to
shorten a lengthy account.
The writer of the Summary normally the team leader should try to put themselves in the
place of busy officials and administrators, dealing with an endless stream of paper across their
desks. What is their main concern when presented with a project report dealing with a
proposal for a large scale and complex investment? They want to be able to understand
what the project aims to do, how, where, and when, with quantified costs and benefits.
They will need to know how it relates to national priorities and those of funding agencies; and
it would be useful if their attention was drawn to major issues, possible politically
sensitive implications and essential aspects of follow up. And they want to be able to grasp all
this without spending a lot of time searching through several pages of densely argued text.
The Summary should not normally exceed 2 to 3 pages in length, so much information will
have to be either left out or compressed to its bare essentials. The reader should not be
distracted by cross references in the Summary to the rest of the report - if the reader is
interested, the list of contents will provide the necessary information on where to find further
detail.
Practical recommendations
If a section of the report has to be redrafted to improve its clarity, it is often best to
start again from the beginning and write an entirely new text. Attempts to save time
by retaining intact sections of the original draft or a reluctance to discard phrases
which the original writer spent long time thinking up seldom produce the desired
improvement.
The team leader would be advised to resist any suggestion that the report or parts of it
be written by committees or in group session. These are invariably a complete waste
of time; it is much better for individual team members to write first drafts of different
sections and for these to be given to an editor to put into a coherent whole.