Common Report Sections

There are several common sections in a report, including a submittal letter, cover page, abstract or executive summary, table of contents, introduction, literature review, experiment/method/procedure, results, discussion, recommendations, conclusion, acknowledgments, references, and appendices. At first glance, these sections may seem a bit overwhelming. However, you have likely had some contact with basic reports structure with journal articles and other assigned class readings. Reports follow the same basic structure, referred to as IMRaD (Intro, Method, Results, and Discussion). Of course, the length and locations of these sections will vary, and some sections may be entirely eliminated, based on the purpose and audience of the report. In some industries, reports even use Excel files and other types of untraditional formats. The sections of a report can be easily categorized into three major groups—front matter, the report’s body, and back matter.