How to Write a Business Memo

When planning your inter-organizational memo, be sure to think about it from your reader's perspective

by Linda Elizabeth Alexander

Writing a report or business email?
Feeling short on words?
Revolutionary software takes your
writing skills to an expert level

View demo now and see how it works!

A business memo helps members of an organization communicate without the need for time-consuming meetings. It is an efficient and effective way to convey information within an organization.

Use memos rather than letters when you are communicating within your organization, including members of your department, upper management, employees at another company location, etc.

Memos solve problems either by introducing new information to the reader like policy changes or new products being introduced, or by persuading the reader to take an action, such as attend a meeting, rinse the coffeepot when empty, or change a current work procedure.

The writing style of a business memo is somewhat formal but it doesn't have to sound intimidating. Your aim in writing a memo is the same as with other correspondence: You want to effectively communicate your purpose to your reader.

Memos are most effective when they connect the purpose of the writer with the interests and needs of the reader. When planning your memo, be sure to think about it from your reader's perspective: Pretend you are the recipient and ask yourself:

 

1. How is this relevant to me?
   
2. What, specifically, do you want me to do?
   
3. What's in it for me?
4. Headings help the reader skim for sections of the document.
5. Numbered and bulleted lists make information easy to scan. Be careful to make lists parallel in grammatical form.
6. Font sizes, underlining, bolding, and italicizing make headings and important information stand out.
7. As in all technical and business communications, long paragraphs of dense text make reading more difficult. Therefore, keep your paragraphs short and to the point.

Now that you know how to write a proper memo, you can be sure that your readers will understand your intentions.

 

Copyright, Linda Elizabeth Alexander

Linda Elizabeth Alexander writes marketing copy for nonprofits and other businesses. Visit her website TODAY for other informative business writing articles: http://www.write2thepointcom.com/articles.html