In this post our business writing trainer Jakki will be discussing five particularly useful resources for business report writing. Jakki also runs ourContent Marketing Courses.

Most of us don’t learn report writing skills at school or university.

Yes, they teach you to write, but you soon realise that your brilliant essay-writing skills simply don’t cut it in the workplace. And unless you’re lucky enough to go on aReport Writing Training Course, you’re on your own.

There are many books out there on business writing, but which ones are a good investment? After all, it’s not as if you have much time to read.

Here, to save you time, are my top five resources on how to write reports that have a positive impact on both your organisation and your career.

1/ Word Tools

Not many people know it, but Microsoft Word comes bundled with customisable proofing tools that help make your writing more readable, as well as more accurate.

In the ‘proofing’section of the Word Options menu, you can select grammar and style settings as well as spelling. These include checks on number formats, wordiness, incomplete sentences, and when to use ‘that’ or ‘which’, for example. Even how many spaces between sentences.

Also the‘readability statistics’option gives you your average sentence length (we recommend 15-20) and a readability score (between 45 and 60 is appropriate for most business reports).

2/ The Economist Style Guide

The Economist magazine is well respected for the quality of its writing.

If your companydoesn'thave its own style guide, this is a good place to start – and few would argue with it.

It’s great for settling knotty debates on style, grammar and punctuation, like when to use hyphens or capital letters, to ensure consistency.

You can buy it on the internet for about £10, or find theshorter versionon The Economist website.

3/ How to Make an Impact

A picture paints a thousand words, as they say.

Professional business writers have to get their point across in a busy, distracting environment. So we need to know how to make a visual impact - our design skills are almost as important as our technical and writing skills.

For advice on presentation and layout,How to Make an Impactby Jon Moon is excellent. It is full of hands-on, practical tips and examples on creating professional looking documents – including tables, graphs, bullet points and illustrations.

It probably goes into more detail than most of us are ever likely to need. But it works as a crash course in design principles for non-designers. I refer to it all the time when I’m creating business reports and presentations.

4/ Write to Sell

Often the purpose of a report is to sell an idea – a recommendation, proposal or a business case are good examples.

Andy Maslen's Write to Sell is subtitled'the ultimate guide to great copywriting'. However, it's one of the most engaging guides to effective business writing I've come across.

It gives an overview of structure, tone of voice, punctuation and editing - guidelines you can apply to any business document from emails and reports to marketing materials and CVs. And if you hate grammar, it won't bore you to death either.

5/ Oxford Guide to Plain English

If your writing tends to be too wordy, you’re not alone. About 70% of people on our report writing courses say this is their top issue. It’s not so surprising - you were virtually trained to add padding from an early age in order to reach essay word counts.

The Oxford Guide to Plain Englishby Martin Cutts can help you unlearn bad habits and make your writing much more concise, so you get your point across. It’s a bit drier than the Maslen book, but works well as a quick reference guide.

It's also inexpensive - good if you're trying toinstillPlain English across a large team.

If your team or organisation could also do with improving other business skills, try ourBusiness Skills and Personal Development Courses.