ClearTips: Riveting reports

Refine your title and section headings

You've been continually revising your title, now give it another test. Does it convey your message? For the example here, we moved from this title:

Growing the Economies of the Middle East and North Africa

to:

Claiming the Future: Choosing Prosperity in the Middle East and North Africa

After the title, take a look at headings. How could they better convey your messages? Headings engage your reader, so don't leave them empty.

A two-hour wall session with the lead authors of a World Bank policy research report on aid effectiveness began with this outline of headings:

Rethinking Aid

The new international environment
New thinking on development strategy
Aid and development
Aid, policy reform, and conditionality
Aid and public expenditures
Aid and the institutions for public services
Rethinking development agencies

Those became:

Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why

New thinking on development strategy
Money matters in a good policy environment
Aid as the midwife of good policies
Money matters—in a good institutional environment
Aid as the midwife of good institutions
Moving aid from money to ideas

Far more informative.

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