Purpose and Audience

Audience
Before writing the memo, consider for whom you are writing. Are you writing for your supervisor who is very busy? Are you writing for a certain group of employees who need information on a particular project or policy? These considerations will affect how your memo is organized. See the Organization section for more information.

Also, audience will affect content. Perhaps you will need to define special terms or explain technical operations. Think about who you are writing for and what kind of knowledge or experience that person has.

Purpose
The purpose of your memo should be clearly stated up-front. Purpose statements typically are one or two sentences at the beginning of the memo stating why you are writing the memo. Here are a few sample purpose statements:

Based upon our previous discussion, I would like to join the following professional societies that relate to my position at ABC Company . . .

Please find below a status report for the Gizmo development project.

When your memo includes several purposes, one way to develop a purpose statement is to define the most important idea involved in your subject. For example:

This memo presents the test results for the Fuel Efficiency Project. Additionally, I have included recommendations for improvements and sample data from similar tests performed.

In this case, the author decided the most important information in the memo would be the test results. The recommendations and sample data are secondary information for the reader.

Sample Memo