Genre analysis report and style guide

Writing Portfolio item 1b: Genre analysis report and style guide

This assignment provides you with the opportunity to investigate a set of annual reports from a genre perspective, consider how writing style and situation are related, and produce a style guide for the organisation you have chosen to focus on in this unit.

Genre analysis report

Using what you have learned about writing annual reports, conduct and report on the investigation described below. Address your memo report to a new writer and editor of these annual reports. Purdue Owl has some useful information on how to write a memo report.

Investigate your organisation’s set of annual reports for your memo report. The more annual reports (years) that you investigate, the easier it will be for you to identify recurring patterns and get an accurate picture of the complexity of this genre.

Consider the scene in which the annual report genre is used by answering some the following questions about the genre’s situation:

Setting: Where do these specific annual reports appear? How and when are they transmitted and used? What other genres do these annual reports interact with e.g. webpages, e-newsletters, activity reports?

Subject: What topics, issues, ideas, questions etc. do these annual reports address?

Participants: Who uses these annual reports?

Writers: Who writes the content of these annual reports? Are multiple writers possible? What roles do they perform? What characteristics must writers of these annual reports possess? Under what circumstances do writers write these annual reports (e.g. in teams, on a computer, in a rush?)

Readers: Who reads the content of these annual reports? Are there more than one type of reader for these reports? What roles do they perform? What characteristics must readers of these annual reports possess? Under what circumstances do readers read these annual reports (e.g. in their offices, at their leisure, on the run, in waiting rooms?)

Purposes: Why do writers write these reports and why do readers read them? What purposes do these reports fulfill for the people who use them?