Office Memorandums

Quick reference

• 00:04 A memorandum, or memo, for short, is used for internal communications
• 00:09 about procedures or official business within an organization.
• 00:15 They generally take an informational tone.
• 00:18 And unlike a transactional letter, a response isn't usually expected.
• 00:22 A memo is often sent to a large group of employees, like your entire department,
• 00:27 or everyone within the company.
• 00:30 You might need to write a memo to inform staff of upcoming events, like the annual
• 00:35 staff party, or to share news about internal changes like someone's promotion.
• 00:41 So let's see what a memo looks like.
• 00:45 The most noticeable thing is the word memo,
• 00:49 or a memorandum, in large bold lettering at the top of the page.
• 00:53 In the next four lines, you'll state who the document is being sent to,
• 00:59 who it's being sent from, the date and the subject.
• 01:03 Notice that we use tabs to keep the header sections aligned.
• 01:10 A horizontal line separating the header section from the body comes next.
• 01:15 If you're doing your memo from scratch, here's how to get that horizontal line.
• 01:21 Let's delete this one here.
• 01:26 If you just type a few dashes on your keyboard and then hit Enter,
• 01:30 then Microsoft Word will autocorrect this to align all the way across the page.
• 01:38 Let's undo this.
• 01:41 If you prefer a double line effect, you can type a few equal signs,
• 01:45 hit Enter, and you've gotten a double line all the way across the page.
• 01:53 Now to start the memo itself, there's no need for
• 01:57 a salutation because the addressee's names or titles are already here.
• 02:01 And the opening paragraph should state the purpose of the memo.
• 02:05 This will be about one or two sentences, it definitely shouldn't go over three.
• 02:11 The second paragraph is for your content.
• 02:13 Use this paragraph to outline the actual news.
• 02:17 Tell them what's changed or what the details are that you'd like to share.
• 02:22 You also provide any support or
• 02:24 justification of the new information in the same paragraph.
• 02:29 Now if either the details or the justification is especially long,
• 02:33 you can separate this into two paragraphs.
• 02:38 The final paragraph outlines what will or should happen next.
• 02:43 Even if there are no specific tasks to be completed,
• 02:46 it's important for the reader to know what's expected of them.
• 02:49 And that basically rounds off what should go in a memo.
• 02:54 You can include the signature of the sender at the bottom, to the left,
• 02:58 but that's usually omitted.
• 03:00 Remember that the name of the sender was already stated at the top of the document.
• 03:09 Memos are formal documents that carry a straightforward, business-like tone.
• 03:14 Established company acronyms that aren't just informal shorthand codes are okay.
• 03:19 Remember that we avoid emotional and
• 03:21 conversational language when writing memos.
• 03:24 And obviously, there shouldn't be any emojis, exclamation marks or
• 03:30 Internet abbreviations in this type of document.

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