In the dark and distant past when I taught English 101, a student approached me after I laid down the first essay assignment. I forget what the assignment was, but it was probably what composition teachers used to call process analysis: how to do something.

"Can I do a compare-and-contrast essay?" said the freshman. I said we were going to do compare-and-contrast later on.

"But I know how to do a compare-and-contrast essay," said the young man. "It's the only kind I really know how to do."

"That's cool," I said, "because compare-and-contrast is harder than process analysis. But this is a different thing. If you want to tell someone how to do something, a compare-and-contrast structure might not be the most effective. The purpose dictates the form. It's like" - and here, clearly, is where I went wrong - "if you were going on a trip, you would pack entirely differently if you were going for a weekend in New York than if you were going for a month in rural Africa."

"Well, that's fine," said the kid. "But I only have one suitcase."

Do you have only one suitcase? No, you probably have a few. Do you have enough?

• Research report: big classic suitcase with hard sides and straps to hold your suit in place
• Website: portfolio with lots of slots for different folders or photos
• Brochure: slim laptop carrier
• Print newsletter: knapsack with a lot of different-sized compartments
• E-letter: snazzy little over-the-shoulder number

It's not just a matter of style, though style is certainly part of the difference. The more important differences have to do with purpose, audiences, and expectations. Put them together and you've got conventions: rules about how to write a particular kind of communication.

The research report has a fairly fixed format and content outline - introduction, literature review, research questions, methods, and so on till you get to Works Cited or References at the end.

The conventions for the brochure are less well defined. But they exist, because we know immediately when the trifold piece in our hands breaks the rules: It doesn't have photos, the fold opens the wrong way, the copy is boring, or whatever.

Websites have thousands of conventions, some related to the writing and others to design or programming. (You didn't know that a website requires three different skill sets? Read The Website Troika.) The rules change according to the purpose and audiences of your site. An e-commerce site, for instance, has a different set of conventions from a site that provides information for researchers.

(Most of us could, however, learn a great deal from the most successful e-commerce sites. They're doing something very right.)

The e-letter is the newest of these genres and the least well defined. It has only one unbreakable rule that I know of: Keep It Short. (That's the KISS principle truncated.)

The point is, you need a lot of suitcases. Your organization regularly produces dozens of different genres of communications, each with its own conventions.

Give your website to your top-notch researcher or program developer at your peril. Let the HR memo-writer do your e-letter only if you don't care whether anyone reads it.

Get someone who has the kind of suitcase you need. You want someone who has worked with this genre - successfully - in the past. Most importantly of all, you need someone who understands the importance of having the right suitcase.

You can see my suitcases here. If my suitcases don't match your needs, contact me anyway - maybe I know someone.

 

Fig Bat Winner