MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

Audience scenario for this memo: Here is Jane, our boss. She asked for the memo at the end of our last staff meeting. 

irst up! What is a memo?  

 By the way, the OWL website at Purdue is a fabulous resource for writing. Memos also have a standard format:  See the image to the left.  Also, look at the email heading in your software.  This electronic message is based on the memo format.  Bonus question:  what is the difference, traditionally, between a memo and a letter.

Topic Sentences: A list of qualities for you to strive for

• Usually a short direct sentence (think announcement)
• Signals the topic in the paragraph (think preview)
• Hooks the reader by 1) raising a question or 2) provoking thought
• Can be placed anywhere, but early on in the paragraph is the best default strategy for most professional documents; in other words, at the beginning of the paragraph
• Contains an element of transition from the previous paragraph

Note:  topic sentences can be implied in tightly coherent prose (for now, leave this subtle technique to the professionals!)

Let's look at examples of topic sentences useful in the rain garden memo:

Rain gardens, or bioretention ponds, are a kind of low impact development.  Low impact development....

Rain gardens have two components:  layers of percolation material and carefully chosen plants.

Rain gardens protect the local environment by absorbing water run-off from impervious surfaces and by sequestering pollutants.

Dr. Allen Davis studies rain garden effectiveness.  Davis, a civil engineering professor, has been studying bioretention for more than twenty years.

Let's also think about sentences generally.  General advice to you?  Write shorter sentences than those you are familiar with in literature and many of your textbooks. 

Now, let's think about sentences: 

Sentence Patterns

Buffy and Sentences

Pitch the Verb

And, on to paragraphs:

Paragraph Definition: think Architectures

Paragraph Types