WRIT 200 Workplace Writing Skills

Incorporating Research into Your Writing

Your fact sheet represents the culmination of your research into your chosen workplace issue. The information you present should be drawn from at least 4-6 credible and relevant sources. This means that your sources should provide a depth and breadth of information, include a reference list or credible hyperlinks, and should not be fact sheets themselves. This assures the reader that the information you provide is current, accurate, and authoritative.

Even though they draw on research sources, fact sheets do not quote these sources directly. Instead, they are written using summary and paraphrasing. In other words, they present ideas from the research sources, using original wording and sentence structure.

However, every time you include facts and information from your research sources, you need to cite the source using APA methods.

Purpose

Your primary purpose in this fact sheet is to inform workers about an issue or problem that affects them. You will also have a secondary purpose, which is more specifically tailored to your workplace issue and audience. This purpose could be to persuade your readers to feel a certain way about the issue or to take a particular action when faced with the issue in their own workplaces. 

Audience

The audience for this fact sheet should be those workers affected by the issue you’ve chosen to research. This might mean that the audience is defined by the industry they work in, their role or position in the workplace, their age, culture, gender, etc.

Content

The content of your fact sheet should reflect your purpose and speak to your intended audience (workers affected by the issue). Please refer to your initial research questions (Journal Entry #7) and the headings you generated to organize your information. Consider what your audience already knows and what they need to know in order to understand your fact sheet and for it to achieve its purpose. As a general rule, 5-6 headings are appropriate for a fact sheet of this length.

Style and Tone

Your fact sheet should demonstrate the principles of professional style and tone; aim for writing that is conversational, clear and concise. To review these principles, please re-read Module 3