The McGraw-Hill Handbook of Business Letters /b> includes everything you need to know to write clear, concise, effective letters for any business situation. Whether you're creating an in-house memo for your fellow co-workers or specialized correspondence for customers and clients, this all-in-one guide will show you the proper style, format, and type to use in all your professional communications/5(7) The Encyclopedia of Business Letters, Faxes, and E-mail, Revised Edition: Features Hundreds of Model Letters, Faxes, and E-mails to Give Your Business Writing the Attention It /5(23) Click Download or Read Online button to get Business Letter Handbook book now. This site is like a library, Use search box in the widget to get ebook that you want. If the content Business Letter Handbook not Found or Blank, you must refresh this page manually or visit our sister site Business Letter Handbook DOWNLOAD READ ONLINE File Size: 41,7 Mb Total Download:
The Basic Business Letter // Purdue Writing Lab
By Michael Muckian and John A Woods. This book has two purposes: 1 to introduce you to some basic ideas about successful written communication via letters and memos and 2 to give you about three hundred sample letters dealing with fifty-four different business situations that you can adapt for your own business letter handbook. Clear and effective writing reflects clear and effective thinking.
Such writing facilitates business action, business letter handbook. It eliminates confusion. It helps people understand the whats, whys, and hows of business business letter handbook and decisions, business letter handbook. It cements relationships or diplomatically ends them. Poorly written letters and memos, conversely, business letter handbook, make matters worse and reflect negatively on the writer.
Nearly all business action involves communication. Many of the problems that occur in any business can be traced to misunderstandings and unclear communication between people. Effectively written letters and memos help minimize such misunderstandings. By following the suggestions in the introduction to this book and using the sample letters as guidelines, you can more easily prepare written communications that will say what you want them to in a straightforward, friendly, businesslike manner.
To use this book in any communication situation in which you find yourself, simply check the letters in each category to find the one that best fits your needs and make changes as appropriate. It is possible and even probable that you will encounter various business problems that are not included in the list of situations the sample letters cover. That does not preclude using the samples anyway. Simply choose a situation similar to one in which you have an interest and adapt the letter to your purpose.
Many companies, regardless of size, have installed electronic mail systems to facilitate internal communication. Recognizing the growing popularity of this medium, we have also included a short section on the use of e-mail and a variety of sample messages showing the uses of e-mail and the composition of business letter handbook messages. Countless hours have been spent defining what good communication is and, more importantly, how to do it. Theorists and social scientists draft diagrams of communications processes and develop complex social archetypes, all for the purpose of better understanding how people conceive and share ideas.
For our sake, however, let's dispense with ornate social theories. Plainly put, we either send or receive information via a common, mutually understood method.
Business letter handbook then act on that information in some way. Simpler still? You talk, write, or sign in a way you expect me to understand. I respond accordingly, using the same or a similar medium to signal my understanding, agreement, opposition, or any of dozens of other socially acceptable or unacceptable responses.
And no matter what the level of sophistication, all communications have one thing in common: They involve someone transmitting information and someone receiving.
Eliminate either party and communication ceases business letter handbook exist, business letter handbook. Business letters are no different. They're designed to inform, persuade, business letter handbook, threaten, or just tell the recipient that his or her bill is past due.
But if they're not written in a way that is easily understood and designed to effectively accomplish their goal, then they have not communicated and the task they are supposed to accomplish often goes undone.
Communication may be a two-way street, but the letter is a one-way medium. Unlike in conversation, there is no opportunity to seek clarification or refute major points during the course of the letter.
To do so requires a return letter, which means more time, effort, and expense. Any failure to communicate rests on you, the letter writer.
True, business letter handbook, some gaps simply cannot be bridged. But most can, business letter handbook a good letter writer takes the responsibility for making the best effort possible to create such bridges, thus shortening the communication process and increasing the productivity in accomplishing the tasks the letter was sent out to promote.
Clarity and brevity in communication, especially in today's stimulus-choked society, is just common sense. But it is also part of an effort to enhance quality in the broader sense.
No matter what your business philosophy, you know that professionalism leads to higher-quality operations and more effective results. And the more quality you business letter handbook bring to your letters in terms of clarity, content, style, expediency, and completeness, the more time you save the recipient. Not only will that person appreciate understanding even bad news with a minimum amount of rhetorical gobbledygook, business letter handbook, but you will accomplish your goal that much more quickly.
Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway was a first-rate letter writer, turning to correspondence when his literary muse was trussed up in a corner, unable to inspire or perhaps not yet sober from the previous evening's revelry.
He would write to friends, family, editors, and sometimes total strangers, sharing ideas, advice, insight, business letter handbook, and information with much the same stylistic acuteness that earned him critical acclaim for novels like The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms.
Letter writing may be the only thing most of us have in common with Papa Hemingway. Although Hemingway had a distinct and recognizable style that is still parodied in literary competitions, much of his genius lay in his simple prose and, more importantly, clear expression of the thought and feeling behind the drama, business letter handbook.
He was an author who was clear in both thought and expression and whose meaning was seldom hard to discern. Maybe all that letter writing had something to do with it. Some of us may try, but few can hope to be the next Hemingway, business letter handbook.
However, we can embrace some of the skills the author brought to his prose, business letter handbook, as well as the notion that good writing often is invisible. Too often business letters—or reports or memos or news releases or anything produced by people who get paid business letter handbook sit behind a desk all day and push paper-fail to communicate for no other reason than that the authors mistake verbiage for communication and syllables for strength.
Packing letters with long words and phrases is a little like business letter handbook eight of your best friends to play tennis on your side: Too much verbiage, like too many players, clutters up the court and impedes the play.
In most writing, less is generally more, provided that the words, thoughts, and phrases we use are simple, clear, and to the point. The best business letter handbook are the ones who can turn complex concepts into simple, clear prose, who can accomplish their mission in a sentence rather than a paragraph, and who know that words are only the medium, not the message.
Good writing often is an invisible framework for the concepts it promotes, and it does not draw attention to itself. Too much business writing consists of confusing phraseology, clichés, technobabble, and insufficiently drawn conclusions that fail to move the recipient to action. These are not hurdles easily overcome. But overcoming them is a worthy goal, and an essential one for those who want to improve their communication ability and the value and impact of their written work, business letter handbook.
Few things aid memory retention like a catchy phrase or a play on words, business letter handbook. It makes something easier to remember and understand. Good writing has this type of educational tool at its disposal, and it business letter handbook help us eliminate stiff, formal BusinessSpeak and replace it with a style that is more comfortable, and thus more effective.
One particular educational tool is called the Seven Cs of Business letter handbook Writingand it describes effective prose as being:. This is the cornerstone of effective communication and requires considerable effort on the writer's part. It includes writing to the reader's level of understanding, but not down to the reader. It means using language, words, business letter handbook, and phrases that the reader understands, while avoiding all jargon and unfamiliar words and phrases.
It involves coherently and logically ordering thoughts and ideas and structuring paragraphs so that each idea has its own place in the letter.
Good narratives are designed to make the desired impact. Remember, it is the writer's obligation to clearly communicate so that the reader can understand, not the other way around. Good writing includes all the information necessary to make the point and promote whatever action the letter requests.
The data must be designed with a purpose in mind. Random details and thoughts, however colorful and interesting, only confuse the reader if they business letter handbook not relevant to the issues being raised. Stay on track and make sure you have provided the reader with enough information to encourage the action you seek.
Brevity is the soul of wit, William Shakespeare once business letter handbook. Plainly put, keep letters short and to the point. Do not pad your communication if the padding does not address the main point or contribute to the letter's goal.
Readers will be annoyed, not impressed, by verbiage that obstructs rather than expedites the communication process. Use numbers, ratios, and facts whenever they are available rather than prose that attempts to paraphrase those particulars. If you are talking about a recent order that has failed to arrive, identify the shipping code and contents of that order. This will help speed the process and clarify the communication's intent.
Words and phrases that set a positive tone or cast recipients' actions or inactions in the most positive light possible receive a better response, business letter handbook, and thus more effectively accomplish their goal. By giving the benefit of the doubt, you are more likely to get the reader on your side. It doesn't always work, but it's worth the effort. The bane of business communication tends to be the BusinessSpeak in which much of it is written.
Writing that is informal and conversational will be more easily understood and better received. You cannot afford to bypass the letter's other obligations and restrictions, but writing in a casual style will result in more effective communications, business letter handbook. Despite mastery of these other steps, letter writers cannot be effective if they ignore accuracy. This includes errors in structure, spelling, grammar, fact, and opinion. Make use of whatever spelling and grammar checking tools your word processor may have, and proofread drafts and finished copies rigorously.
When possible, have business letter handbook person proofread your letters. We all make mistakes, but even a tiny one creeping into your final text undermines your credibility as a communicator and casts a shadow over every other element of your message.
Is there a flip side to all of this? Are there Seven Deadly Sins of Writing? Just turn the Seven Cs around and you'll have those sins. Letters are not the easiest way to communicate, nor are they the least expensive. When you take into consideration the time it takes to compose the letter, have it typed, check it for accuracy, have inaccuracies corrected, and have the letter mailed or faxed—well, why didn't you just pick up the telephone instead?
Letters often are necessary, however, for a variety of reasons we will cover a little later. More importantly, they enable an effective communicator to create a medium that business letter handbook beyond the surface purposes of informing and persuading into a deeper realm of political sensitivities. Some of those sensitivities are unique to individuals, firms, or business letter handbook others are universal to the human race, business letter handbook.
Volumes have been written on the psychology of communications.
Writing a Formal Business Letter
, time: 2:16Business Letter Handbook by Michael Muckian
Click Download or Read Online button to get Business Letter Handbook book now. This site is like a library, Use search box in the widget to get ebook that you want. If the content Business Letter Handbook not Found or Blank, you must refresh this page manually or visit our sister site Business Letter Handbook DOWNLOAD READ ONLINE File Size: 41,7 Mb Total Download: Jan 01, · With hundreds of ready-to-use model business letters that you can adapt for your own business correspondence! These clear, easy-to-follow sample letters cover the most important type of business correspondence: Proposals and requests for bids or /5 BUSINESS LETTER HANDBOOK Read PDF Business Letter Handbook Authored by Muckian, Michael Released at - Filesize: MB To read the file, you need Adobe Reader software program. If you do not have Adobe Reader already installed on your computer, you can
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