This section will focus on public texts–the different genres you might be asked to write in your future career. We will cover everything from how to write inter-office communication to persuasive online writing. Genre is the key. Make sure you understand the constraints of the genre before you put fingers to keyboard.

18.1 Email

Email is one of the most popular forms of communication in the business and academic worlds. But despite how common email is, it’s deceptively hard to write a really good email. You want your messages to be clear, correct, concise, and to-the-point. You want to get the the meat of your message quickly but at the same time keep a light, professional tone. Focus on these Do’s and Don’ts:

The Do’s of Email

• Be polite and considerate.
• Always be a bit more formal if you are writing to your superior or someone in a position of authority. It’s smart to err on the side of being too formal.
• Begin with an appropriate salutation. Find out how your professor/boss/peer would like to be addressed. Or if you don’t know, notice how they sign their emails or refer to themselves. If they live in academia-land, stick with Professor or Dr. If they live in the real world, use Mr. for men and Ms. for women. (Mrs. and Miss are out-dated terms that unnecessarily emphasize women’s marital status–don’t use them unless someone specifically requests it.)
• Use the subject line. It should clearly and concisely state what the email is about. Don’t use a vague subject line or start a sentence in the subject line and finish it in the body.
• Be careful when using the Reply All option. Does everyone on the original email need to see your response, or is it something you should keep between yourself and the original sender?
• Sign your emails with a friendly closing salutation like “Sincerely,” or “Best regards.”
• Consider an email signature with your name. In a workplace setting, your signature will have important information like your title, your working hours, and other ways to contact you or make appointments. Students may choose to include their student numbers in email signatures (just be careful who you share that with!).

The Don’ts of Email

• Don’t email your professor/boss if you can find the answer to your question elsewhere (e.g., it’s in the syllabus, the textbook, online, or ask a classmate or coworker)–unless you’ve looked and the answer is still unclear!
• Don’t ask, “Did I miss anything important when I didn’t come to the meeting/class yesterday?” (Consider how this might make your instructor, who spends hours preparing lessons over the semester, feel.)
• Don’t use emoticons or emojis and don’t overuse exclamation points.
• Don’t be overly informal (e.g., avoid slang or spellings like “thx”). Capitalize sentences and the word “I” like normal (this is not a text message) but don’t use ALL CAPS (that’s the email equivalent of yelling).
• Don’t send GIFs in professional settings.
• Avoid being snarky, rude, or curt. It might be funny and sarcastic, but your audience may not read it that way. It’s much harder to convey feeling (and sarcasm) through email, so don’t assume your reader will understand if you’re joking.

Of course, like all genres, there are tons of instances where these genre conventions may be broken. Your boss can use emojis, and you can, too, as long as you let your boss make the first move to informality. The same thing goes with salutations. Always use the proper format and formal names, but let them drop the salutations before you do. Let your boss/professor sign their first name before you address them as such. Let your boss use slang or emojis before you do.

Remember, you’d rather be slightly overdressed to a party than under-dressed. Same thing goes for workplace writing. It’s better that your writing be slightly over-formal than sloppy and ill-mannered.

18.2 Memo

A memo is a weird thing. It lives in the space between an old-school letter and an email. The great thing about a memo is that it forces us to get to the meat of our message quickly. And, being that it is slightly more formal than an email, it immediately tells our audience that this information is important.

So when do we send a memo?

• If it is part of the company protocol.
• When the message is too long to be contained in an email.
• If the document is going to be printed out and placed, say, on a bulletin board.
• When we need to convey detailed and complex information to those outside of our workplace.

Memos look a lot like email–if the email were written out in a Word document. Follow this format to create a memo (you can also use a template from Word or Google to begin with):

Make sure that you get to the main point of your memo quickly. That means that the first sentence is your purpose statement. The content should be short and to-the-point and provide the context or background information briefly. The last sentence should be a clear action request.

18.3 Online writing

Whether in a blog post, an online article, a social media post, or a personal portfolio website, online writing genres are often persuasive and informative. They ask the reader to reconsider previously held ideas or to take action. Like all of the other genres we’ve discussed in this textbook, an understanding of audience is extremely important.

One of the worst things you can do when writing online is to write in a manner inconsistent with your target medium. Just think about how an email to your professor sounds (or should sound) different than a text to your close friends.  . Your tone must be balanced and consistent and your voice unique—humorous or cynical, angry or sorrowful, objective or contemplative–but definitely the voice of the writer. If you’re writing for your job, remember that you are not writing as a private individual, but as an employee. You are an extension of the company and should reflect that voice. Here, we’ll cover some tips for online writing.

Start with an attention-grabbing opening line that cuts to the heart of your key message and encourages people to read further. Online articles are meant to be read quickly. If an article is not interesting, readers generally will not bother finishing it. Therefore, it is crucial that you begin with a good lead, an opening sentence or story that “hooks” readers immediately and makes them want to read on. A good lead tantalizes, informs, and sets the tone for the piece. It can even be creative.

Emphasize active verbs. Don’t overuse adjectives and adverbs, which only weaken writing. Write to the level of your audience.

Keep paragraphs short but variable: In general, paragraphs should be no more than 3-5 sentences. Keep sentences short. If a sentence is overly long, your audience will get lost (and bored).

If you want to deliver a really punchy point, remember—single sentence paragraphs rock!

(The reason is “gray space,” the way a long block of text tends to turn gray upon glancing. The most important consideration about shorter paragraphs is that they’re easier for readers to read. Long unbroken blocks of text are daunting to most readers. Frequent paragraphs promise a sort of “rest stop” to readers. One advantage to this is that you don’t need to keep your paragraphs wholly unified and long as in academic writing.)

Find the story. We all love dazzling our friends with great data and facts, but to really make an impact with your piece wrap your data in a story. Refer to real world events or personal experiences that you and your audience have likely encountered. Don’t try just to teach your readers, touch them emotionally.

Include Images. Images are often the first things that hook the reader. Make sure that your images promote your message and are there for a purpose. Make sure that the images you use create a cohesive aesthetic for the article, post, or overall blog. Just like your words tell a story about the content and the writer, so do your images.  A word of caution—provide proper attribution for each image you include. If you don’t know if an image is copyrighted, don’t use it. Instead go to Creative Commons or a site like Unsplash where you can find thousands of beautiful, copyright-free images.

Beware that even if an image is free to use or share, you still need to say where you got it. Look through this textbook and notice that all the images are copyright-free or have a Creative Commons copyright. Note also that we always say where the images some from–that’s called Attribution and is often required, so just get used to doing it. Be a responsible online writer! Give credit!

18.4 Infographics

An information graphic is a document that uniquely displays information and data in a compelling way. The use of graphics, images, and symbols allows readers to download information much more quickly than text alone. You have probably seen them used for advertising or public service ads.

At this point of your work, you are ready to go beyond writing documents; now you can design them and get to use the rhetorical principles we have discussed throughout this textbook in an even more engaging way. There are many different modes of rhetoric—remember, everything is rhetoric—but each mode has its own rhetorical strengths and weaknesses.

Your audience will be anyone who is interested in the information you are presenting in your infographic. You need to create a document that will engage and inform them quickly, and inspire them to seek out further knowledge. Because of its easy access and shareability, your infographic will pull in a much larger secondary audience. So, be sure to create a document that less-informed audience members will understand and appreciate.

In addition to Photoshop, InDesign, and Powerpoint, there are many online infographic generators to choose from. Check out the following generators and find one the suits your needs:

• Canva
• piktochart
• Venngage
• Visme

Formatting is entirely up to you. A good rule of thumb is to use around 250 words of text in your document and a combination of images and charts/graphs. Simplified images are usually better than actual photos. Just remember: your visual rhetoric should make your argument as effectively as your written rhetoric does.

Beware of including information that comes from only one source, since this can unfairly drive the facts towards a particular conclusion. In the social sciences, this is called single-source bias. Look at your infographic the same way that you would a research paper or a university essay. The more sources you have, and the more building blocks you have to tell an interesting story, and the more credible that story is.