{"id":982,"date":"2014-07-20T16:05:18","date_gmt":"2014-07-20T04:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=982"},"modified":"2014-07-20T16:05:18","modified_gmt":"2014-07-20T04:05:18","slug":"memo-re-those-emails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=982","title":{"rendered":"Memo: Re those emails"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Memo\"<\/a>I began my working life during the era of the memorandum.\u00a0 Back then, memos came in many flavours.\u00a0 Some were written to inform the reader; but, as Dean Acheson famously quipped, many many more were written simply to protect the writer.<\/p>\n

And don\u2019t think that just because they were laborious to produce \u2013 drafting, typing, amending, adjusting, retyping (often more than once), and then delivering them by hand or by snail-mail \u2013 that they were few and far between.\u00a0 Despite many of them having little relevance to the recipient, they tumbled into our physical inboxes almost as frequently as emails now tumble into our virtual inboxes.\u00a0 How often they got read \u2026 well, that\u2019s another matter.<\/p>\n

But there were exceptions.<\/p>\n

For a while, I worked for an organisation headed by a man whose memos had an almost poetic quality to them.\u00a0 They were generally quite short \u2013 a paragraph or two at most \u2013 beautifully crafted, and, like any good poem, they were almost always rewarding to read.<\/p>\n

After three or four years, our paths diverged: I moved off to another organisation, and, soon after, the chairman-poet moved into semi-retirement.\u00a0 But then, a few years later, I ran into him \u2013 quite by accident \u2013 and we ended up having a meal together.<\/p>\n

During the course of the meal, I told him how much I had admired his memos.\u00a0 Was there a secret?\u00a0 I asked.<\/p>\n

He confessed that it often took him as long as 20 minutes or half an hour to compose one of his compact communiques.\u00a0 But he consoled himself with the knowledge that if he dashed something off in three or four minutes, and then nobody read it, that was three or four minutes totally <\/em>wasted.<\/p>\n

He also said that he tried to never use a word or phrase in a memo that he wouldn\u2019t be comfortable using in a casual face-to-face conversation.\u00a0 \u2018I\u2019m just not a \u201cmoreover\u201d kind of bloke.\u00a0 And I think if I was to use \u201cmoreover\u201d in a memo, the reader would think that either a) I hadn\u2019t written it, or b) I was being pompous.\u00a0 Neither of which would help my cause.\u2019 \u00a0He was answering my question rather than offering advice; but I took it as advice anyway.<\/p>\n

Emails have, of course, taken over from memos.\u00a0 But I think the same rules apply.<\/p>\n

A friend of mine is famous for her emails.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure that many people think that she just pumps them out.\u00a0 But I have seen her at work.\u00a0 She really toils over them.\u00a0 As she says, the test is not of what she puts in, but of what the reader takes out<\/p>\n

Are you someone who would say \u2018moreover\u2019 in the course of a pub conversation?\u00a0 If the answer is no, then maybe you shouldn\u2019t use such words in your writing either.\u00a0 And next time you are tempted to rattle out an email in three or four minutes, remember, if your reader doesn\u2019t take out what you wanted them to take out, you have wasted those three or four minutes \u2013 and possibly a whole lot more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I began my working life during the era of the memorandum.\u00a0 Back then, memos came in many flavours.\u00a0 Some were written to inform the reader; but, as Dean Acheson famously quipped, many many more were written simply to protect the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":984,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions\/984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}