Assuming you mean choosing the right person to focus on or write about for a biographical report, essay, or profile, here is the first part of an expert guide to help you make that selection.
Introduction: The Power of Choosing the Right Subject
When assigned a biographical report, a character study, or a profile piece, the immediate instinct for many students and writers is to reach for the most famous names in history. It is easy to default to figures like Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, or Cleopatra simply because their names are recognizable and information is abundant. However, choosing a subject for a report is not merely about finding someone important; it is about finding the intersection between your own curiosity, the constraints of your assignment, and the depth of the narrative available.
Selecting the right person transforms a tedious school assignment into an engaging intellectual journey. Conversely, picking the wrong subject—someone whose life is either too vast to condense or too sparse to analyze—can result in a frustrating writing experience and a superficial final product. To write a compelling, insightful, and well-structured report, you must approach the selection process with a strategic mindset. This guide will walk you through the essential criteria, psychological factors, and practical steps needed to choose the ideal person to write about.
Phase 1: Defining the Scope and Purpose of Your Report
Before you even begin brainstorming names, you must look closely at the parameters of your assignment. Every report serves a specific purpose, and the subject you choose must align with that goal.
1. The Core Objective
Ask yourself: What is the ultimate goal of this writing?
Informative/Biographical: If the goal is strictly to recount historical facts, timelines, and achievements, you need a subject with a well-documented public record and clear milestones.
Analytical/Persuasive: If the goal is to argue why someone mattered or how they changed their field, you need a subject whose legacy is nuanced, debated, or transformative.
Narrative/Profile: If the goal is to capture the essence of an individual's lived experience, you might benefit from choosing a living person, a local hero, or a lesser-known historical figure whose personal struggles offer high emotional resonance.
2. Time and Length Constraints
A common pitfall in report-writing is scope creep. If you choose a titan of history like Napoleon Bonaparte or Leonardo da Vinci, their lives are so vast, multi-faceted, and thoroughly researched that summarizing them in a standard-length report becomes an exercise in cutting out vital context.
For short reports (500 to 1,000 words): Choose someone with a singular, well-defined achievement, a specific turning point in history, or a focused career. Examples include a specific astronaut who broke a record, a local activist who spearheaded a single piece of legislation, or an artist known for a specific movement.
For long-form reports (2,000+ words): You have room to explore complex timelines, systemic impacts, and deep-seated motivations, making multi-era historical figures or complex modern innovators more viable.
Phase 2: Finding Your Angle – Passion vs. Practicality
A great report balances two competing forces: what you care about and what the research supports. If you lean too far toward pure passion, you may run into a wall of missing sources. If you lean too far toward practicality, you may end up bored and uninspired.
The Curiosity Compass
The best reports are written by authors who genuinely want to know the answers to questions about their subject. Instead of asking, "Who is a famous scientist?" ask:
"Who is a scientist whose work was stolen or overlooked during their lifetime?"
"Who is a modern creator who completely changed how we consume media?"
"What historical figure made a terrible mistake that accidentally changed the course of science or politics for the better?"
By framing your search around compelling questions rather than static names, you naturally gravitate toward dynamic subjects with compelling narrative arcs.
What specific type of report or subject area (e.g., history, science, modern culture) are you focusing on for this assignment?
Navigating the Grey Areas: Context-Specific Guidelines for Report Person Selection
As professional writing continues to evolve away from archaic, overly rigid structures, the choice of grammatical person has become more nuanced. While the broad rule of thumb leans toward the third person for ultimate objectivity and the first person for transparency, the reality on the ground depends heavily on the specific industry, the nature of the data, and the expectations of the end reader.
To master report writing, one must look beyond blanket rules and examine how different sectors approach grammatical person in practice. Below is a comprehensive breakdown of how varying fields handle this stylistic choice.
Corporate and Business Reports
In the corporate world, reports range from internal memos and progress updates to comprehensive market research analyses and financial audits.
Internal Memos and Progress Reports: When writing an update to a team or supervisor, the first-person plural ("we") or even singular ("I") is frequently welcomed. For example, writing "We completed the phase-one data audit" establishes direct accountability and ownership. It tells management precisely who executed the task.
External and Financial Reports: When preparing a document for stakeholders, shareholders, or regulatory bodies, the third person or a careful passive voice dominates. Phrases like "The fiscal audit indicates a 4% growth" sound much more neutral and globally authoritative than "We found that our company grew by 4%." External readers want to see impartial facts unclouded by internal pride or corporate bias.
Scientific, Technical, and Academic Research
For decades, scientific reporting strictly mandated the passive third person (e.g., "The solution was heated to 100°C"). The rationale was that scientific truth is universal and independent of the observer; therefore, the researcher's identity should be completely erased from the text.
However, modern scientific style guides—including the American Psychological Association (APA)—have shifted.
The Case for "We" or "I": Modern APA guidelines explicitly permit (and sometimes encourage) the use of the first person to describe what you and your team did. Saying "We surveyed 400 participants" is clearer, more direct, and less clunky than "The authors surveyed 400 participants" or using passive constructions.
Where Third Person Still Rules: Even in contemporary scientific writing, the third person is retained when presenting results or established facts to keep the focus strictly on the data rather than the researcher's personal viewpoint.
Law Enforcement, Incident, and Legal Reports
In legal, investigative, and security frameworks, clarity, accountability, and chronological precision are paramount.
The First-Person Standard: Many law enforcement agencies and security operations explicitly require the first person ("I observed," "I detained").
Because these documents often serve as sworn legal testimonies, blurring who performed specific actions by using passive voice or third-person detachment ("The officer approached the vehicle") can introduce ambiguity in a courtroom. Using "I" ensures absolute clarity regarding who took action at any given second.
Practical Checklist: Determining Your POV
Before you type the first word of your next report, run through this quick decision-making checklist to ensure your choice of person aligns with your goals:
Check the Style Guide: Always look for institutional guidelines, corporate templates, or academic rubrics first. If a specific standard is mandated, follow it strictly.
Identify the Audience: Ask yourself: Who is reading this? If it is an executive board expecting traditional formality, lean toward the third person. If it is a collaborative team project where individual contributions matter, first person is usually appropriate.
Evaluate the Content: Are you presenting hard statistical data and empirical research? Use the third person to maintain objectivity.
Are you detailing a personal field study, an action-oriented audit, or a reflective analysis? Introduce the first person to claim ownership of the findings. Maintain Consistency: Never shift randomly between first, second, and third person within the same section. If you begin a paragraph analyzing data in the third person, do not abruptly switch to "As you can see, I discovered..."
Conclusion
Ultimately, choosing the right person for a report is an exercise in audience awareness and rhetorical strategy. The first person offers transparency, personal accountability, and directness, making it ideal for reflective, operational, and collaborative documents.
By understanding the strengths and limitations of each grammatical person, you can elevate your report writing from a rigid compliance exercise into clear, persuasive, and professional communication.