A passing Informal Memo Report has the following characteristics:  

1)  Your memo-style report must look like a report.  Any assignment that does not have headings and use lists will quite likely fail.  Also, any assignment with overly long paragraphs will quite likely do badly, because long paragraphs usually means that sub-headings and/or lists were not used.

2)  Your memo-style report must look like a memo.  Any assignment that looks like a letter, or does not use correct memo format, will lose most of the formatting marks.  In addition, your memo-style report must open and close as a memo would.

3)  Your report must be organized into sections.  The content of each section should belong in that section.  Thus, I should not see recommendations in the discussion section or discussion in the section that describes the problems.

4)  Each of your sections should have a clear heading, that tells me what to expect in that section.  Headings should be formatted consistently; that is, if a main heading is bold, all-caps, and left-justified, then all main headings must be bold, all-caps, and left-justified.

5)  Each of the assignment topics asks you to identify problems, suggest possible solutions, and make recommendations.  Your report should include, at the very least, a distinct section for each of these areas.  In other words, an assignment that jumps directly from describing problems to making recommendations will not do well.

6)  In addition to the three sections listed above, I expect that your report includes a Next Steps section.  In this section, you would suggest what should happen next:  that could be a feasibility study, to pick which recommendation to implement first, for example, or further research, or the forming of a team or committee.

Read less