Your CO hands you a blank NAVPERS 1610/2 and says "write yourself up, I'll edit it." You've drafted a dozen EVALs for your Sailors. You have never written a FITREP for yourself, and Block 41 — the Comments on Performance block that actually gets read by a selection board — is staring back at you empty.

FITREPs are not EVALs with an officer's name swapped in. The trait structure is different, the language selection boards expect is different, and a well-written Block 41 for an LT competing for department head slots looks nothing like one for a CDR up for command. This post walks through the block-by-block structure of the W2-O6 FITREP, with weak and strong examples for the sections officers actually struggle with.

Why the FITREP Format Trips Up First-Time Writers

The NAVPERS 1610/2 splits an officer's performance across nine trait-support areas (Blocks 33–39) that feed the actual narrative in Block 41, plus Block 28 (command context), Block 29 (duties), and Block 40 (career recommendations). Each piece has a distinct job:

Block 28 — Command Employment and Achievements. This is about the command, not the officer. Mission, platform, deployment, inspection results. If you write your own accomplishments here, a board reads it as someone who doesn't understand the form.
Blocks 33–39 — Trait support. These are grade boxes, not free-text fields. The narrative that justifies each grade lives in Block 41, one tight bullet per trait.
Block 41 — Comments on Performance. The actual narrative. This is where a board decides whether you're Early Promote material or just Promotable.
Block 40 — Career Recommendations. Two short lines, no more than 20 characters each. Realistic next steps only — recommending DH school for an ENS with six months in service reads as either ignorant of the pipeline or dishonest about performance.

Miss that separation and you get a FITREP that reads like a resume instead of a report a board can act on.

Block 41 Comments: The Section That Decides the Board

Every trait bullet supports a grade. But Block 41's opening and closing lines are what a board member actually remembers after reading two hundred FITREPs in an afternoon. The winning structure is consistent:

A factual opening/ranking line — who this officer is, at what scale, if a ranking is supplied.
Action/result/impact bullets — one per meaningful accomplishment, each with at least two measurable elements.
A closing line tied to promotion tier — only when the reporting senior has actually decided the tier.

Weak Block 41 Opening

LT Alvarez is a dedicated and hardworking officer who consistently exceeds standards and is a key contributor to the wardroom.

Every word here is stock language a board has read a thousand times. "Dedicated," "consistently exceeds," "key contributor" — none of it is falsifiable, and none of it separates Alvarez from the other 199 LTs in the promotion zone.

Strong Block 41 Opening

LT Alvarez, Communications Officer for 12 months, led 18 Sailors and a $2.4M C4I suite through a 7-month INDOPACOM deployment with zero reportable circuit outages.

Scope, scale, timeframe, and a measurable outcome, all in one sentence. A board member now knows exactly who this officer is before reading a single bullet.

Weak Supporting Bullet (Mission Accomplishment and Initiative)

Showed strong initiative and consistently supported mission readiness across the department.

"Strong initiative" and "supported mission readiness" are exactly the stock phrases BUPERS Chapter 13 warns against — they make every officer sound alike, which is the opposite of what a bullet is for.

Strong Supporting Bullet

Built deployment tasker battle rhythm that cleared 34 overdue actions and cut late reports by 60% across 4 departments — did it without being told.

Two measurable elements (34 actions, 60% reduction), a named scope (4 departments), and the initiative angle stated as fact instead of an adjective.

Quantify Every Line — Even When You Don't Have Numbers Yet

The single biggest gap between a mediocre FITREP and a competitive one is quantification. Every substantive bullet needs at least two measurable elements: a count of people or systems, a percentage, a dollar figure, a duration, or a named program tied to a result.

If you're staring at a thin accomplishment with no hard numbers yet — "outstanding officer, always goes above and beyond" — don't paraphrase it into more adjectives. Scaffold the bullet with placeholders so you know exactly what to go find:

Closed xx outstanding actions ahead of suspense and absorbed xx additional taskers across xx departments over a xx-month period.

That placeholder version tells you precisely what to ask your department head or personal record for before the FITREP is finalized: a count of actions, a count of departments, a timeframe. Filling those blanks turns a vague sentence into a bullet a board will remember.

Career Recommendations (Block 40): Be Realistic

Block 40 is two lines, 20 characters each. This is not the place to reach.

Weak: Recommending "COMMAND SCREEN" for a first-tour LTJG. It signals the reporting senior doesn't understand the pipeline, and it undercuts every other recommendation on the report.

Strong: DH SCHOOL / DESRON STAFF for an LT who is actually competitive for department head — specific, sequenced, and something a board can act on immediately.

Command Employment (Block 28): Keep It About the Ship, Not You

Block 28 gets misused constantly by officers who try to sneak personal achievements into it. It's reserved for command-level context:

DDG deployed to INDOPACOM for a 7-month presence operation, supporting FONOP tasking, allied integration with Japan, and strike group readiness; ship earned Battle E during the reporting period.

Note there's no "I" or "LT Smith" anywhere in that sentence. Personal contributions belong in Blocks 33–39 support and Block 41 — Block 28 is strictly about the command's mission and outcomes.

Three Mistakes That Cost Officers a Selection

1. Writing EVAL-style bullets instead of FITREP-style ones. Enlisted EVAL bullets often lean on ALL-CAPS headline cadence. FITREP Block 41 bullets should be sentence case except for short opening/ranking or closing lines — mixing the two conventions reads as unfamiliarity with the form.

2. Vague promotion language that doesn't match the trait grades. If Block 41 reads like an Early Promote and the trait grades sit at 3.0s, a board notices the mismatch immediately and discounts the narrative.

3. Skipping quantification on "soft" traits. Command Climate, Military Bearing, and Teamwork bullets get quantification skipped more often than Mission Accomplishment bullets — but "led CMEO working group after survey gaps, driving an 8-point climate improvement" is still measurably stronger than "fostered a positive command climate."

Put the Structure to Work

Understanding what goes in Block 28 versus Block 41 versus Block 40 is one problem. Turning a rough description of what an officer actually did into board-ready text — with the right trait framing and quantification built in — is another, especially two days before a report is due.

RapidEPR's Navy FITREP generator is built specifically for the W2-O6 format: it asks which block you're writing, applies the right constraints (character caps, line counts, ALL-CAPS-only rules) automatically, and scaffolds placeholder numbers when your input is thin so you know exactly what to go find. Three options per request, in the format a board expects to see.

If you're new to writing evaluation narratives in general, how to write strong military evaluation bullets covers the action/result/impact structure that underlies every branch's format. And if the FITREP you're drafting is short on hard numbers, how to quantify accomplishments when you don't have numbers walks through six categories of measurable detail that apply to almost any billet.

A FITREP that gets an officer selected isn't the one with the most impressive adjectives — it's the one a board member can verify at a glance. Get the structure right, quantify everything, and let the facts carry the recommendation.

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How to Write Navy FITREP Block 41 Comments (With Examples)