Emails and Memos: By: Utsav Ghimiray

Emails and Memos
By: Utsav Ghimiray

Content:
• Introduction to emails and memos
• Benefits of email
• Audience for email
• Planning email
• Formatting email
• Dos and don’t in email
• Audience for memo
• Criteria for effective memo
• Reference
Introduction to emails and memos:
• Communication is essential for being able to act and make decisions in
the business world. Although some communication can take place face-
to-face, a great deal of communication is conducted through text
messages, e-mails, memos, and letters.
• Email is one of the fastest means of communication. A person can send a
message, electronically around the world and receive an answer almost
immediately. Email simply means electronic mail.
• Unlike electronic correspondence, memo take more time. A memo
means memorandum which also means remainder. A memo is normally
used for communicating policies, procedures, or related official business
within an organization.
Benefits of email:
• Saves time
• Is convenient
• Can be written internally and externally
• Is more cost effective
Audience of email and memo:
• The readers of text messages, e-mails, memos, and letters have
similar characteristics.
• All of them expect the communication to be brief, to target a specific
reader or readers, to have a specific purpose, and to follow standard
format.
• Keep your language moderately simple and natural.
Audience for email:
• For personal as well as professional correspondence, e-mail has
become a common way to communicate.
• Readers may be inside or outside the writer’s organization.
• Thus, writers know some readers well and others not at all.
• Readers expect messages to be relevant and clear.
• They will not waste their time with messages that are incomplete,
confusing, or unclear.
Planning email:
• It involves planning to communicate with readers who have diverse
needs and expectations.
• Your subject line must be specific and descriptive. It should show
readers how the topic relates to them. If your subject line is poorly
written, chances are the receiver will delete your message without
reading it.
• Second, consider the reader’s expectations for formality and length. If
you are sending an e-mail to people in your company or organization,
you are likely to know the formality they expect by referring to other
e-mails.
Planning email:
• Third, plan for differences in e-mail software. Avoid complex
formatting such as bulleted lists, tables, italics, or underlining unless
you know that the recipient’s software can read them.
• Fourth, clearly explain the context of your message so that all readers
will understand.
• Also consider privacy and security, especially when planning text
messages and e-mails.
Formatting email:
• Writers usually do not need to be concerned about formatting
decisions when they create e-mails because the cellular and e-mail
software providers have already made most of the decisions.
Dos and Don’ts in email:
Audience for memo:
• Memos are used to correspond inside an organization.
• Therefore, the reader will be a receiver inside the writer’s
organization—an internal audience.
• In an organization, everyone is likely to receive and read memos.
• Even though memos are addressed to people inside a company, the
writer must consider his or her audience carefully.
• The audience may consist of people with a variety of outlooks,
backgrounds, opinions, interests, roles, and levels in the organization.
• Sometimes the writer will know the readers and sometimes not.
Planning memo:
• Prewriting memos requires writers to consider the audience’s
expectations as readers usually expect memos to be brief and to
cover one topic.
• Make sure the memo explains the topic fully—whether it offers a
solution to a problem, outlines a change in procedures or policies, or
deals with other business concerns.
• You should plan to include all of the specific details—for example,
names, dates, times, and locations—that your audience may need.
Criteria for effective memo:
• Subject line
• Introduction
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• Style
• Grammar
Subject Line:
• First line of communication
• Includes a topic and focus
Introduction:
• Explain why are you writing.
• Tell what are you writing about.
Discussion:
• Explain exactly what you want
• Itemize your needs for easy access
Conclusion
• Tell what’s next:
a. When you expect a follow up.
b. Why that date is important.
Memo style:
• More casual than letters.
• Determined by audience, topic and purpose.
Grammar:
• All technical communication must be grammatically correct,
regardless of audience, purpose or topic.
References:
• Darlene Smith-Worthington, Sue Jefferson - Technical Writing for
Success, 3rd Edition
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_writing
• https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/word-definitions/definition-of-te
chnical-writing.html

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