Why don’t memos “flow well”?
Memos are sometimes choppy as they are written to address several perhaps unrelated
issues or questions. It is a challenge to string together your thoughts in a way that is easy
and pleasant to read. Students may tend to rely on quotes from the professional literature
too heavily. Often times memos will seem to be multiple quotations strung together
paragraph after paragraph. Although accurate for the most part, that makes for difficult
and uninteresting reading. In general, quotations should make up no more than 10% of a
memo. Long quotations, four lines or parts thereof, should be set apart from the text by
double spacing before and after and indenting the quotation one inch from the left
margin.
If you will get the “story” of the solution sorted out in your mind before writing you will
end with a better product. Once you’ve got the story in your head you can usually write
the memo in such a way that makes it easily readable.
Multiple drafts are the rule not the exception to good writing.