Why Nobody Reads Your Report and How to Write One They Will
About the author: Catherine Baron’21 is an FSI Global Policy Intern with European Council on Foreign Relations. She is currently a Political Science major Stanford University.
Here is the hard truth about research they don’t tell you in college: just because you worked hard to write a paper, does not mean anyone will read it.
This dawned on me as I was preparing an 18-page report on Chinese regulators’ tech crackdown for ECFR’s Asia team. As students, we are lucky to get feedback from faculty, TAs, and peers for our unpolished writeups. In a professional setting, we won’t have this support network.
Instead, our research report is competing with a host of scintillating media platforms for our audience’s time and energy. They don’t have to read our work, even if they asked for it. This begs the essential question: how can we get them to read?
Before I offer tips for writing research dossiers in international affairs, this mindset shift may help: view your product as an incredible opportunity to share insights that could change hearts and minds. It makes the research and writing process more enjoyable, which yields better results. With that, here are the three S’s to present information so that others will read: make it shiny, succinct, and sublime.
Make It Shiny
First, format your text to make key ideas pop. See what I did there? It pays to make the text more readable.
As for the report structure, I adopted the academic writing style to the professional context. For example, signposting is among the most critical and underrated techniques. In report writing, this shows up as
· the executive summary
· table of contents
· topic sentences.
Write them so that readers will want to read further and avoid irrelevant sections. Putting the “so what” of your findings up front is key.
I leave the specifics of crafting these elements to the many online guides at your service, save for two observations.
· Headings pack key ideas. For example, instead of titling China’s tech crackdown as “Domestic Rationale”, call it “Exerting Control over a Maturing Economy.”
· Timelines clarify complex topics. For example, China’s regulatory actions against Didi unfolded across institutions on both sides of the Pacific. Understanding the web of events can inform your reader’s judgements.
Make It Succinct
Second, simplify your language. Styles change, and so should the way you present your ideas across contexts. Academic writing trains us to give point-by-point support for nuanced arguments. Sadly, this nuance is often lost in the big words, long sentences, and block texts. Thoroughness in research should not come at the cost of clarity in writing.
The context of the report may also involve a non-technical audience. They care more about high-level insights than how you got there. They’ve entrusted you with the process of discovery. You will not disappoint in that department.
But a caring writer is also a ruthless editor. Hack away “cool but irrelevant” information. Proofreading with the eyes of a general reader is to see the world from another’s perch, a critical skill regardless of whatever you do. This means that intricacies go in a footnote — even better, drop a link for further reading. Eyeballs are prime real estate. Distractions cost you.
Make It Sublime
Third, connect the trees to the forest. When research reveals contradictory information, academic frameworks can inform the structure of your ideas — even when academic writing may not. For example, instead of saying “businesses will suffer”, I learned from political economy classes to identify winners and losers. The same goes with the Washington-Beijing binary. Many believe it is in the U.S. “interest” to decouple from China, but these interests are not monolithic. From management and engineering classes, I learned how motivations become actions using probability.
To recap: make it readable, understandable, and structured. It takes time and practice in striving for these three goals. Let us hone our craft.
