Business Correspondence Module 2 - Module 2: Business Correspondence Week 2- Lesson 1. The Nature of - Studocu

Module 2: Business Correspondence

Week 2-

Lesson 1. The Nature of Business English and Principles of Business
Correspondence

What is business English?
Business English is the kind of English used in conducting or in buying
and selling activities. Its extensive use in commercial transactions leads to
the accumulation of its own business terms which the other fields of
knowledge may sometimes borrow. This proves that Business English is not
exclusive or snobbishly aloof language. It exists as the same kind of
language used in other aspects of life. It is not any specialized or language
intended nobly for people involved in business.

Business is “ informative, affective, adaptive, and derivative .” It
is informative because it uses words that can always point to actual
objects or events referred to. This is possible through its use of simple and
specific terms that give clear relation between the word and its referent—a
denotation that results in the creation of an extra or one and only one
meaning of the term. Getting into the information will be very easy if the
word gives only one meaning rather than multiple meanings that cause
ambiguous sentences. However, the meaning of the word does not come
only from its relation to its referent, but also from its relation to the feelings
of the sender and receiver. Hence, the use of negative, positive, prejudicial,
and figurative language that connotes personal meanings or expresses
emotions explains why Business English is affective. In its attempt to
create beautiful feelings, it uses positive, original, vivid, and concrete words
instead of negative, cliché, stereotyped, and abstract terms.

Another word to describe Business English is adaptive. One proof that
this language is adaptive is the “You Attitude” principle in business letter
writing. The You Attitude means that the writer must adapt the language of
this letter as well as the other aspects of it to the nature of the reader—his
intelligence, education, and other socio-cultural factors affecting the life of
the reader.

Business English derives its meaning from the structural makeup of
the language. The simplicity, conciseness, wordiness, or redundancy of the
structures greatly affect the derivation of meanings. Since Business English
derives its meaning from structural relationships, it is therefore, necessary

that the letter uses simple, concise, direct, and active structures to help the
reader get the meaning or message of the letter easily. (Theece, 1987)

Lesson 2. The Importance of English in Business Communication

1. It shows your willingness to go beyond basic business standards.

Back in the early days of pre-globalization, knowing English was a plus.
Like it or not, it was a mark of superior knowledge and sophistication. It
made you look impressive to people.

This means that to impress your interviewer or boss now, you must
show that you are extremely fluent and competent in both speaking and
writing the language.

2. It will help you to communicate better with your colleagues.

Working in an office means teamwork and collaboration. Even if you
are an introvert (someone who prefers to spend more time alone), you will
have to interact with your colleagues. And that will be difficult if you do not
know the language they speak very well. In a worst-case scenario, it may
even lead to misunderstandings that might put your job at stake.

3. It is important for delivering presentations and speeches.

As mentioned before, business English is important for effective
communication. You cannot deliver a presentation to your team or oversee a
board meeting if you speak in your native tongue and if no one else in that
room speaks that language. So, you need to speak the “common tongue”
well, so you can translate your thoughts and ideas into coherent (clear and
logical) sentences that everyone can understand and respond to.

Just having a great idea is not enough. You must successively express
it to your audience.

Luckily, there are also plenty of online courses that focus on successful
business meetings and presentations.

4. Good pronunciation always makes a good first impression.

Speaking and writing business English are two different skills—you may
write well, but unless you can speak clearly and fluently, you are unlikely to
make an impact in the workplace. People do judge you by the way you
speak. Also, the type of English that is spoken differs from place to place.
American English is not the same as British English. There are in fact
notable differences in accents and pronunciation. Similarly, in India it is

correspondence can take place between organizations, within organizations
or between the customers and the organization. The correspondence refers
to the written communication between persons. Wikipedia

Business Correspondence

Just as we express our views, opinions, thoughts, and idea through
writing. Businesspersons also feel the need of expressing themselves. It is
not always possible for them to remember each detail in the business.

They use the simplest way of expressing i., written correspondence.
A written correspondence in the business world is the business
correspondence.

Meaning of Business Correspondence

Any communication in the form of the letter is correspondence. Any
person related to a business expresses oneself though business
correspondence. One can also ask any doubt or uncertainty through
business correspondence.

A businessman writes and receives letters in his day-to-day life. A
correspondence between two organizations or within an organization comes
under this category. A letter to a supplier, complaint letters, letter of inquiry,
job application letters are some of its examples.

Importance of Business Correspondence
A business correspondence has numbers of importance. Its most
important feature is the ease of reaching and communicating with different
parties. It is not always possible to meet persons face to face.

A business correspondence helps to meet some organizational goals.
One can achieve the objectives through it. Let us study some of them in
details.

Maintaining a Proper Relationship
It is not always possible for any business or organization to reach to
any person. This will cost any business. Here, the business correspondence
will be a rescue for any business.

It helps in maintaining the proper relationships between the parties.
Business correspondence strengthens the business. It also helps in the
internal communication. It makes communication within the organization
clearer and more precise.

2. Serves as Evidence
Any written form of communication serves as evidence. A business
correspondence helps the person in a business to keep a record of all the
facts. These written records will serve as evidence.

3. Create and Maintain Goodwill
It helps in creating and maintaining goodwill between a business and a
customer. Any letter to enquire, complaint, suggestion or feedbacks helps a
company to grow and maintain goodwill.

4. Inexpensive and Convenient
It is a cheap and convenient form of business communication.
5. Formal Communication
A business communication serves as a formal communication between
two persons. It may be a seller and a buyer. It can be between an employee
and the employer. The language used is formal and logical.

It helps in removing the ambiguity and the doubts of the person
involved in the business. The formal communication in business is followed
and acceptable.

6. Helps in the Expansion of Business
A business correspondence helps a business to achieve the set goal. It
also ensures the expansion of a business. With no waste of time and proper
utilization of manpower and resources, a business can expand.

Any information regarding some resources or any product or market
can be easily done. Even the news of the expansion of business can be
spread by it.

The seven parts of a business letter

Regardless of where you are in your career or what field you are in,
knowing how to format a business letter is vital. You should use business
letters whenever you are mailing documents to a government agency, filing
formal requests with law firms or medical facilities, sending professional
documents and when designing a cover letter. A professional business letter
consists of many different parts. Here is what you should include in every
business letter:

1. Heading

The heading goes at the top left corner of the letter. The heading
should have your name, return address, contact information (such as your
phone number, email address or fax number) and the date. You should
include your name prefix, such as “Ms.,” “Mr.” or “Dr.” You should skip a line
between the contact information and the date. You do not have to include a
return address if the letter is printed on a letterhead that includes the
address. The letterhead is a company logo that is usually at the top center
of business documents that are connected to a company, government
agency or other organization.

2. Recipient address

Leave an extra line between the date and the receiver’s address, and it
should be on the left margin. You should include the name of the person you
are sending the business letter to, including their name prefix. Make sure
their name is spelled correctly and the address is as complete as possible to
be sure they receive the letter. The address should show in a standard
envelope window when the paper is folded into thirds.

3. Subject

The subject should be short and direct, and it should tell the person to
whom you are writing the letter what the letter is about. If you have a
reference number—such as a claim number, case number or reference
number—you should include it on this line. The subject does not have to be
written as a complete sentence. Often, the subject starts with “RE:” to show
that you are writing in response to a previous conversation or request. For
example, a subject line might read “RE: Claim Number 129523 – Filing
Documents and Policy Information.” This allows the reader to find your claim
and lets them know what to expect in the rest of the business letter.

The 8 C’s of a Business Letter
The Business Letter is the most widely or commonly used form of
external written communication. With the various intentions a business
correspondent has in writing a business letter, one finds difficulty in giving a
precise definition of a business letter. Indeed, how can there be a specific
meaning of a business letter when it serves many purposes. It seeks to
explain, to sell, to introduce, to apologize, to invite, to refuse, to promise, to
complain, and to organize. However, despite the uncertainty in meaning, it
is easier to give judgement on it. You can easily determine whether it is a
good or bad letter or it has been written well or poorly. The yardstick you
can use in judging the quality of a letter is the 8C’s or eight characteristics
of a business letter:

Clarity
Conciseness
Consideration
Courtesy
Concreteness
Cheerfulness
Correctness
Character

Clarity – The use of precise, concrete, familiar words, and the
construction of effective sentences and paragraphs are the best ways
of achieving clarity.
Here are some ways of achieving clarity or clearness.
1. Think before you write. Before writing the first sentence of your
letter, decide and organize your thoughts about the focus, the reason,
and the beginning of your letter. For example, you may ask yourself
these questions:
Why am I writing this?
How will I begin my letter?
What will I stress or emphasize in my letter?
2. Express yourself in simple and familiar words. Basically, the
purpose of your letter is to inform. However, your work cannot achieve
this if it is loaded with “high-falutin,” high-sounding, or complex words.
Study the examples below.

Long and complicated Familiar or common
Conjecture Guess
utilize Use
Ameliorate Improve
terminate End
Conflagration fire
Edifice building

Avoid using verbal dead words, horse-and-buggy, and jargon
expression. Verbal dead words are words that have no significance or
necessary place in the sentence.

Dead word Clear
affixed his signature sign
basic essentials essentials
at this point in time now
meet together meet
like for example like
plan in advance plan
attached herewith attached

Horse-and-buggy words are old expressions used by people riding
in a carriage drawn by horses the period of Queen Victoria.

Horse-and-Buggy Modern
I deem I think
With your kind permission May I
advise tell
Your kind favor Your letter
Favor us with a reply Please, reply

Jargons are words used by a certain set of people with common
interest or in the same profession. Those not in this kind of group do
not find these technical words easy to understand. Words commonly
used by lawyers, physicians, engineers, or businessmen are
meaningful only to these set of professionals. Ordinary people can
hardly understand these technical terms.

Examples:

*legal profession- habeas corpus, preliminary injunction, subpoena,
corpus delicti, status quo, etc.

interests, likes, and dislikes—an approach that emphasizes the You as
it deemphasizes the I and We. What are highlighted in the letter are
those about the reader—the benefits and the advantages he can get
by entering a business transaction. This thoughtful consideration
serving as the foundation of goodwill and the means of influencing
people is also called empathy, human touch, and understanding
human nature.

Courtesy

Just like consideration, courtesy is an attitude of the mind that
cultivates goodwill and friendliness. It requires the use of polite
expressions, such as please, thank you, kindly, would you, could you,
that show the writer’s sincerity, thankfulness, thoughtfulness,
gratefulness, and respect towards the reader.

Concreteness

The only way by which you can create a clear and convincing
picture of what you are selling through a letter is the use of descriptive
or mental pictures about the product. Through words, the reader can
form images. Hence, rich imaginations result from rich sensory
experiences and words that create beautiful images. These are those
that appeal to the reader’s senses. General, vague, and abstract terms
that exist only in the mind do not activate the senses. To produce an
alive, active, and real letter capable of eliciting instant decisions from
the reader, use concrete, vivid, specific, and other image-building
words.

Cheerfulness

“Simile and the whole world smiles with you, cry and you cry
alone.” Indeed, if you have a lively disposition in life, you will have
more friends; a dim outlook in life will drive people away from you.
Generally, nobody would like to live with a person preoccupied with
ugly thoughts about the world. Analogously, a letter loaded with
negative expressions will not elicit favorable responses from the
reader. It is easier to motivate the reader to act on the message of the
letter if the words can cheer up and showing willingness to serve.

Polite, courteous, and friendly words, instead of tactless, offensive, and
blunt expressions are the right words to give the quality of
cheerfulness to your business letter. Among the positive words to
which people react favorably are benefit, cordial, happy, help,
generous, loyal, pleasure, thanks, and thoughtful. Words with negative
connotations that often arouse unfavorable reactions include blame,
complaint, failed, negligence, regret, trouble, unfair, and many others.

Correctness
This refers to the right level of language—formal or informal— the
accuracy of figures, facts, grammar, spelling, punctuation marks, and
the layout of the letter.

Character
What makes a person special or interesting? The answer is his
unique or distinct personality or individuality. Comparing a business
letter to an individual, you can find the former interesting, if such letter
uses words and introduces ideas that are natural, original, fresh, rather
than expressions that are worn-out, cliché, stereotyped, and plain
imitations. A letter written through the writer’s own style of expression,
not by his act of borrowing, reflects the writer’s strength and
confidence.
*A Quiz on this topic will soon be posted via Google Classroom.

A. The Parts of a Business Letter

Lesson 6: Components and Formats of Business Correspondence

Points to Ponder:

How many parts of a letter are there?
How should each part be written?

Remember these:

A normal business letter has eight parts. In the order of their
appearance from top to bottom, these are Letterhead, Date Line, Inside
Address, Salutation, Body, Closing or Complimentary Close, Signature Line
and Notations.

The Letterhead is found at the uppermost part of the letter. The sample
letter in the preceding page has this letterhead:

DAFO’S Pet SHOP
21 Gugo Street, Lima, Rizal
346-78-90/709-45-

This part of a letter gives the following principal information: full name,
full address, telephone number, and the nature of business of the company
sending the letter. The secondary information are names of one or more
officers, telex number, logo, or corporate subsidiaries. With the many
artistic designs of the letterheads, some consider this both information-
giving part and an ornamental feature of a letter. However, the best kind of
a letterhead is one that has simple design. An elaborate letterhead tends to
grab the reader’s attention from the central message of the letter. Since the
letterhead projects a corporate image and, somehow, affects the reader’s
understanding of the message of the letter, some companies take much
care and time in finalizing the appearance of the letterhead to represent the
company. As a matter of fact, some companies launch a money-spending
contest on company logo and letterhead designing.

You can only find the letterhead on the first page of a letter consisting
of several pages. A piece of bond paper without a letterhead may have a
typewritten heading to the right center of the page.

The second part of a business letter is the Date Line, which is typed
two or four spaces below the letterhead. There are two standard ways of
writing the date, the American way (January 25, 2021) and the British way
(25 January 2021). More ways are used by other business correspondents,
but whatever style you choose, the usual procedure calls for one
punctuation mark, the comma after the day, (July 4, 2021) and for the non-
abbreviation of the name of month.

The address of the writer is found in the Heading, that of the recipient
is in the Inside Address. This third part of the letter, the Inside Address, is
written four to eight spaces below the Date Line on the left margin.
Normally, if this consists of three to four lines, the first line presents the
name of the person or the company and the individual or official corporate
title of the like: Miss, Mrs., Atty., Dr., President, Manager. For example:

Mrs. Lina G. Rabe, Manager Atty. Rey T. Langit, President
Nova Enterprise Pasay Steel Corporation
45 Taft Avenue, Manila 81 Session Road, Baguio City

The following are some reminders on the proper way of writing titles:

Address an individual the way he usually signs his name.
Avoid abbreviating Christian names, corporation, company, and official
positions or ranks, like: Sergeant, Treasurer, Secretary, Sales Manager,
Director, etc.
You may abbreviate titles like Honorable, Reverend, Professor. But in
formal letters, it is preferrable to write these in full.
Include the article “The” before the company name, if it is naturally a part
of the name like —The Dean’s Café or the Manileñan Ladies Circle.
Write the titles—Honorable, Reverend in full if the article ‘ The’ precedes
them, like The Reverend Jose P. Liwanag, not The Rev Jose P. Liwanag.
Use the titles Honorable, Reverend, Professor, and Superintendent before
full names, not before a last name, like —-Professor Merlyn E. Arevalo,
Honorable Orly D. Rivas, not Professor Arevalo, Honorable Rivas.
Use small letters in writing the Article The in “the Reverend Lino H.
Peterno” or “the Honorable Nestor G. Torres” if the article is preceded by
other words in the sentence, such as—Everybody stood up to greet the
Honorable Jose P. Laurel.

The fourth part is the Salutation or Greeting. This is written on the left
margin, two or four spaces below the Inside Address. Since its purpose is to
cheer up or greet the addressee with the use of positive words like Dear,
Dearest, My dear , it is also called the Greeting. However, you cannot just
use any greeting you want. The degree of formality tells you which greeting
to use. The most formal salutations for top ranking government officials are

The fifth and biggest part is the Body. This begins two spaces below
the Salutation. The spacing is double between the paragraphs of the letter.
It is in this part where may convey all the messages you want your reader to
understand. Of course, to do this, you must apply the 8 C’s of a letter.

Closing or Complimentary Close comes as the 6th part. It is typed 2 to 4
spaces below the Body. Unlike the Salutation that uses two punctuation
marks, comma and colon, the Closing uses only one mark, the comma. If
the closing is of several words, only the first word should be capitalized. The
closing of a Complimentary Close also considers the degree of formality.
Below are some of the most used closings that range from formal to
informal:

o Very respectfully yours,
o Respectfully yours,
o Very truly yours,
o Truly yours
o Sincerely yours,
o Cordially yours,
o Best wishes,
o Kindest regards,
The 7th part is the Signature Line. In business letters, two signatures
are needed—the printed and penned signature. The typewritten signature is
typed four spaces below the complimentary close. It is four spaces because
the order two spaces are for penned signature of the writer and for the fully
capitalized name of the country represented by the writer. The name of the
company maybe placed between the complimentary close and penned
signature. If the name of the company is in the letterhead, you may do the
way with the typewritten signature. About signature of women, consider the
following assumptions.

Filipinas Bank
54 Real Street
Intramuros, Manila

Gentlemen: Subject: The delivery of our order no. 897 of June 5, 2020
The goods we ordered did not arrive at the time agreed upon.

It is assumed that a surname preceded by initials belongs to a man.
It is assumed that a name not preceded by Miss or Mrs. always
means a name of unmarried woman.

The last part is Notations. The following are the notations that come
two spaces below the Signature Line.

Identification initials. These are the initials of the writer or dictator
and the typist or transcriber. A colon or slash mark is used to separate the
two kinds of initials. (e. KM ly KM: LY KM/LY)
Enclosure. Sometimes, there are some important documents or
papers that the writer would like to attach to the letter. The inclusions of
these are made known to the reader by the explicit statement of these
papers in the body of the letter and in the enclosure, a notation written two
spaces below the initials of the dictator and the typist. It uses word
Enclosure or the abbreviated form—Enc.

For example:
VM:DR

Enc.
Resume

Carbon Copy. This notation is found two spaces below the last line of
the signature. Its purpose is to set the reader know that a copy of the letter
is sent to another person whose name is not mentioned in the address. The
term Carbon Copy or the symbol CC may then be written for this kind of
notation and following CC or Carbon Copy is the full name and official
corporate position of the other recipient.

For example:
Sincerely yours,

Miss Celine Dion
Manager, Personnel Department

CC. Mr. Lenardo Di Caprio

Blind Copy. If the writer, in confidence, decides to give a copy of the
letter to a person not referred to in the address, he may note this as “blind
carbon copy” or bcc on the copy for the “secret” recipient. This bcc is not