Mike P on Writing Formal and Informal Reports:

--Formal Reports--
Formal Reports are used very often in the workplace. The three main kinds of formal reports are recommendation reports, feasibility reports, and evaluation reports.

Recommendation reports:
Basic recommendation reports are used to recommend a specific choice of action in the workplace. Recommendation reports normally are necessary when a company or organization recognizes a certain issue or problem that needs to be addressed in one way or another. Recommendation reports tend to follow the same problem solving goals: Recognize the audience, understand the problem, and Recommend the best choice or choices.

Feasibility reports:
Feasibility reports are used to present a situation and decide on whether the proposed solution or solutions are “feasible” or possible. Feasibility reports are very important in the workplace and are crucial steps in the decision making process.

Evaluation reports:
Evaluation reports usually used to assess the value of something. Evaluation reports are one of the most common reports used in the workplace. While the other two formal reports mentioned above concentrate on future actions, an evaluation report usually look back at previous actions to determine whether they were worthwhile.

SAMPLE FORMAL REPORT

--Informal Reports--
Informal reports are common documents in the workplace. Informal reports can be used to notify a client of a problem, explain a new company policy, provide lab results to a coworker, or even detail an investigation to authorities. Informal reports are usually less comprehensive than a formal report and are much more lenient as far as their content and format. The audience is usually made up of both Internal and External audiences.

Informal reports can be:
Informative
Explanatory
Persuasive
Analytical
Recommendatory

Common types of informal reports are: Memos, Letters, E-mails, Presentations, Progress Reports, and Lab Reports.

SAMPLE INFORMAL REPORT


Sources:
Dobrin, Sidney, Christopher Keller and Christian Weisser. Technical Communication in the Twenty-First Century. Upper Saddle River: New Jersey. Prentice Hall, 2009.
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