Consulting Journal: Writing

This article is reprinted from The Consulting Journal
http://www.consultingjournal.com

Writing: Report headings

by David Blakey

Do your report headings show style or just follow style?

[Monday 28 August 2006]

Reports written by consultants often contain headings that look strange.

Summary and Conclusions
Our summary and conclusions are ...

If you do not think that the heading above looks strange, then have a look at this next example.

Summary of Our Conclusions
The summary of our conclusions is ...

If that heading does not look strange to you, then you may be following a style without ever considering whether that style is good. Several consulting firms expect their consultants to write headings like the examples above.

If you are writing the name of a book, such as A Tale of Two Cities, then capitalizing each word is the acceptable style. If we are writing about Dickens' novel, we would be unlikely to write A tale of two cities.

For some reason, many consulting firms have taken this convention for book titles and have decided to use it for chapter or section headings, like Summary and Conclusions. It does not look good.

Style

Style has several meanings. The two that apply to writing are the customary way of writing and the manner of writing. When style is used to mean the customary style of writing, it has no quality attached to it. So, the style guide for the Consulting Journal is neither good or bad: it is simply the style - the custom - that is used. When style is used to mean the manner of writing, it does have a quality. One can have a good writing style or a bad writing style.

If consulting firms thought about their style guide in the same way that they thought about their assignments, they might decide that their house style - their custom - would follow best practice. Their style of writing would use good styles of writing.

Re-thinking

You should consider every part of your house style before prescribing it. If you already have a house style, you should set someone the task of reviewing it. As with a consulting assignment, the task will involve finding out what is best practice and then finding a way to deploy that best practice effectively.

In the example above, the headings do look much better (and one can say stylish) as

Summary and conclusions
Our summary and conclusions are ...
Summary of our conclusions
The summary of our conclusions is ...

The best style for headings is that only the first word and any proper names should be capitalized.

Reports

I take the rules of capitalization further.

Governments usually capitalize all titles, as in the Identity Card Technologies: Scientific Advice, Risk and Evidence. Many consulting firms follow this practice and apply it to the title of their reports.

Report on Identity Card Technologies: Scientific Advice, Risk and Evidence

When reviewing your house style, I recommend that you consider whether the following looks better.

Report on identity card technologies: scientific advice, risk and evidence

I think that it does. It is the title of a report, not the title of a novel. It has the advantage that proper names will still be capitalized, so that they will appear as proper names.

Report on the house style of the Consulting Journal

This may not suit your organization's house style. It may, for example, not look good on your stationery. I would like you to consider it, though. Consider secondary titles, too. These are the titles that go under the main title, especially when a report is in more than one document.

Report on the house style of the Consulting Journal
Evidence, conclusions and recommendations

I hope that you can decide to do better than

Report on the House Style of the Consulting Journal
Evidence, Conclusions and Recommendations