The 80-Word Incident Report
You are the duty cadet finalising a one-page incident report for the wing commander. A junior cadet's draft reads: 'At about 2145 hrs on 12 March, a Cadet No 4471 was observed by the guard commander to be absent from the night roll call, and later it was found that he was in the medical inspection room, which he had not informed anyone about, and the matter was reported.' The wing commander has returned it with three remarks: 'Says everything, tells me nothing. Whose failure? How long absent? Cut to 80 words.' Your officer adds two constraints: keep the cadet's name out, and assign no blame before the board of inquiry sits. You also know two facts the draft leaves out: Cadet 4471 reported sick at 2100 hrs to the duty clerk, who forgot to pass it on, and the absence actually lasted from 2130 to 2215 hrs.
1. Identify the two most serious faults in the draft and explain why each matters in a service report.
Read the worked answer
Fault 1 - the agent has been erased. The chain 'was observed… was found… was reported' removes every actor. A service report is a decision document: the commander needs to know who observed, who found the cadet and who reported it, because those names determine follow-up, timings and credibility. Passive voice is not wrong in itself; three agentless passives in one sentence is.
Fault 2 - sequence has swallowed causation. The draft strings events together with 'and later', so the reader cannot separate the absence (2130–2215) from its cause (a 2100 sick report that was never passed on). The commander therefore cannot tell whether he is looking at a discipline lapse, a duty-clerk signalling failure, or both - which is exactly the question his remark 'Whose failure?' is asking.
A third, smaller fault: 'about 2145 hrs' is vaguer than the known facts allow, and vagueness in a report invites the reader to distrust the rest of it.
2. Rewrite the opening of the report in 30 words or fewer: active voice, no name, no blame assigned.
Read the worked answer
Model version (24 words):
Cadet 4471 missed the 2130 roll call and was located in the medical inspection room at 2215; he had reported sick at 2100.
Why it works:
- Active and attributed to events, not people - 'missed', 'was located at', 'had reported' describe facts without a verdict.
- Precise numbers replace 'about' - 2130 and 2215 give the commander the absence duration (45 minutes) without his having to ask.
- The sick report is placed in the same sentence, so the reader sees immediately that the cadet did notify someone; whether that notification was properly handled is left to the inquiry.
- No name, no adjective, no 'negligently', 'failed to' or 'unfortunately'. Each of those would pre-empt the board.
A weaker version would be 'Cadet 4471 absented himself from the roll call' - 'absented himself' is an accusation dressed as a verb.
3. The wing commander wants 80 words or fewer. Decide whether the duty clerk's omission belongs in the report at all, and justify your call.
Read the worked answer
Include it - but as a timeline fact, not a finding.
Reasoning:
- Materiality. Without it, the report implies the cadet told nobody. That is a different incident from the one that occurred, and a report that misstates the incident is worse than a long one.
- It is a separate failure. The clerk's dropped message is a procedural defect in the duty system, which the commander can fix; concealing it guarantees recurrence.
- But it must not be a verdict. Write 'the 2100 sick report was not passed to the guard commander' and stop. 'The duty clerk failed to pass on' assigns blame before the inquiry, which your officer forbade.
- Word budget. It costs about 15 words; recover them by deleting 'and the matter was reported', 'about', and the relative clause 'which he had not informed anyone about'.
The test is not whether the fact is embarrassing, but whether omitting it would change the reader's decision.