Justin J. Bain
PhD Student in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric
Syracuse University
315-443-1412
jjbain@syr.edu
• Philosophy
• Writing 105
• Writing 205
• Writing 307
• Writing 110WRT 307: Memo Assignment
In various forms, you will communicate in writing with coworkers, supervisors, team members, and other departments within a given workplace. For simplification, we will categorize these sorts of inter/intra-office correspondence as memos. The goal of this assignment is to have you identify the forms and formats of memos for your workplace and to produce a series of brief memos written to various audiences for various purposes.
To begin this assignment, it will be useful to review the sorts of formal and informal writing presented in your last report, as this will determine the sorts of memos you will be asked to produce. In class, we have discussed some of the important features and considerations for producing memos. Drawing from that work and from your own research, you will produce three professional memos to meet the following exigencies.
1. At your place of employment, a situation has arisen in which certain personnel have to be "let go." Though you are not certain of the exact reasons, there are rumors that profits are down and that employees are not being productive enough. Given this situation, your supervisor has been instructed by his supervisor, Ms. Gibb—the current General Manager—to have employees document their work and productivity over the last month. Your supervisor, Justin Bain, has asked that each employee write a brief memo documenting this information, which will be included in a report he will present to Ms. Gibb. a. For this memo, please invent a viable project for your workplace (as researched in your report) and an appropriate work history for the month.
2. You are part of a team working on a current project that has been given a priority status. Your work is affected by the progress of another team that has fallen behind schedule. If you proceed with your work without the input of that other team, you risk having to redo the entire project. If you do not proceed, your group will fall dangerously behind schedule. Write a memo to the other Team Leader, Mark Savage, in which you address this situation. a. For this memo, draw on the project created in 1 above to invent the work of another team, and compose a memo to meet the given circumstances.
3. You have been emailed the following message by your friend and Team Leader, Marie Critchern:
"Team:
Our current project is running over-budget. In my last report to Mr. Danberg, I attempted to explain the reasons for this, but I failed to convince him that the extra hours and expenditures were necessary. Though he believes in the value of our project, he has instructed me to seek alternate sources of funding. Please take an hour or so and see if you can locate some viable sources—email me with what you find.
Thanx,
Mariea. For this memo, please attempt to find actual sources of funding for the project described in 1 and 2 above, and compose the memo accordingly.