Guidelines for Writing an Executive Summary

An Executive Summary is an non-technical introduction that provides a quick overview of the document on which it is based.

Its purpose is to consolidate the principal points of a document in one place.

After reading it, your readers should understand the main points you are making without having to read every page of your document.

Tips When Writing an Executive Summary

Some guidelines for writing executive summaries:

• Rationale — explain why you wrote the report

• Emphasize your conclusions or recommendation — Include only the most significant information to support your conclusions

• Write the executive summary after you have completed the report.

• Brevity — Keep it concise. Remove extraneous information.

• Ask a ‘neutral’ person to read the executive summary and discuss what they’ve read.

• Length — keep within 1-2 pages.

• Spell-check and proofread — avoid spellchecker as they will not catch wrong spellings that have slipped through, for example, amy instead of may.

Remember: think of your Executive Summary as a standalone document; it should be independent of the main report or proposal you're writing.