Technical Writing: An Exercise In Document Rewriting

Rewriting a school memo to parents.

This post critiques a low quality school memo and redesigns it with a technical writing approach.

Below is a mock school memo to parents regarding a lunch menu update.

This memo is:

• Difficult to navigate
• Unclear in its purpose and intended audience
• Not highlighting the newest, most relevant info
• Structurally ‘sloppy’
• Confusing — what exactly are the rules and steps mentioned for orders & lunches?
• Unprofessional
• Visually unappealing

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Below is my redesigned version of the same memo from above.

My memo is:

• Easy to navigate
• Clear in its purpose and intended audience
• Highlighting the newest, most relevant info (top section)
• Structured appropriately, with clear headers and sections
• Simple to understand and read
• Much more visually appealing
• Professional and credible

And finally, it still contains all of the relevant information from the original document.