Letters: Formal

Letters: Formal

¨A corporate environment will send letters (external correspondence) to and receive letters from potential employees, vendors, clients, lawyers, colleagues in other companies, and city, state, national, and international governments.

 Components of Letter Writing

¨No matter who the reader is or why the letter has been written, a letter should have the following eight Essential Components:

¨􀁺    Writer’s address

¨􀁺    Date

¨􀁺    Reader’s address

¨􀁺     Salutation

¨􀁺    Text

¨􀁺    Complimentary close

¨􀁺    Signature

¨􀁺    Typed name

Formal letter

2 Calle sin nombre

London

5 January 2011

  Dear Sir or Madam

  I’m writing in response to your advertisement. I would like to apply for the post of part time secretary.

  I believe this position would an ideal way of gaining more experience of secretarial work. I have strong communication skills and I’m very interested in working while I am finishing the degree of administration. I also enjoy working in a team.

  My qualifications include a module of administration and two years of the degree of Administration and Business Management at the university.

  Please find attached my CV; which provides more details of my qualifications and work experience. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require more information.

  I look forward to hearing from you.

  Yours faithfully,

  Pepita.

Informal letter

58 Big Ben

London

24 May 2011

  Hi Andrea,

  

  Thanks for your letter. It was nice to hear from you.

   

  As you know, I’m in London with my parents and my brothers since one week. I’m staying in an expensive hotel. There are lots of nice and dynamic places to see as the Westminster Bridge. At night it’s precious!  People are polite although a bit difficult to understand. I must to practice more the English!

  The weather is changeable but usually it's wet and windy. The last week was very cold. The food is varied and expensive but it's tasty. This night we’re going to a famous restaurant to have dinner. 

  I’ve got to go now. Write soon!

  Love,     

  Pepita.

¨ Formal letter VS. Informal letter

¨Greeting:

  Dear Sir or Madam

     I’m writing in response to your advertisement.

¨Closing:

  I look forward to hearing from you.

  Yours faithfully,

¨Greeting:

  Hi

     Thanks for your letter. It was nice to hear from you.

¨Closing:

  I’ve got to go now. Write soon!

  Love,

  ¨Write a letter to your manager requesting him to replace old computers in your department with new computers with updated soft wares. 

Acknowledgement letters

Memos

Memos differ from letters in two
significant ways

¨First, memos are internal correspondence, written by employees in a company to employees in the same company. Letters, in contrast, are external correspondence, written from within a company to outside vendors, clients, or colleagues.

¨Secondly, memos have a different format than the letter essential components.

Memo components

¨Memos replace the eight letter essential components with the following memo identification lines:

¨Date: Date is the month, day, and year in which you are writing

¨To: To names your reader

¨From:  From is your name

¨Subject: Subject (typed in all capitals) provides your audience two things: a topic and a focus.

¨For example, a successful subject line would read as follows:

¨Subject: VACATION SCHEDULE FOR ACCOUNTANTS

¨Subject: VACATION SCHEDULE FOR ACCOUNTANTS

¨Accountants is the topic of the memo; vacation schedule is the focus.

¨The focus aids communication more than the topic.

¨The topic of a memo, for instance, can stay the same, while the focus changes. Look at the following examples:

Subject: SALARY INCREASE FOR ACCOUNTANTS

Subject: TERMINATION OF ACCOUNTANTS

In each of these instances, the topic stays the same: Accountants. Notice, then, how important the focus comments are. We see a huge difference between salary increases, vacation schedules, and termination.

¨In addition to the identification lines, memos differ from letters in one other subtle way. Whereas letters are signed (essential component #7), memos are initialed next to the From line.

¨Though memos and letters differ as noted, they are similar in all other ways. Successful memos, like letters, have an introduction, body, and conclusion. Like letters, successful memos are clear, concise, accessible, accurate, and achieve audience recognition.

Class Task

During a routine safety committee inspection for your school, you discover that the generators and electricity equipment are placed in the playground (they are supposed to be kept closed at all times and away from the students). You discussed the issue with Mr. Hamza, the foreman in charge of the area in question, but he refused to rectify the problem. Write a memo to Mr. Amir, the Vice President who supervises the safety committee. Explain the situation and specify what action you want taken.

Email. writing

Email. writing

  E-mail is rapidly becoming one of the world’s most important means of communicating in the business place. To succeed in their jobs, our students need to learn how to write the successful e-mail.

Why is E-mail important?

¨Just look at these numbers:

¨140 million people used e-mail in 2003.

¨E-mail messages outnumber first-class letters 30-1.

¨80 percent of business employees say that e-mail has replaced most of their written business communication.

¨45 percent of business employees say that e-mail has replaced most of their business-related phone calls.

¨66 percent of business employees say that they are e-mail only communicators.

E-mail Benefits:

¨ E-mail allows a writer to instantly communicate with a reader.

¨ E-mail can be sent to numerous readers at the same time.

¨ E-mail allows the writer and reader(s) to chat with each other online. A real-time dialogue is possible, whereas memos and letters may require days or weeks for dialogue to occur.

¨ E-mail means no telephone tag.

E-mail is similar to and different from memos and letters:

¨Letters are external correspondence; memos are internal correspondence. E-mail (electronic mail), in contrast, can be both internal and/or external. Employees can e-mail each other within a company and/or e-mail vendors, clients, and colleagues outside a company.

¨E-mail is similar to memos in that both use identification lines (Date, To, From, and Subject), in contrast to a letter’s eight essential components. Like letters and memos, e-mail must be clear, concise, accessible, accurate, and achieve audience recognition.

¨A successful e-mail contains a subject line with a topic and a focus, an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.

E-mail problems

¨Specifically, e-mail causes the following problems:

¨Instantaneous communication hinders the writer’s ability to double-check facts, effectively proofread text, and achieve the correct tone.

¨—If we write something that has grammatical or mathematical errors, we can check these for correctness.

¨—If we write something that might be offensive, we can set the memo or letter aside for a while. Then, at a later date, we could review the original and revise accordingly.

¨—E-mail, in contrast, can be sent at the push of a button. This speed may hinder our revision.

¨People don’t like scrolling endlessly. Instead, e-mail should abide by the WYSIWYG factor (What You See Is What You Get). One, viewable screen of text is better than text that only can be read when you scroll . . . and scroll and scroll.

¨Some can use highlighting techniques; other e-mail packages cannot. If a system can use highlighting but another system cannot, the codes used to highlight will garble the e-mail message. E-mail writers should limit themselves to:

¨numbering,

¨Asterisks

¨indenting (by using the tab key or the space bar)

E-mail and computer viruses:

¨Computer viruses, easily spread via e-mail, make readers cautious about opening e-mail from unknown sources. To avoid this problem, you should use Sig. Lines in your e-mail.

¨These signature lines tell readers who you are (since e-mail addresses like BigDaddy@aol.com or SweetBaby@hotmail.com don’t communicate clearly).

¨Ideal signature lines include your name, your organization/company, contact information (phone and fax numbers), and your URL and e-mail address.

The biggest problem in e-mail is the lack of professionalism:

¨Students are used to writing IMs—Instant Messages—to their friends. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re discussing e-mail written in the workplace, to bosses, co-workers, vendors, and clients. In instant messages, our students can get away with poor punctuation and spelling.

¨As Diane Stafford, editoralist for the Kansas City Star, says, “One could argue that the casual nature of instant messaging has created a different mind-set among young e-mail users.

¨Perhaps the medium dictates the style, and [students] don’t think it requires the same attention as, say, a school essay.”

¨But for business e-mail, those errors create the wrong image, making employees and companies look unprofessional. Stafford continues by stating, “job readiness education is a good thing in middle schools and high schools…Teach [students] that what’s acceptable in instant messaging isn’t appropriate for job hunting” (C1: May 2, 2002).

¨Write an email to a colleague giving some recent news of something that changed in the office.

Email Writing :

Class Task 1:

¨Take a separate sheet of paper.

¨As a recent buyer of the car, write an email to the manager of United Automotive company, Mr Ahmad, regarding the  poor quality of service facility available in the city.

¨Make sure your tone is not harsh or rude. Sign the email with your name.

¨ Class Task 2:

¨On the back side of the sheet that you have received, write a reply email to your customer as Mr Ahmed.

¨Attend to his complaint, so concern, apologize for the inconvenience and provide alternatives.

¨Make sure your tone is gentle, concerned and customer focused.

Reports

¨Reports come in all types and sizes

¨Students could write long reports (over three pages) or short reports (under three pages). They could write:

¨􀁺     proposals to recommend the solution to a problem or to assess the feasibility of a project

¨􀁺     trip reports about an off-site visit

¨􀁺     laboratory reports about the results of a procedure

¨􀁺     status reports about their progress on a project

¨

¨ A report is a more highly structured form of writing than say, an essay, and is designed so that it can be read quickly and accurately; though reports are not necessarily read from beginning to end. Structure and convention in written reports stress the process by which the information was gathered as much as the information itself. Reports should be organised for the convenience of the intended reader. Reports are written on a wide range of subjects for a wide variety of reasons.

¨ ¨

¨ Before writing any report you should identify the objective and the preferred conventions of structure and presentation. This is as true for reports you write at university as it is for reports written in employment. All reports attempt to communicate findings for one reason or another, whether to inform decision makers, change public opinion or maintain a record of development. Whenever you write a report you must bear in mind why you are writing and

¨who you are writing for. All reports have an intended reader. Put yourself in his/her position. What does he/she need to know?

 Stages in report writing

¨

¨ The following stages are involved in writing a report:

¨§ planning your work;

¨§ collecting your information;

¨§ organizing and structuring your information;

¨§ writing the first draft;

¨§ checking and re-drafting.

¨ ¨ Draw up an outline structure for your report and set the work within a sensible time scale for completion by the given deadline. One common structure is based on the 4 P’s: position, problem, possibilities, proposal. This means you outline the current position, describe the problem, examine the range of possibilities and decide on a proposal (Hemingway, 1993). Some of the most time- consuming parts of the process are collecting and selecting your information, and checking and revising your report.

¨§ Clarify your terms of reference – what brief are you working to?

¨§ Decide on the main sections of your report – what instructions have you been given ?

¨

 Structuring your report

 Check with your tutor to find out what your report should include and how it should be presented. The following elements are however common to many reports:

¨• title page,

¨• acknowledgements,

¨• contents,

¨• abstract or summary,

¨• introduction,

¨• methodology,

¨• results or findings,

¨• discussion ,

¨• conclusion and recommendations

¨• references,

¨• appendices

¨ Sections in detail
 ¨• Title page

¨This should include the title of the report (which should give a precise indication of the subject matter), the author’s name, module, course and the date.

¨• Acknowledgements

¨You should acknowledge any help you have received in collecting the information for the report, for example from staff in your department, support services or external companies.

¨• Contents

¨You should list all the main sections of the report in sequence with the page numbers they begin on. If there are charts, diagrams or tables included in your report, these should be listed separately under a title such as ‘List of Illustrations’ together with the page numbers on which they appear.

¨• Abstract or summary

¨This should be a short paragraph summarising the main contents of the report. It should include a short statement of the main task, the methods used, conclusions reached and any recommendations made. The abstract or summary should be concise, informative and independent of the report. The summary may have more than one purpose: it reminds the reader what they have read but it is also useful to busy managers or professors who may not always read the full report.

¨Write this section after you have written the main body of the report.

¨• Introduction

¨This should give the context and scope of the report and should include your terms of reference (what have you been asked to find out?) State your objectives clearly, define the limits of the report, outline the method of enquiry, give a brief general background to the subject of the report and indicate the proposed development.

¨• Methodology

¨In this section you should state how you carried out your enquiry. What form did your enquiry take? Did you carry out interviews or questionnaires, how did you collect your data? What measurements did you make? How did you choose the subjects for your interviews?

¨• Results or findings

¨Present your findings in as simple a way as possible. The more complicated the information looks, the more difficult it will be to interpret. Graphs, charts and diagrams help your reader identify key results and break the flow of written text.

¨• Discussion

¨This is the section where you analyse and interpret your results drawing from the information which you have collected, explaining its significance. Identify important issues and suggest explanations for your findings. Outline any problems encountered and try and present a balanced view.

¨ ¨• Conclusions and recommendations

¨This is the section of the report which draws together the main issues. It should be expressed clearly and should not present any new information. You may wish to list your recommendations in a separate section or include them with the conclusions.

¨• References

¨It is important that you give precise and accurate details of all the work by other authors which has been referred to within the report. References are normally listed in alphabetical order bythe authors' names or in numerical order. Check your Department handbook to find out what referencing format is required by your Department.

¨• Appendices

¨An appendix contains additional related information which is not essential to read but can be consulted if the reader wishes. However the interpretation of the report should not depend on this being read. You could include details of interview questions, statistical data, a glossary of terms, or other such information.

Style of writing

¨Keep it simple. Avoid sentences that are too long and eliminate unnecessary jargon. Your tutor will be able to advise whether the report should be written in the ‘active’ or ‘passive’ voice.

¨The active voice reads as follows:

¨‘I recommend ...’

¨The passive voice reads:

¨‘It is recommended that ...’

¨The active voice allows you to write short, punchy sentences. The passive appears more formal and considered and is more suitable for academic writing. Avoid mixing the two voices.

¨In which voice will you be expected to write?

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Layout

¨Most reports have a progressive numbering system. The most common system is the decimal notation system. The main sections are given single arabic numbers - 1, 2, 3 and so on.

¨Subsections are given a decimal number

¨- 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and so on.

¨Sub-sections can be further divided into - 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3 and so on.  

¨ Presentation

¨Your report should be easy to read. Usually your department will ask for it to be word  processed.

What are the requirements for your department or module?

¨• Leave wide margins for binding and feedback comments from your tutor.

¨• Avoid rambling by using short sentences.

¨• Paragraphs should be short and concise.

¨• Avoid using unnecessary jargon and unexplained abbreviations.

¨• List your standard measurements, units and technical terminology in a glossary at the end.

¨• Headings should be clear – highlighted in bold or underlined.

¨• Label graphs, pictures or drawings as 'Figures', e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2 etc.

¨• Tables of information should be labelled separately, e.g. Table 1, Table 2 etc.

¨ Redrafting and checking

¨Once you have written the first draft of your report you will need to check it through. It is probably sensible to leave it on your desk for a day or so if you have the time. This will make a clear break from the intensive writing period, allowing you to view your work more objectively. Assess your work by re-reading particularly focusing on:

¨• structure,

¨• content,

¨• style

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