Memo Builder with Format Checks

What a memo is for

The word comes from Latin and means, roughly, the thing that is to be remembered. That is still the job. A memo is the short written record an organization keeps of a decision, a request or a plan, and in business it is the internal counterpart of the letter, which usually goes outside. It is meant to be read quickly and acted on, then found again months later when someone asks who agreed to what. Everything about its shape serves those two moments: the first fast read, and the later search through a folder.

The heading does most of that work before the body starts. To, From, Date and Subject are the four lines most memo formats share, and each answers a question a reader would otherwise have to dig for.

To says who is expected to act. From says whose authority stands behind the request and whom to ask about it. The date anchors every deadline in the text, and it is the first thing anyone checks when two memos disagree. The subject line is a retrieval key: it is what a reader scans in an inbox and what a clerk types into a search box years later. A copy line does something subtler. It tells people they are being informed, not tasked, and the Army regulation on correspondence says to use its copies-furnished line only for people with a need to know or a real interest in the subject.

Then comes the body, and here the advice from every serious source is the same: lead with the point. The federal plain language guidance on Digital.gov says to state your purpose and the bottom line, put the most important information at the beginning and push background toward the end. Army Regulation 25-50 asks for the main point at the beginning and the active voice, and it cites the Plain Writing Act of 2010, which defines plain writing as clear, concise and well organized. For a memorandum the regulation spells out the order: a short purpose sentence, then the recommendation or conclusion, then the rest.

That advice is about prose, and prose is the part no checker can judge. What a checker can judge is the skeleton. A memo that leads with its point but cites an enclosure that is not attached, or numbers its paragraphs 1, 2, 4, has still failed its reader, and the failure is mechanical.

Numbered paragraphs and the outline underneath

Long memos number their paragraphs so a reply can say “see paragraph 3b” instead of quoting a sentence. The Wikipedia article on memoranda notes that briefing notes often carry numbered paragraphs to keep them well organized. Numbering turns a memo into an addressable outline, and an outline has rules.

AR 25-50 gives the Army’s version in its first figure. Main paragraphs are numbered 1, 2, 3. The first subdivision uses lowercase letters, indented a quarter inch. The second uses numbers in parentheses, indented half an inch. The third uses letters in parentheses and is not indented any further. The figure states two rules in plain words: when a paragraph is subdivided there must be at least two subparagraphs, and nothing is subdivided beyond the third subdivision. In short: 1. a. (1) (a), and no deeper, so the fourth level is the last. The text adds that a one-paragraph memorandum is not numbered at all, and that a memorandum of more than one paragraph numbers them.

The Navy’s correspondence manual, SECNAV M-5216.5, shares the core rule: if there is a paragraph 1a there must be a 1b. It goes deeper, showing eight levels in its paragraph structure figure, while telling writers not to go past the second level until every way of reorganizing has been tried. It also shows how to cite a subparagraph without periods or spaces, as in 2b(4)(a).

Numbering breaks in predictable ways. A paragraph is cut during review and the numbers now skip. A subparagraph b is deleted and a stands alone. Someone indents a list of points as (1) and (2) directly under a main paragraph, skipping the lettered level. None of this is hard to see in a two-paragraph memo; all of it hides well in a six-page one. The checker in this tool keeps one counter per level as it walks the paragraphs and reports each skip, each jump past a level, each lone subparagraph and each marker deeper than (a). On 60 outlines built to contain known faults, it reported exactly the planted findings and nothing else.

Enclosures, references and the count that has to match

The most embarrassing memo errors are cross-references. AR 25-50 says to number and attach enclosures in the order the memorandum first mentions them. A single enclosure is listed as Encl, with no number in front. Two or more are listed under a count, such as 2 Encls, followed by a numbered description of each. References go in the first paragraph, numbered in the order the text mentions them.

The Navy does it differently, which is a useful reminder that the form is a convention, not a law of nature. Its letters label references with letters in parentheses, (a) and (b), and enclosures with numbers in parentheses, (1) and (2), even when there is only one, and it forbids listing the same item as both.

Three things go wrong. The text mentions enclosure 3 when only two are attached. The list carries an attachment that the text never mentions, so the reader does not know why it is there. And the count line disagrees with the list. That last one has a telling cause: it appears when the count is taken from the mentions in the text instead of from the list itself. A memo that mentions enclosure 1 twice and enclosure 2 once has three mentions and two enclosures, and the count line must say 2 Encls. This tool counts the list, then checks the mentions against it in both directions.

Here is a worked example you can repeat. Load the business example: two attachments are listed, the text mentions attachment 1 and attachment 2 once each, and the page prints 2 Attachments. Now change “(attachment 2)” to “(attachment 3)”. The cross-reference table at once shows “attachment 3” as not in the list and Attachment 2 as never mentioned, while the count line still reads 2 Attachments, because the list still holds two items. Change it back and both findings clear.

The finder works from a stated pattern rather than a guess. It counts the words enclosure, encl, attachment and atch when a number follows, including lists such as “encls 1 and 2” and ranges such as “1 through 3”. A reference id letter must be followed by punctuation or by “and”, so “a reference a new hire can use” is not read as a mention. The cost of that strictness is honest: a phrase such as “the attached report” is not counted, and the table says only what the pattern found.

Recipients, addresses and what a syntax check can promise

Recipient lists rot quietly. The same person appears twice with different capital letters. Someone sits in both the To line and the copy line. A pasted address carries a stray space. The cleaner here splits the lists on new lines and semicolons, trims them, merges entries that differ only in letter case, and drops from the copy list anyone already addressed. In the business example, five entries become three.

Addresses are checked against a subset of the Internet Message Format, RFC 5322: a dot-atom before the @ and a domain after it, built from the labels that the mail transfer standard, RFC 5321, allows. RFC 5321 also caps the part before the @ at 64 octets and a domain at 255. It notes that the part before the @ may in principle be case sensitive, while calling any reliance on that a barrier to working mail. That is why a merge that only changed letter case is marked rather than done silently.

A syntax check cannot tell you that a mailbox exists or that the right person owns it. The example memos use addresses at example.org, a name RFC 2606 reserves for documentation and examples. Dates get the same treatment: the business format asks for the full-date form of RFC 3339, such as 2026-10-24, and the checker confirms it is a real calendar day, using the leap-year rule printed in that RFC.

How the government format differs, and what the files hold

AR 25-50 recognizes three forms of Army correspondence: the letter, the memorandum and the message. Its memorandum has no From line. The office symbol sits at the left with the date flush right on the same line, MEMORANDUM FOR comes on the third line below, the subject two lines under that, and the text three lines under the subject. The writer appears only in the signature block, which starts at the center of the page on the fifth line below the text or the authority line.

Up to 5 addressees fit after MEMORANDUM FOR; any more turn the address into SEE DISTRIBUTION, with the full list after the signature block. The regulation also asks for a subject of 10 words or less where possible, and dates written as 13 March 2020.

The page itself has rules. Margins are 1 inch at the left, right and bottom, with a ragged right edge, and a 12 point font is recommended. Multiple-page memorandums are to be avoided, but when they happen a paragraph of three lines or fewer is not split, a split paragraph leaves at least two lines on each page, and the signature never starts a new page without at least two lines of the last paragraph. The government example in this tool runs to two pages for exactly that reason: its final paragraph moves to page two with the signature block.

The business format has no regulation behind it, and the tool says so. It keeps the familiar header lines and borrows the same page discipline because nothing better is standardized.

The files are part of the record. A .docx is a ZIP package of XML parts defined by ECMA-376, the Office Open XML standard, whose packaging rules allow only stored or deflated entries. This tool writes those parts itself, then reads its own file back with a small ZIP reader that walks the central directory described in the ZIP specification and uses the browser’s raw deflate decompression, comparing every paragraph. When you open someone else’s .docx, it takes only paragraphs and runs and lists what it left out, such as tables, text boxes, tracked deletions and comments.

Know the limits before trusting the green lights. The page count is exact for the PDF the tool writes; a word processor may break the .docx elsewhere. The PDF prints plain ASCII, so other characters are flagged. The priority label is a handling note you choose, not a security classification marking, and nothing here judges whether your point comes first. That part is still yours.