Paper #2
Should the
Administrative Details
Length: 4
pages, double sided.
Stapled!
Due Friday, March 6, 2:00pm.
Writing an effective policy memo
is difficult. Good memos should present strong ideas clearly and logically. If
you always assume that your reader only has time to skim your memo, you will
not go too far astray. In grading your memos, I will consider six criteria: (1)
content, (2) overall clarity and brevity, (3) structure, (4) grammar, (5) tone,
and (6) style.
Content: Content, of course, is the most
important determinant of a good policy memo. Weak or illogical ideas, no matter
how well presented, do no one any good. Here are some things to keep in mind.
First, present opinions AS opinions not facts. Opinions presented should also
be substantiated. Second, avoid logical fallacies such as appeals to authority,
slippery slope arguments, hasty generalizations, faulty causation (post hoc
ergo, proctor hoc), etc. Third, when citing facts, be correct. Fourth, use
logic and facts to support each of your main points and/or to refute opposing
points. Fifth, important ideas are better than trivial ideas. Sixth, present
your ideas in some sort of useful order. I recommend starting with the most
important ideas unless there is a compelling reason not to.
Overall Clarity and
Conciseness: Clarity
should be the goal of all writing. It is the second most important criterion of
a good policy memo, next to content. Your ideas should be presented so that
readers can understand your points easily and without having to read any
sentence twice. If you use effective headings and structure, your clarity will
increase immensely. But you also have to have good grammar, style, content, and
presentation. Conciseness is also important. Use as many words as you must, but
write your memo in the fewest words possible. Focus on the most important
points, and be aware of your reader’s time constraints. But do NOT cut out
vital information just for the sake of brevity. Again, keep in mind what the
reader needs to know. You will likely have to rewrite your papers more than
once to get full credit on clarity and conciseness.
Structure: Your policy memo should usually have an
introduction that contains a thesis statement. A thesis statement gives the
reasons behind the recommendation(s) you are making. A good thesis explains the purpose of your memo.
And second, it outlines the direction the remainder of the memo will take. The
remainder of the memo should then follow the structure outlined in the
introduction. These supporting points should be organized as internally
consistent paragraphs. Within each paragraph, you should lead your reader from
old to new information. By that, I mean you should usually build on previously
introduced concepts in the first part of a sentence and say something new in
the predicate. Old new. Old new.
It is also important to use helpful transitions between sentences. Finally, you
will conclude. Usually you will not need a separate paragraph to conclude a
policy memo, but occasionally you may. At the very least, your memo should not
end so abruptly that it seems odd to the reader. Eventually, you will be able
to judge what is appropriate, given the nature of the paper and the audience.
Grammar: Poor grammar does more than obscure
ideas. When I read poor grammar, for instance, I suspect that the writer is
poorly educated, lazy, or unconcerned about the memo topic. These are messages
you probably do not want to communicate. The first part of improving grammar is
to learn punctuation and spelling rules. If you have questions regarding the
use of commas, semicolons, colons, hyphens, periods, quotation marks, etc, you
need to pick up a simple textbook and study the punctuation sections. Also,
know what a good sentence is. Avoid awkward sounding phrases, run-ons,
fragments, etc. You should choose your words carefully, limit your use of
contractions and rarely end sentences with prepositions. For the purposes of
this class, think of grammar as writing good sentences and structure as writing
good paragraphs in a logical order.
Tone: Tone refers to the author’s voice.
Writing can sound angry, indignant, cheerful, humorous, cautious, etc. It can
range from stilted to formal to informal to conversational to just plain old
colloquial. The voice that comes across is affected by sentence length,
bolding, italics, capitalization and punctuation. And don’t forget it! You
should choose your own tone. But here is some advice. First, be aware that
angry tones are rarely persuasive. Second, your
writing will sound more reasoned if you avoid painting yourself as an extremist
-- even if you are. Third, indignation can at times be effective, but more
often it makes you seem ridiculous to people who disagree with you. Fourth,
humor is often inappropriate. By all means, experiment with tone. But use wise
judgment, and be prepared to lose points if the reader doesn’t think your tone
works. I often try to write in what I call an educated conversational tone. I
use contractions if it sounds awkward not to, write actively, and try to avoid
really big words or jargon. I also start sentences with words such as “so,”
“and,” and “but.” You don’t have to be that conversational, but you do have to
be consistent. So, if you use “nevertheless and not withstanding” to start one
sentence, don’t use “but” to start the next. Otherwise you sound as if you have
no “voice” at all. If you vary your tone wildly or use tone ineffectively, you
will lose points.
Style: Style is similar to tone and is difficult to define. So let me describe what I mean by giving you concrete advice. The first advice is to write actively. To do that, make the grammatical subject of your sentence the agent and make the verb the agent’s action. Ex: John hit the ball. John is the subject and the agent. Hit is the verb and John’s action. Passive ex: The ball was hit by John. Second, use strong, descriptive verbs. Ex: John tapped the ball or John smashed the ball. Third, avoid turning perfectly good verbs into nouns. Ex: The smashing of the ball was performed by John. This will help you with the next piece of advice. Fourth, avoid stringing prepositional phrases together. Ex: The smashing of the ball was performed by the bat of John. Save your passive voice for those rare occasions when it’s actually helpful. For instance, passive can be used to move a previously introduced concept to the beginning of a sentence so that you continue moving from old information to new information. Ex: After a sentence on President Kennedy, you might write, “He was assassinated later that month by the CIA.” And that might flow better than saying, ”Later that month, the CIA assassinated President Kennedy.” In the latter example, you are introducing new information before the “old” or previously introduced concept (President Kennedy). Passive is also appropriate when you want to hide the agent of an action to avoid assigning blame. Ex: “My car was wrecked” sounds less accusing than “My boyfriend/girlfriend wrecked my car.” In short, I’m not telling you to blindly cut all passive voice from your papers. But I do want you to avoid it when it’s unnecessary, which is most of the time. Above all, be conscious of what style you’re using. Eloquence and catchy “leads” are also part of style. In general, clever turns of phrase, similes, metaphors, etc have little place in policy memos. If you can “hook” your reader in less than a sentence, then you are probably fine. But journalistic “leads,” while enjoyable, are not appropriate for most policy memos. Finally, decide right now to renounce metadiscourse. By metadiscourse I mean telling the reader what you are going to do in your memo. For example, “In the next paragraph, I will...” or “ In this memo, I...” Metadiscourse is seldom appropriate, certainly not in a policy memo