Write statement headings
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The principle
A heading can name a topic or state a finding. 'Financial performance' names a topic. 'Margins fell everywhere except the north' states a finding. The first tells the reader where to look; the second tells them what they will find when they look. Most finance writing uses the first kind, and so tells the reader nothing until they have read the paragraphs underneath the heading.
Busy readers (and your reader is almost certainly busy) skims the headings looking for the important bits and reads little else. The committee member the night before the meeting, the chief executive between two others, the finance director down a backlog of unread reports: they run an eye down the page and stop where something catches. Headings that name topics catch nothing. The reader who skims them learns how a document is organisation, not what it says.
Why it fails in practice
Naming a topic is easier, because it takes no thought. 'Reserves' is the safe label for a section about reserves; you can write it before you know what the section will say. 'Reserves run out in 14 months on current spending' can only be written once you know the finding and are willing to commit to it on the page. The topic heading is the heading you can write first, which is exactly why it says nothing.
Topic headings feel more proper. They look neutral, orderly, of a piece with every other report. A statement heading that states a finding looks bolder than finance writing is used to being, so writers reach for the label and leave the news in the body, where the skimming reader never reaches it. The habit is inherited, not chosen: the last report named its sections, so this one does too.
Before and after
The same headings from a quarterly finance report, named and then stated.
Before
Financial performance
Capital programme
Reserves
Risks
After
Revenue is on budget; two departments are overspending
The capital programme is £4m over and slipping into next year
Reserves run out in 14 months on current spending
The main risk is pay: a 1% rise above budget costs £1.2m
Read the first list on its own and you know which topics the report covers. Read the second on its own and you know what the report says: the position, the numbers that matter, and what is coming. The reader who never gets past the headings has, in the second case, still been told the report. That is the whole of the difference, and it is decided entirely by how the headings are written.
What to do instead
Write the body of your report first, then write headings for each section to state what that section found, not what it is about. If you cannot state a finding, the section may not have one, which is worth knowing before the reader finds out.
Then apply the test: read your headings on their own, ignoring the body (this is a great use of the Outline View in Word). If they read like a summary of the document’s argument, the reader who skims them is in good hands.