What a memo is, and when it is the wrong genre

Four defining traits

A memorandum — memo, from the Latin for reminder — is the written form an organisation uses to speak to itself. Smith's channel table gives it four traits that decide everything about how it is written. It is internal: it goes to people inside the organisation (or, as a memo of understanding, between two organisations acting as insiders). It is one-to-many: it assumes a group audience, where email and letters speak to individuals. It is on the record: it exists to be filed and found — a written record of a decision, an announcement, a policy, a small report. And it is objective: no personal bias, no subjective preference, because a memo may carry policy weight and legal standing when it records a procedure or an agreement, so an ambiguity in it can become a legal matter. Two consequences follow. A memo has no salutation and no closing salutation — the header does that work — and it is always direct-approach: the opening states the main point, the body supports it, the closing gives the action.

Worked example — three deliverables, three genres

At Wren Advisory three things leave the analyst's desk in one week for Lakeshore Print Co. A two-line note to Priya Raman moving Thursday's review to Friday. One reader, one action, no record needed beyond the thread: an email. The recommendation on the nine-year-old press — one decision, four alternatives, a matrix, next steps, due 15 November. It will be filed, shown to the bank, referred to in February when the checkpoint comes round; it goes to Priya and will be read by her bookkeeper and the Wren partner; it must be objective enough to survive a vendor's complaint: a memo — Smith's table lists small reports among what memos carry. A thirty-page study of the Ontario commercial-print market that Wren commissioned for its own planning. Multiple readers over months, sections a reader will consult separately, a table of contents, appendices, a transmittal letter: a report. The test is not length alone but readers, record and structure — and in AFM 111 the recommendation memo is the report-shaped work in memo form: one to two pages, headed sections, a table, an appendix.

When the memo is the wrong genre

Three misuses cost marks in practice. The memo that should be an email: one reader, one small action, nothing to file — a memo here is ceremony, and its header says the writer did not think about the channel. The memo pasted into an email body with no header: the To / From / Date / Re lines are the memo's identity and its filing record; without them it is an over-long email, and the genre — and the record — is lost. Send the memo as a named attachment with a two-line covering email. The memo that has grown into a report: five pages of narrative, no headings, the calculations in the text — the fix is to cut to two pages and move the working to an appendix, not to call it a report.

The five qualities

Olds gives five qualities that mark a good memo, and every one of them is a rubric line in disguise. Audience orientation: written for the people who will read it — no acronyms only management knows, no assumptions the newest reader cannot follow. Professional tone: formal, courteous, unhurried. Subject emphasis: the topic is announced in the Re line and stays the topic; a memo is about one thing. Direct format: the point first, then the support. Objectivity: facts, figures and reasons; no first-person feeling, no advocacy.

Classify four situations

A firm-wide change to the expense-claim procedure, effective 1 December — internal, many readers, on the record, objective: memo. Telling one colleague her draft is ready for review — email. The Lakeshore press recommendation — memo (a small analytical report to an internal-style reader, filed and acted on). A market-sizing study for a lender, forty pages with appendices — report, sent with a transmittal letter.

List the five cold

Audience orientation, professional tone, subject emphasis, direct format, objectivity. And the four traits underneath them: internal, one-to-many, on the record, objective.