English · Report Writing
Report on a Book Fair
A newspaper report on a book fair, with a full model answer.
Say where and when the fair is being held and who opened it, then describe the scale — stalls, publishers, visitors — what is selling, and what the organisers say about it. A book fair report is a scene as much as a set of facts, so one paragraph of description earns its place.
The question: Write a report on a book fair held in your town.
The format
Give the facts of the fair first
Where, when, how many stalls, who organised it and who opened it. A fair report is useful before it is atmospheric, and the practical facts belong at the top.
- Number of stalls is the scale figure.
- Name the organising bodies.
One paragraph of scene
Describe the crowd and who is in it, and what is selling. This is the paragraph that makes a fair report readable, but it is one paragraph, not three.
- Say who the visitors mostly are.
- Attribute sales impressions to stallholders.
Include a complaint and the practical details
A minor negative attributed to stallholders adds realism. Close with opening hours, the closing date and anything scheduled — the information a reader would act on.
- 🚨 Most scripts omit the opening hours entirely.
Model answer
Model answer (about 195 words)
Week-long book fair opens in Rangpur
Our Correspondent
Rangpur, 5 September: A week-long book fair opened at the Town Hall grounds on Thursday with sixty-four stalls, organised by the district administration and a local publishers' association.
The fair was inaugurated in the afternoon by the Deputy Commissioner, who said the district had lacked a regular fair of this kind for several years. Stalls have been taken by publishers from Dhaka as well as by local booksellers, and a separate section has been set aside for children's books and for books in Bengali on science.
By evening the grounds were crowded, with students from the nearby colleges making up most of the visitors. Several stallholders said sales on the opening day had been better than they expected, though a few complained that the ground had not been levelled properly after the rains.
The fair will remain open from three in the afternoon until nine at night until 11 September. The organisers said a poetry reading and a discussion on children's literature would be held over the weekend.
What earns and loses marks
- Include the practical information — opening hours and closing date. A fair report that a reader could not act on has missed part of its purpose.
- Put the numbers in the first sentence. A news report leads with how many, where and when; anything else in the opening line is an essay opening in disguise.
- 🚨 Keep yourself out of it. “We should all be careful on the roads” is a sentence from a composition and loses the register mark immediately.
- Attribute every claim you could not have witnessed. Unattributed figures are the clearest sign of an invented report.
- About 180 to 220 words in four short paragraphs is the right length; newspaper paragraphs are short by convention.
Frequently Asked Questions
One paragraph. A sentence or two on the crowd and the atmosphere gives the report life, but the rest must be facts: who organised it, how many stalls, who opened it, when it runs. A report built entirely of atmosphere is a descriptive composition.
A brief one adds realism, as the model does with the unlevelled ground. Reports routinely carry a minor negative alongside the positive, and including one shows you understand that a report is not a publicity notice. Attribute it to stallholders or visitors.
Opening hours, the closing date, and anything scheduled during the fair. These belong near the end, and they are what makes the report useful to a reader who might attend. Many scripts omit them entirely.
Keep going
Model answers, formats and grammar rules for every SSC and HSC writing question.