Page 71 ing processes (Chapter 3) to ensure that the content is appropriate and will not lead to legal liability. Further, the use of a writing and editing process can ensure that memos incorporate appropriate organizational plans and visual cues that make them easier to create and to read.
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Chapter 8—
Business Letters
Business letters are an important link to individuals and groups outside of your company. While written communication within a company is
generally done through e-mail and memos, business letters are generally thought of as a more formal means of communicating with those outside of a company.
In this chapter, we discuss the use of writing and editing processes to avoid common errors in writing business letters.
We will help you improve your writing and editing processes, and thus the quality of your products, by examining five factors that help determine the success of business letters:
• Content
• Organization
• Tone and phrasing
• Correctly spelled names and titles
• Style—layout and design
Content
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Valuable Letter-Writing Resources
For those of you with limited experience in writing everyday business letters, a number of excellent resources are available. Sabin, The Gregg Reference Manual, 1 7th edition, covers correspondence and usage issues in extensive detail, as does DeVries in The Prentice-Hall Style Manual. 2 Both books contain hundreds of pages of sample documents and illustrations showing how to handle the minute details involved in creating technically correct correspondence.
The first step (prewriting) will help you determine who will be reading your material, what they know, what they want to know, what you want them to do or not do, and how to give them the information they need. The last step (postwriting) will help ensure that you have met your objectives and avoided fatal errors.
One of the more effective additions to a business letter is an action statement: an indication of what you are going to do next or what you expect the reader to do. An action statement can be effective as a first sentence or a closing sentence.
Organization
Making sure your business letter is organized is a given, yet many overlook this crucial step, and the resulting letter resembles a rambling stroll though the countryside.
To create a well-organized business letter, it is especially useful to apply the ideas suggested in Chapter 4 on logic, structure, and organizational plans. If your ideas fit into a problem-solution format, then organize your letter in that mode. If you can talk effectively about your ideas in relation to time (e.g., fiscal quarters) or geographic or market areas, and that perspective will help your reader better understand the implications, then organize your letter (or a section of it) accordingly.
When you use organizational plans to help your readers see the pertinence of your ideas and to make your ideas more familiar, you will decrease their work and increase the likelihood that they will be able to assimilate your points.
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Apply the ideas of Malcolm Forbes 3:
• Know where you are going.
• Make your main point in the first sentence or paragraph.
• Use clear, concise, straightforward statements.
• Sum up.
• Get out.
Forbes's advice is excellent. You need to put your reason for writing in your first sentence or paragraph. It is sometimes recommended that you put good news in your first sentence, and if you have bad news, to buffer it by using a neutral first sentence or paragraph. For example, ''We have greatly enjoyed being able to supply your company with high-quality parts for the last five years. But we can no longer supply parts to your company, as your account is 90 days past due." This technique can be problematic, however, because many people skip the buffer and go directly to the bad news.
Use the buffer cautiously.
Tone and Phrasing
Tone is another one of those commonsense points that is often overlooked. In seminars, one of the best exercises we do is to pass out a sample letter and ask for a show of hands: Would you read this, set it aside for later, or toss it? Tone errors are the second most common reason (after too much information with no visual cues) that managers and executives give for setting aside a document to read later.
Tone errors often reflect poor editing for grammar and failing to complete the postwriting step. Tone errors often result from anger. If you write a letter when you are angry, don't mail it immediately. Put it into a desk drawer, let it sit overnight, and then review it in the morning. It's easier and more effective to take the time to review it than to have to apologize or to suffer the consequences of your poor judgment.
Tone Errors Include Negative Phrasing
Some letter writers will take a negative approach:
We understand your customers have been canceling contracts due to your inability to meet milling tolerances of ±0.001 microns.
Building on a positive statement is usually much more effective:
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Our new CNC machines are helping our customers meet strict milling tolerances of ±0.001 microns and increase market share.
Often, the wrong tone is a result of one or two words that convey the wrong impression. Other times, tone errors are more problematic because they reflect a writer's basic personality, which is hard to hide in your writing.
Because it is difficult to take on the reader's perspective and to recognize the "wrong" tone in a letter that you have written, we strongly recommend using a postwriting step that includes letting your letter sit overnight and then rereading it or, better yet, asking a colleague to read it before you send it out.
Other Phrasing Concerns
Some phrasing errors occur as a result of being immersed in a company's culture. These include the excessive use of jargon and acronyms, gender-specific phrasing, trite phrases, and using the passive voice.
Jargon and Acronyms
How do you know you're using too much jargon and too many acronyms? One clue is writing that appears codelike: ". . . the SLC group at EK is very concerned about JIT delivery and ROE for the L&D function of the CNC . . ." When the spell checker for your word processor highlights every third word, it's time to start editing.
Gender-Specific Language
Not only is gender-specific language typically inaccurate, it is often inappropriate and can even cause legal problems. For example, do you mean security men or security officers? Managers, men who . . . or individuals who . . . ? Senior vice presidents, women who . . . or senior vice presidents, executives who . . . ? If a specific group is composed of only one gender, it is appropriate to note it; however, it is probably not appropriate, at least in
Phrasing problems can also be related to active versus passive voice in sentence construction. In general, use concise, active voice. It is shorter, eliminates a percep-
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tion of overly formal writing, and increases the effectiveness of your writing.
Carol Gelderman in her chapter, "Business Letters," 4 provides an excellent illustration of the difference between active-versus-passive construction and verb tenses—two concepts that are frequently confused. As Gelderman illustrates, it is easy to write both active and passive constructions in all verb tenses:
When you use active voice, the subject "does" the action of the verb:
• Smith writes the best letter. (active, present tense)
• Smith wrote the best letter. (active, past tense)
• Smith will write the best letter. (active, future tense)
When you use passive voice, the subject is "acted upon" by something else:
• The best letter is written by Smith. (passive, present tense)
• The best letter was written by Smith. (passive, past tense)
• The best letter will be written by Smith. (passive, future tense)
Using the active voice in your business letters will significantly shorten them and often make them more effective. The passive voice is only effective if you want to maintain a formal tone.
Correctly Spelled Names and Titles
Do people work for Proctor and Gamble or Procter & Gamble? Is your potential client Kathy Smith, Cathy Smithe, Kathryn Smith, or Ms. Kaye Smith? One of the quickest ways to lose the confidence of someone with whom you hope to do business is to misspell that company's or individual's name. It shows you don't care enough to hunt through files, check a web site, or make a phone call. Remember, it's always worth taking the time to confirm the spelling of proper names.
A fatal error that ranks close to misspelling a person's name or a company name is giving someone the wrong title—be it too high or too low. We guarantee that if Ms. K. Smith is a senior manager and you refer to her as a senior vice president, Ms. Smith won't be impressed—it might even remind her that a glass ceiling prevents her from becoming a senior vice president!
There is often more than one way to use titles correctly. For guidelines, we suggest using The New York
Page 78 Times Manual of Style 5 and the Chicago Manual of Style, 6 as well as visiting web sites. For example, we recently needed to know how to use certain honorary titles in Japan. The answer was simply a web site away (the Japanese Embassy).
Avoiding Fatal Errors
Fatal errors like misspelling someone's name or using the wrong title can be avoided by making a quick phone call, checking other correspondence, or logging on to a web site and checking your information. If you're lucky, you might make direct contact with the person you need to deal with—
perhaps eliminating the need for your letter or making it a follow-up or confirmation letter instead.
Style—Layout and Design
Creating effective business letters requires more effort—and more writing and editing skill—than creating effective memos. We say this because writers often use visual cues in memos to help them overcome poor writing and organizational skills and to make their logic and organization easy to see and follow.
In contrast, some people feel that they should not use visual cues in business letters. They think that managers and executives aren't used to seeing such cues and that they are negatively perceived.
Eight Deadly Cover Letter Errors
Michelle Magee, formerly Assistant Director of Placement at the University of Rochester's Simon School of Business, in her seminars on cover letters, often discussed eight deadly errors that need to be avoided:
• Typographical errors
• Gross grammatical errors
• Misspelled company or employer names
• Content that lacks substance
• Content that doesn't sell
• Templated or form letter content
• Wrong company name (often due to form letters)
• Sloppy, crumpled, coffee-stained letters with handmade corrections
Michelle Magee is now the Program Coordinator for the Office of Cooperative Education and Career Services at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Page 79 However, when we ask managers and executives in our seminars whether they prefer to receive business letters with or without visual cues
(subheads, displayed or bulleted lists, indented margins, subject lines, etc.) to make the key points easier to read, the vast majority—90 percent in a typical seminar—say they prefer receiving business letters that contain visual cues. Why? Easy. It takes too much time to scan a traditional letter to
Unless you are dealing with a very conservative reader (figure this out during your prewriting step), use visual cues (subheads, displayed or bulleted lists, indented margins, subject lines, etc.) to make your letters easier to read.
End Point
In a business letter, it is important to verify that you have included the right content, used an appropriate organizational pattern, avoided errors in tone and phrasing, spelled names and titles correctly, and used style and layout and design features that make your letters easy to read. The sample letters included in Appendix D illustrate solutions to such concerns.
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