Writing course assignment( letter and memorandum)

ASSIGNMENT 1: NEGATIVE MESSAGE WITH POSITIVE EMPHASIS

Due Date: Sunday, October 25, 11:55 p.m.

Assignment Format: Letter to Lyn Smith and Memorandum to Rita Simmons

Primary Audience: Lyn Smith (for the letter) and Rita Simmons (for the memorandum)

Length: up to 1000 words (total; i.e., for the letter and memorandum together)

Note: This assignment consists of two parts: a letter and a memorandum. Include both texts in the same file (either .doc or docx; not pdf): place the memorandum first, and start the letter on the second page. Failure to include one of the elements will result in your assignment being graded out of 50%.

Value: 20% of your final grade

Background Go back to the Globe Airlines case and review it. In particular, review the criteria for the reply to Lyn Smith set out by your immediate supervisor Rita Simmons, and confirm your assessment of Ms. Smith. Ms. Simmons has now told you that you cannot offer the E-TUVs to the customers.

Part 1: The Memorandum Write a short memorandum to Rita Simmons, in which you submit your draft letter to her for review, give a very brief explanation of your approach, and ask her for comment and approval to return the letter to be signed and sent to the customer. This document does not need to exceed three sentences.

As the message of transmittal, this document should appear before the letter.

Part 2: The Letter Write a letter to Lyn Smith, in which you refuse her specific requests while doing everything you can (within the criteria and limitations you are working under) to persuade her to return to Globe as a customer in the future.

Be sure to use the information that you gathered about Ms. Smith for the first assignment and everything that you have learned about negative messages from the lecture notes and your text.

You are writing the letter on behalf of Rita Simmons, so you should use her name in both the address and signature blocks.

ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR ASSIGNMENT 1 (NEGATIVE MESSAGE)

Format Once again, please double-space your assignment, indenting the first sentence of each new paragraph (so that you do not need to leave extra space between paragraphs). Include both documents in the same file, opening with the memorandum of transmittal, but start the letter on a new page, beginning with the address block.

Genre The memorandum of transmittal is a common genre in professional writing. It is often very short (e.g., it might contain only a few sentences); this semester, only the final assignment, a formal report, will feature a page-long transmittal message. As with the diagnostic assignment, you should open the memo with a To/From block, identifying the recipient, the writer, the date (again following the date of Smith’s original letter), and the subject. The letter to Smith will open with an address block containing the addresses of the company and of Smith. Please make up both addresses.

Structure/Content Transmittal Message As noted above, the memorandum of transmittal will be brief. It should contain three sentences: the first will identify the attached letter, the second will offer a succinct overview of the letter’s contents, and the third will solicit suggestions for improvement. (This structure is conventional for a memorandum of transmittal, and you will use it again for the second graded assignment.)

Buffer As for the letter, the negative message with positive emphasis is a specific genre, so it features conventions both of structure and of content. The introduction—known in this genre as a buffer —should be short; in this case, two sentences will suffice. Locker and Findlay offer five possibilities for the buffer, but I encourage you to acknowledge the receipt of Smith’s letter and to comment on the value of such a document. The former establishes your ethos as a detail- oriented person (an important consideration for this audience), and the latter establishes a positive tone that encourages the reader to continue reading and (one hopes) makes the reader more amenable to the negative message. Essential to the positive tone is the absence of negative diction, including euphemisms like “situation” or “issue” (which almost always mean “problem”).

Paragraph of Explanation The first body paragraph of the letter will offer an explanation for Smith’s concerns. It will be based on facts: these facts constitute the evidence that inform the negative message, the refusal that appears at the end of this paragraph and that stands as the logical conclusion to your presentation of evidence. A discussion of feelings has no place in this exercise (many of you noted in the forum that Smith’s letter was less compelling than it could have been because of its many emotional appeals and digressions). If you think that Smith deserves an apology, place it

(as Locker and Findlay indicate) early in this paragraph, and do not repeat it. Also, do not offer a blanket apology: if it is necessary, it must refer to a specific failure. Again, the specificity of your evidence boosts your credibility and will help the reader to understand and accept (if not celebrate) your refusal of her requests. The negative message must appear at the end of this paragraph: it is the logical conclusion of your presentation of compelling evidence. A deference to policy is not compelling evidence; were you tempted merely to cite policy, you should discuss the rationale for that policy (i.e., indicate why it exists and what brought it into being). Do not place the refusal in the next paragraph (where it will create paragraph incoherence), and neither apologize for your refusal nor repeat it elsewhere. In this case, you will refuse two requests. While the first refusal requires a longer explanation, the second one requires only a single sentence. Place both explanations before the refusals, which must appear at the end of the first body paragraph.

Paragraph of Alternatives The second body paragraph of the letter should offer alternatives to the refusal, and it should open with a topic sentence that identifies its purpose. It will be shorter than the first body paragraph, but it should contain at least four sentences (the standard number for a well- developed body paragraph). More importantly, however, you must always offer a specific alternative to each refused request. Smith has made two requests, and you have refused both of them. Your paragraph of alternatives, then, must offer an alternative to each request. Smith has asked at least one question not related to compensation, and you can answer this question in this paragraph, should you choose to do so.

Goodwill Ending The goodwill ending will be concise, as it was in the first assignment: two sentences will suffice. As always, the goodwill ending should be positive, personal, and forward-looking, so it must say something specific about Smith’s relation to Globe while avoiding negative diction. An apology is particularly inappropriate in this paragraph, where (as Locker and Findlay indicate) it appears as an admission of liability. You should not invite further correspondence; such an invitation implies that you have not supplied all of the essential information and that the matter is still up for debate.