Business Letters

-Group 5 Srinath Reddy Y Suraj Hegde Y Sanju Susan Eapen Y Nishit Thakkar Y Netika Bhatia Y

Writing Good Business Letters

Business letters are external documents though managers use a letter format to correspond with subordinates and executives. Good letters are crisp, concise, spoken in tone, organized and easy to follow.

Basic percepts: Business Letters

Answer Promptly
Show that you are genuinely interested

Dont be too short, brief, or curt

If its bad news, say you are sorry

If its good news, say you are glad

Give everyone the benefit of the doubt

 Never send off an angry letter

Watch out for cranks

Appreciate humor
Be careful with form letters

TO EXPLAIN SOMETHING
Nothing is self-explanatory Translate technical terms Go step-by-step Dont say too little Dont say too much Illustrate Answer expected questions Warn against common mistakes

When are you required to apologize

Take the complaint seriously
Explain what happened and why

Dont shift the blame

Dont just write, do something

STYLE OF BUSINESS LETTERS

Ability to convince others

Three basic criteria for writing to be better received:

Compact

Informal
Organized

MAKE YOUR WRITING EFFICIENT

Big words

Words ending in wise

Doublings Noun modifiers It is Legalese

 Missing Hyphens Smothered verbs Specialized terms That and which The use of ion and of Wordy expressions.

SPEAK WHEN YOU WRITE

Write with personal pronouns. Use contraction (occasionally).

Reach out to your reader occasionally by asking questions.

Prefer short, spoken transitions over long, bookish ones.

A preposition is a word you can end a sentence with.

Keep sentences short, about 20 words on average

HOW TO MAKE PASSIVE VERBS ACTIVE

Passives sentences are deadly in business letters for several reasons: They obscure responsibility by omitting a subject or human actor from the sentence They are almost always longer

They delay discussion of subject, the real action in passive sentence, comes in the end.

Example

Passive
Active

Passive : It has been determined that more purchase decisions

should be made by local managers

Active : The director decided the local manager should make more
purchase decisions.

Make your bottom line your top line

Open with your main point
Give directions before reasons, request before justification, answer before explanation, conclusion before details and solution before problems Readers like listeners are put off by people who take forever to get to the point

To better organize letters:

Use headings and subheadings
Keep paragraph short Dont cluster up the first paragraph

Encouraging and Developing good writers

Give examples of clear, concise writing

Know what you want before giving assignments

Breakup the difficult projects into manageable assignments (parts) Be certain the writer understands and agrees with the comments Dont force your writers to parrot your style.