#purpose statement

Audience – who is going to read your piece of writing? Employees? Managers? Software developers? Who is the intendant audience? Note: In academic setting, don’t think about your teacher only. Think of other people who might be the target audience in real life.

Action – what action will they take (do they need to take) after reading your text? Make other plans? Analyze the data?

Knowledge level – how much do they know? How much do they need to know? Do they need to know why something is going to happen? It’s always a good idea to ask how much they already know. If you can’t do it, then assume they know much. It’s always easier to fill in missing information, then wonder which bits to remove.

Credibility – will they believe you? Do they need proof?

Second step – creating an outline

Type of document – it’s good to let people know what they’re holding. Is it a letter? Is it a report? Each writing type conveys information differently. Such knowledge will activate readers’ background knowledge and help them process and absorb the information faster.

What the document does – here we need to pick an appropriate verb, for example, explain, inform, detail, warn, notify, etc.

Information the audience needs – what is the document about? Here, we need to come up with a topic or focus sentence(s) that sums up the main idea of the document.

Audience – who’s going to read it?

What audience does with the information – why are we telling them this? What is the desired outcome? Do we want them to take particular actions?

Practice

Context: The parking lot outside your company is going to be unavailable for three days, from April 17th until April 20th. You need to inform people about it. (For a more complicated context, we would need a lot more data such as what, when, why, how something happened, who was involved, etc.)

Step 1 – gathering data

Audience – all the employees

Action – make other plans (take a bus or walk to work)

Knowledge level – the context is simple, so we can safely assume they know “much” about it. They don’t need to be told where the parking lot is or who manages it. They already know it or it is simply irrelevant.

Credibility – it’s not rocket science. They don’t need proof.

Step 2 – Creating an outline

Type of document – notice (or memo)

What the document does – informs (or notifies)

Information the audience needs – about the parking closure; from April 17th until April 20th (They probably don’t need to know the “why.” It might be interesting, but unnecessary.)

Audience – all the employees

What audience does with the information – take other means of transportation (desired outcome)

Step 3 – Let’s put everything together!

This memo notifies all the employees of the parking closure. The parking lot will be unavailable from April 17th until April 20th. Please, take other means of transportation during that time.

There are a million other ways how to connect the information bits. That’s just an example. You can always omit some pieces of information depending on their usefulness, relevancy, or how you want to deliver the whole.

Spoken announcement or a notice on the commonly accessible notice board:

To all the employees! The parking lot will be unavailable from April 17th until April 20th. Please, take other means of transportation during that time.