information may be required depending on the legal status of your business

formation.Contact your legal adviser for exact details.

2. Name and address:

Always include the recipient's name, address and postage code. Add job

title if approriate. Double check that you have the correct spelling of the

recipient 's name .

3.Date:

Always date your letters.Never abbreviate January to Jan. 31.

4.Reference:

These are optional.They are a good idea if you have a large volume of

correspondence.These day modern word processors made this an easy task to

complete and maintain.

5.Salutations:

The type of salutation depends on your relationship with the recipient.

Always try to personalise letter thus avoiding the dear sir/madam

situation.

6.Subject matter:

Again this is optional, but its inclusion can help the recipient in dealing

successfully with the aims of your letter. Normally the subject sentence is

preceded with the word Re: It should be placed one line below the greeting.

7.Communication:

This will contain a number of paragraphs, each paragraph dealing with one

point and one point only.

8.Signature:

The signature should be clear and legible-showing you are interested in the

letter and consequently the recipient.Your signature should also be

followed underneath by a typed version of your name and your job title.

9.Enclosures:

If you include other material in the letter, put 'Enclosure','Enc', or'

Encs', as appropriate, two lines below the last entry.

A letter's style:

Previously we created the main points of our letter, now we must transform

this into a final version.To do this, four main considerations are

necessary.

1.Format:

There are three main formats: blocked, semi-blocked and indented.

The former has all entries tight against the left -hand margin.The semi-

blocked format sets the references and the date to the right margin for

filing and retrieval purposes, with the remaining entries placed against

the left margin.

The indented format follows the same layout as either of the above, but

indents each paragraph by five or six spaces.

2.Prose:

Clarity of communication is the primary goal. Don't use technical jargon if

the recipient is unlikely to understand it. Short sentences are less likely

to be misunderstood or misinterperted. Be precise , don't ramble. Check

each sentence to see if it is relevant.Does it add to the point ?

3. Manner:

Always try to personalise your letters. Always try to be civil and friendly

even if the subject matter is stern and sensitive.Give the impression to

the recipient that some effort and thought has gone into the letter.

4. Accuracy:

Once the final version of the letter has been created, polish it off with a

final spelling and punctuation check.

Letter writing etiquette

Always make sure you start and end your letters correctly. If you are

writing to Mrs Jane Smith then you should start the letter 'Dear Mrs Smith'

and finish it with 'Yours sincerely' - N.B. 'sincerely' does not start with

a capital 'S'.

Particular care is required when you are writing to a woman. If she has

just written her name as Jane Smith do you start the letter 'Dear Jane' or

'Dear Ms Smith'. She might be offended if you refer to her as 'Ms' and you

might not feel comfortable writing 'Dear Jane' as it sounds too familiar.

To get round this problem all you have to do is ring the company and ask

them how she likes to be addressed. If there is not a telephone number for

the company in the advertisement just call Directory Enquires (dial 192 in

the UK). When you ring the company all you have to say is that you are

writing to Jane Smith and you would like to know whether she is a Ms, Mrs

or Miss so your letter can be correctly addressed.

If the advertisement just says reply to J. Smith how would you address the

letter? Dear Sir? or Dear Madam? Dear Mr Smith? You would be well advised

to ring the company and find out J. Smith's full name and title

(Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss). Remember politeness costs you nothing, but it can really

pay dividends and you will probably be the only person who has bothered to

find out. This may distinguish you from everyone else who applied - being

noticed is the key to writing a potential interview-winning covering

letter.

If the advertisement just says write to the Personnel Department or reply

to Box Number 55 it may not be possible for you to find out who will be

handling your reply. In these cases you will have to start your letter

'Dear Sir/Madam' and finish the letter with 'Yours faithfully'. Please note

that 'faithfully' does not start with a capital 'F'.

Striking the Right Tone

An underlying goal of most business letters you write is to

promote goodwill between you and your reader. Especially when writing to

someone for the first time, you should use a tone that will encourage that

person to listen to you and want to work with you now and in the future

If your letter is primarily informational or contains good news, a

direct approach is usually best. State your point or offer your news

immediately and briefly, and then explain any other information the reader

needs to know.

Finding the proper tone is more difficult if you are delivering bad

news. In this case, taking an indirect approach may be a better strategy.

In the first few sentences, for example, you could begin on a positive note

by stating how much you want to work with the reader’s company or by

reminding the reader of times you accommodated his or her requests in the

past. When you do get to your point, try to minimize the reader’s

disappointment or anger by delivering the message in carefully considered

language that conveys your news clearly but tactfully.

Establishing a Courteous Tone

The fast pace of letters makes it easy to send a message

without fully considering the nuances of its tone. If you do not take the

time to think about your words and how they may be perceived, your letters

may seem overly blunt or even insulting.

A simple rule can keep you from writing inadvertently offensive

letters: Always ask yourself how you would feel if you received the message

you are sending. If you would bristle at its terseness, you can assume the

reader will as well. If you are unsure how the message might be taken, ask

for someone else’s opinion, or let it sit overnight and read it again the

next morning with a fresh eye.

If someone sends you a rude e-mail message (or “flame,” in e-mail

slang), take a moment to calm down before responding. The best way to douse

a flame is to write back using the most neutral and measured tone you can

muster. In some cases it’s best not to respond to a flame.

4. Style of a business letter

Now I will deal with some common writing problems that do not involve rules

of grammar. These problems—of parallelism, redundancy, and the like—are

more rhetorical than grammatical; that is, they involve choices you must

make as a writer trying to create a certain style of expression. You must

determine what stylistic choices will afford greater clarity and cogency to

each of your efforts to communicate. We all make different choices when

faced with different communicative tasks depending on what we feel will be

most effective. An expression that is appropriate for a formal letter may

be utterly off-putting in an informal message.

A successful and distinctive writing style is an elusive bird of

paradise. It is unmistakable once you see it but difficult to find. It

involves many things: creating an appropriate voice for your purpose,

choosing the right words for the subject and audience, constructing elegant

sentences whose rhythm reinforces their meaning, presenting an argument in

a logical fashion that is both engaging and easy to follow, finding vivid

images to make thoughts accessible to your readers. You can probably add to

this list. You may, for example, want to shock or jolt your audience rather

than court it, and this strategy requires stylistic features that are quite

different from those you would use for gentle persuasion.

Parallelism

Most memorable writing has as one of its recognizable features the ample

use of parallel grammatical structures. A basic guideline about parallel

constructions is to make sure that all the elements in a balanced pair or

in a series have the same grammatical form. That is, if you start with a

that-clause, stick with that-clauses; if you start with an infinitive,

stick with infinitives; if you start with a participle, stick with

participles; and so on. What you don’t want is a mixed bag, as in She had a

strong desire to pursue medicine and for studying literature or The

scientist asked for volunteers with allergies but who had not given blood

recently.

A second point is to make sure that once you have chosen the kind of

grammatical forms you want to make parallel, you structure them

symmetrically. Remember that an initial article, preposition, auxiliary

verb, or modifier will tend to govern all elements in the series unless it

is repeated for each element. For example, if you set up a series of nouns

with the first modified by an adjective, the reader will expect the

adjective to modify the rest of the series as well. Thus you should say The

building has new lighting, plumbing, and carpeting but not The building has

new lighting, plumbing, and different carpeting. The same is true for

articles: He brought the rod, reel, and bait. If you want to restrict a

modifier to only one noun, repeat the article for each noun: He brought the

light rod, the reel, and the bait.

When you spot a faulty parallel, recast the structure to give all

the elements equivalent treatment. If your new parallel construction does

not seem much of an improvement, rewrite the sentence completely to avoid

the parallel construction. Better to have no parallel structures than to

have parallel structures that sound overblown or stilted.

Faulty parallelism is all around us. We see and hear it every

day—often without taking notice. How many times have you heard Please leave

your name, number, and a brief message? After waiting for the tone, have

you ever objected to the imperfect symmetry of this sentence? In our most

recent ballot we presented some sentences with questionable parallelism to

the usage panelists to see how tolerant they would be. As we expected, they

had a range of opinions.

Crafting sentences with flawless parallelism takes effort and

practice. Even if your readers don’t notice or object when you make

mistakes, balance and symmetry are worth striving for in your writing.

There are certain constructions that are notorious for throwing things out

of whack. I listed some of them below.

both … and …

comparisons with as and than

compound verbs

either … or / neither … nor

not only … but also

rather than

Passive Voice

Writing handbooks usually include warnings about the passive voice—it

is wordy and clumsy and leads to static rather than dynamic writing. There

is truth to this, certainly, but the passive voice also has legitimate

uses, and in many instances it is preferable to the active voice.

Such phrases as "The material will be delivered"; "The start date is

to be decided"; "The figures must be approved" are obscure ones leaving

unsettled who it is that delivers, who decides, and who does the

approving. Which side it is to be? Lawsuits are the plausible outcome

of leaving it all unsettled. Passives used in contracts can destroy the

whole negotiations. "You will deliver" is better for it identifies the

one who will do delivering. Certainly, "must be approved by us" violates

other canons. "We shall have the right but not the obligation to approve"

is less unfortunate.

There is no doubt that passives do not suit business letters, and

if they go all the way through without adding something like "by you" or

"by us" they are intolerable. Once in a long while one may find passives

used purposely to leave something unresolved.

Redundancy

A certain amount of redundancy is built in to the English language,

and we would never consider getting rid of it. Take grammatical number, for

instance. Sentences such as 'He drives to work' and 'We are happy' contain

redundant verb forms. The -s of drives indicates singularity of the

subject, but we already know the subject is singular from the singular

pronoun he. Similarly, are indicates a plural subject, which is already

evident from the plural pronoun we. Number is also indicated redundantly in

phrases like this book and those boxes, where the demonstrative adjective

shows number and the noun does as well.

But there are redundant ways of saying things that can make the rest

of your writing seem foolish. Many of these are common expressions that go

unnoticed in casual conversation but that stick out like red flags in

writing. Why say at this point in time instead of now, or because of the

fact that when because will do? Something that is large in size is really

just large. The trouble lies less in the expressions themselves than in

their accumulated effect. Anyone can be forgiven for an occasional

redundancy, but writing that is larded with redundancies is likely to draw

unwanted laughs rather than admiration.

Listed below are some of the more problematic redundancies.

but … however

close proximity

consensus

consider as / deem as

cross section

else

empty rhetoric

equally as

free gift

from whence

inside of

mental telepathy

old adage

rarely ever / seldom ever

reason is because

reason why

refer back

revert back

VAT tax

Wordiness

In a world in which efficiency has become a prime value, most people

view economy in wording as a sign of intelligence. Its opposite, therefore,

is often considered a sign of stupidity. Most of us are busy and impatient

people. We hate to wait. Using too many words is like asking people to

stand in line until you get around to the point. It is irritating, which

hardly helps when you are trying to win someone’s goodwill or show that you

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