The Interoffice Correspondence Package

The Interoffice Correspondence Package (ICP), is your chance to hone your everyday professional writing skills. In our technological age we communicate chiefly via the written word. This shift in communication means that not only are writing skills more important to potential employers than ever; it also means that your writing skills are often your first or most frequent avatar of your professional persona. This assignment focuses on professional texts and and gives you a chance to practice their formats and conventions in order to develop a consistent set of internal writing protocols.

Project Basics

Deliverables

Your package will be composed of four sections:

  • A  reflection
  • An email
  • An interoffice memo
  • A business letter

Delivery

  • Complete your project as a continuous Word document, beginning each section on a new page in this order:
    • Reflection
    • Email
    • Memo
    • Letter
  • Make sure each section is formatted properly. Add your student author’s block to the reflection page only.

Project Sections

Reflection

Writing reflections help students consider their learning process, how their knowledge of a topic changed, and how it might affect future writing experiences. The purpose is to identify present skillsets and reimagine them over time.

You will write your project reflection last but it will appear first in the document order. The project reflection should be about one page and  will:

  • introduce each of the package documents
  • discuss how you developed your texts
    • email: reflect on your original document and your revision process
    • the memo: reflect on the structure as well as the content
    • the business letter: reflect on your familiarity with this genre, how it is similar or different to the other writings, and how the purpose drove your text.
  • identify where you struggled and where you succeeded
  • discuss how the assignment might transfer to real-world experiences

Email

 The next document in your Interoffice memo package is the email, which we introduced in our Writing Emails and Memos module page (see iCollege).  For this document, you will revise your introductory email to me, using what we have learned through our readings and iCollege notes. Use chapter 7 of our textbook to reconsider the success of your original email and then revise it to have the following:

  • a salutation and opening
  • identify yourself and your field of study 
  • in a few sentences describe your professional goals over the next 3-5 years
  • Note your level of experience with business writing and what you hope to achieve from the class.
  • a closing and typed signature, with a space in between

If you wish to include anything extra, feel free, but make sure it flows and is edited. Mimic the format of an email by duplicating the header lines and be sure to include email addresses.

Memo

You will write your memo as a representative of an organization with which you are connected. It could be your job, a club, volunteer group, your church, your sorority or fraternity, etc. Identify a current or past event in which information had to be shared with the members of that organization in an efficient and clear way (perhaps COVID-19 has prompted changes to a schedule or protocol, or you have an opportunity you would like to share). 

Now develop your memo to share that information. You may use the memo template in Word or create your own. Again, look back at the Writing Emails and Memos module page (iCollege) for more information about structure.

Business Letter

Finally, you will write a business letter. The business letter is similar to the memo, but it has an outward facing audience. Your business letter should do one of the following and be addressed to a real person:

  • a thank you letter to a business or person who has helped you professionally
  • A letter of introduction to someone who has influenced you professionally or with whom you would like to collaborate
  • A letter of praise or complaint to a business or institution

Your letter should be formally formatted (detailed in week 3) and include each of the following:

  • a header
  • clearly identify you as the author
  • outline your exigence (why you are writing) 
  • similar to the memo, include any additional information
  • propose a next step (depending upon the reason you are writing, your next step might be a meeting, or a solution to an issue, for instance)
  • conclude with a formal closing and a method of contact

**Peer review materials will be due to the drop box the Sunday before peer review. Check the calendar for peer review dates.