What is a report?

A report is a formal, structured piece of writing that usually presents the findings of some research, an enquiry, or an information gathering process.

Reports are often thought of as being mainly scientific and technical, but they can be produced in any subject area, for example, to give the results of a survey in the social sciences, or to describe a review of the literature in an arts topic. If you are writing a scientific report, please see our page on Scientific Writing.

Think of it like this: "This is what I did, and this is what I found"

This short guide looks at

Report writing workshops

The Skills Team run the following relevant workshops:

Critical thinking and writing
Referencing with Harvard or APA
Referencing with Footnotes or OSCOLA

To book onto our workshops please visit the Skills workshops page.

Top Tips Printable Guide

A single page guide covering the essentials elements of report writing.

Click the image to download the PDF.

Other resources

Reports and Essays: key differences - from the University of Plymouth - a good quick guide

How to Write Reports in Plain English - the Plain English Campaign's guide to writing professional reports - very applicable to academic work too.