Memo about Genre Conventions for Letters, Memos, and Emails (30 min)
Let’s finish the activity from 7-9 on this.
Activity: As a group, plan a memo that summarizes the genre conventions for memos, letters, and emails. Include any information that you think is particularly important (e.g., style/tone for emails, netiquette, direct vs. indirect memos) for writers. You won’t include *all* information from the chapter, since this is a summary. See example memos on our CourseWeb in Course Documents so you can get a better sense of formatting possibilities than you can see in the chapter.
After planning an outline with a plan for each paragraph or section, compose an email that goes out to the class informing them that the memo is attached and how they can use the memo.
Let’s go through some example emails and why you wrote them the way you did.
What was lost or different between the memo and the email?
The Frame Method and Other Email Tips
Discussion of Frame Method
The Assumption Of Negativity and Rudeness Detector: *REMEMBER WHAT TRANSLATES WELL AND WHAT DOES NOT. People tend to read negatively—so try not to write something that could reasonably be interpreted as rude.
Other tips–anything else from chapter or from experience stand out to you?
Clean up the following (this sample email from this post about email etiquette):
Hi-
Great talking to you on the phone today; Can’t wait to tell you more about how HubSpot can help you’re company. I scheduled the demo we discussed earlier and you can find the agenda here: https//www.longesturlever.com/donteverdothistoyourprospects.
Talk to you son.
Cheers — [Your name]
Letters
Heightened formality compared to memos and emails. Chapter 6 has an excellent template for requirements and options. Other than formality, what stands out here to you compared to memos and emails?
In terms of audience, how would you say the “formality” is different in a letter compared to memos or emails? What do you mean when you say “formality” in this context?
Genre Brainstorm (10 min)
Who got responses from people they contacted by email? What did they say? Tell me all of the genres associated with work that you can think of.
You might have to enter a certain register for different parts of any document (e.g., the purpose section of the memo). The most glaring differences, though, are often in design features. Thinking of genre means thinking of audience, and, conversely, their expectations for language and design.
Design and Accessibility (30-45 min)
Every genre means different design and accessibility things to think about.
What do you value about design? What about accessibility? Go to the readings to help you think through this. I’ll give you a few minutes to review. Let’s list them out on the board.
- How readable it is to all audiences.
- How pleasing it is to look at, thus increasing probability reader will stick around.
- Navigation–how to get around a document.
- Anything else?
Based on the readings, how does design and accessibility principles impact readability, aesthetic pleasure, navigation, etc.?
Some additional items to consider:
Alternative text: *Stephanie Kerschbaum on image descriptions
To serif or not to serif?: Based on many studies, feels like the idea of serif or sans serif being better online vs. print is too simplisitic. It really doesn’t matter in older media, and matters even less now with better screen resolution, updated fonts, etc. Contrast is useful, though, if you want to separate headers from body text, etc.
Group activity
Let’s see these at work in 4 different texts. Each group will read their text in terms of design features or accessibility features that they think really stand out (or don’t) in the text.
Group 1, Example Report 2-Design:
Group 2, Example Report 2-Accessibility:
Group 3, Example Report 3-Design:
Group 4, Example Report 3-Accessibility:
Group 5, PennDOT Construction Webpage– Design:
Group 6, PennDOT Construction Webpage– Accessibility:
Group 7, Pittsburgh Public Schools “Facts at a Glance” Webpage– Design:
Group 8, Pittsburgh Public Schools “Facts at a Glance” Webpage– Accessibility:
Next, the accessibility and design groups for the given text will join with each other to talk about what worked and didn’t, and how they might change the document to mesh good design principles with good accessibility features. If this text could be revised, how?
Do revisions with design in mind and revisions with accessibility in mind ever clash? How? If not, why not? Ok, let’s return to our list to see if we want to revise anything
Break (10 min)
Studio Time (30-45 min)
Work on Unit 1 revisions and/or Unit 2 project. Please seek me out for any questions!
Research, Proposals, and Reports (45 min)
Differences between research in academic vs. professional settings?
What are some differences in research practices in academic vs. professional settings?
Proposals
Proposals are not as rigidly formatted across contexts as memos or emails might be. Still, there are some elements to consider as consistent:
-having a good document design
-have an introduction to alert scope and gist of proposal
-description of why proposal is being written. What prompted it? Here is where you need to be persuasive. You need to show how your idea came about and why it is so potentially and positively consequential.
-Have plan of action. What you are going to do, how you are going to do it, how money would be spent, etc.
-anticipate concerns about the project. Can be own section but does not have to be.
-Conclude by summing up and explicitly asking audience for action. Be confident and assertive.
Unfortunately, models of proposals have been heavily monetized and there are very few free examples. Typically, only grant proposals are free. Though they are different from business, investment, and internal-workplace proposals, they do follow a similar format.
Activity: Go through both example proposals on CourseWeb. Note their organizational differences. What do you see as the strength and weakensses of those choices (especially consider differences when they are the “same” sections between them)? Why?
Activity: What “tone” or “tones” exist in both proposals? Circle examples in the text as evidence of this tone. How might this tone be different if it were another genre?
Some things to look for or try out:
- Positive and negative words
- Scoring (e.g., 1-5) how positive or how negative words are
- How much language is “certain” or assertive (e.g., “This is X”, “This has to be done”)?
- How much language is more doubtful or qualified (e.g, “This seems to suggest that X,” “It might be a good idea to do X”, use of dependent clauses to qualify statements)?
- What “register” is present (i.e., are there clusters of words that point to a type of social interaction, worldview, job?)?
- What kinds of sentences? (e.g., lots of simple sentences creating a “blunt” tone? Many complex sentences creating an “intellectual” tone?)?
- Other rhetorical devices or linguistic features that suggest a certain attitude, worldview, social interaction, job, etc.?
Reports
Reports share information with an audience. But how that information is analyzed is what distinguishes different kinds of reports. Workplace Writing identifies four different kinds of reports: feasibility, comparison, cause, and impact.
Feasibility: how we might be able to do something
Comparison: comparing options for something to do
Cause: why something might be happening
Impact: how something we did is impacting us
From BWE:
Progress report: how things are going like annual or quarterly reports
Recommendation report: research to use to make recommendations for problems or solutions
Summary report: summaries of information on a given subject
Report conventions vary, but they all have some version of:
- Introductions with clear purpose and outline of what is to come, a background on why report was written, methods, limitations, any needed definitions. Might also include an even shorter “executive summary” prior to the introduction that concisely summarizes the whole report but focuses on decision-making.
- Analysis: how you perform what you found. Organize as you see fit, adhering to good professional writing practices
- Conclude with major findings and interpretations, and, possibly, recommendations.
- Good document design throughout, which can especially be important for longer reports that require more navigation.
For longer reports, you might have:
- -a letter of transmittal that informs supervisor that the report is complete with a summary of major findings (like an executive summary but as separate page)
- -Abstract that summarizes a little more extensively than what was in letter of transmittal (like an executive summary)
- -table of contents
- -list of figures and tables
- -list of abbreviations
- -executive summary: a summary focused on decision-making
- -body, conclusion, recommendations as in shorter reports
- -appendices, glossary, index
BWE ch. 11 also has a good breakdown of sections of a formal report. If you are doing Option 1, you can do a more informal rather than the full formal report. The informal report can have elements of formal report.
[also good on types of graphics—will go back to this on day we spend on visuals]
**For research-oriented genres of writing, how do you have to go about writing in a way that establishes your credibility?
Activity: For the four example reports on CourseWeb, give it 1 or 2 of the labels from WW and/or BWE. Why did you give it that label?
Also: how do these reports both follow and violate these conventions as listed from your textbooks? If you could revise them, what would you do?
Activity: Do you find that there are different tones across the reports? What are they? Why do you think they are different?
Some things to look for or try out:
- Positive and negative words
- Scoring (e.g., 1-5) how positive or how negative words are
- How much language is “certain” or assertive (e.g., “This is X”, “This has to be done”)?
- How much language is more doubtful or qualified (e.g, “This seems to suggest that X,” “It might be a good idea to do X”, use of dependent clauses to qualify statements)?
- What “register” is present (i.e., are there clusters of words that point to a type of social interaction, worldview, job?)?
- What kinds of sentences? (e.g., lots of simple sentences creating a “blunt” tone? Many complex sentences creating an “intellectual” tone?)?
- Other rhetorical devices or linguistic features that suggest a certain attitude, worldview, social interaction, job, etc.?
Review and Next Time (5-10 min)
-Spending time thinking about genre helps you meet expectations of your readers and purposefully violate conventions when rhetorically helpful.
-Design and accessibility are crucial components of any piece of writing, and arguably more important for the quick reading of professional writing.
-Research-oriented genres require a different sort of attention than the shorter, everyday genres of memos, emails, (to a lesser extent) letters. Tone, design, etc.
Next Time
-Records, Documentation, and Policy writing
-Introduction to WPC Project (Unit 3 project)
-More studio time
-Any catching up from today