Writing Business Letters

How To Write A Business Letter

Is it really important to develop skills in business letter writing in today’s workplace? Certainly, it is! The reason being that in general an executive or a senior manager usually has to spend many hours each day going through letters, e-mails, reports and memos written by the employees. A lot of that time is a big waste as they try to decipher poorly written matter, and as anybody will tell you, in today’s fast paced life, every minute is precious. Badly written letters, whether they are meant to be letters of introduction, or explaining some matter about the company, or perhaps some business related query, not only waste time, effort and money, but can also damage the reputation or image of a company. Many good ideas never get incorporated simply because they were not communicated properly in writing.

Writing For The Recipient
Often writers are not mindful about focusing on the recipient, writing for themselves instead. As a writer, you know what is in your mind and what you want to communicate, so you take for granted that the recipient will too. However, if the recipient had already known what you have in your mind, there would be no necessity to write the letter at all, would there? It is really up to you to communicate what you want to say so that the recipient of your letter understands it clearly.

Avoiding Jargon
Using jargon improperly is one of the chief barriers to business communication. However, a certain amount of jargon can be used if the recipient is a part of your organization, company, profession or industry. After all, jargon, which is simply specialized terminology, is often created because these terms are used by the members of a group to communicate with each other. These terms become a problem when the writer forgets that the reader, not being from the group, may not be able to understand the specialized language. In addition, when jargon is used, the recipient usually does not always communicate the fact that they did not understand, because they think that they ought to know. Hence, because of the use of inappropriate language, there is a breakdown in the communication, resulting in the message being lost.

Using A Pleasant Tone
Most business letters are simply not pleasant. The phrases and words that are used are never used in normal conversation, and many of these letters have a tone that was not actually intended.

Tone is related to sound, like the tone of a human voice. It is chiefly by the tone of somebody’s voice that we know whether he/she is annoyed. The tone of the voice reveals whether a person is being sarcastic or polite. Tone is equally important in writing, but the problem is the sound of the written words cannot be heard. Hence, it is even more important to express yourself clearly when you write.

Most people don’t even realize that instead of using pleasant words, when they write a business letter, they are actually using very caustic sounding words. Some examples of the caustic words that are used are: fault, blame, inferior, failure, penalty, negligence, and complaint. Some of the pleasant words that can be used are: appreciate, thank you, please, agree, understand, service, excellent, and value.

With e-mail growing in importance as a tool for writing business letters, the problem of caustic words has become even more noticeable. At least when a letter is written on paper, there is time to reflect on how and what has been said. However, with e-mail, the send button is usually clicked on before perusing what has been written. This has resulted in many misunderstandings and breakdowns taking place in potentially lucrative and advantageous communications and relationships.

When learning how to write a business letter, you need to first inculcate the habit of using polite and pleasant words when writing to somebody. Being nice pays.