How to write a business letter: rules and guidelines

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

An essential attribute of any business is business correspondence. Employees of each enterprise communicate with colleagues and customers, with suppliers and consumers. In general, the daily routine of any office certainly includes participation in correspondence.

Despite the fact that most employees in enterprises and organizations send and receive numerous messages every day, not everyone adheres to established norms and rules when creating them. It turns out that writing a business letter correctly and correctly is not so simple. There are a number of requirements and patterns that are applied in the world and related to workflow. They include the rules for writing a business letter, as well as the main points regarding design.

When composing a message to a third-party organization or just to a colleague in a neighboring department, you should adhere to a strict style (with the exception of friendly correspondence, for which there is nosimilar restrictions). Do not use too emotional words even to describe the importance of the transaction or the delight of the tested products. A business letter should be clear, concise and moderate enough.

The message should start from the addressee. If it is intended for an employee of a third-party organization, you must certainly indicate its name, position of the recipient, as well as his full name. In the case when the document remains within the company, a surname with initials is sufficient (you can also add the position held).

A business letter to an outside organization should be on company letterhead (regardless of whether it is sent electronically or on paper). If it is absent, you can simply indicate the details of the sender in the "header" of the document.

Before you start writing a text, you need to think about its structure, identify the main points and goals of writing. This will make the writing process much easier. The letter should end with a signature, which indicates not only the name of the sender, but also the position, as well as the name of the enterprise that he represents.

When sending an offer to a potential client or partner, at the end, you must certainly express gratitude for cooperation and hope for further joint work.

In addition to the rules used in business correspondence, there are also recommendations. For example, any document addressed to a specific person should begin with the words "dear" with full name, andnot initials. No need to use abbreviations in letters, for example, write "uv." or reduce the position of the addressee, his place of work.

The international document flow is considered the most difficult, since each state has its own nuances of communication, and the language in which you have to correspond with foreign partners is not always clear to the writer of the letter, so you have to use the services of translators. Before resorting to the services of such a specialist, it should be clarified whether he knows how to write a business letter in English, or whether we are talking about a banal literal translation. If foreign document flow is planned to be constantly maintained, it is better to hire an employee who speaks a foreign language enough to write a business letter on it.

In general, the achievement of the task in many respects depends on how the document is drawn up and how it is designed. So never underestimate the importance of business etiquette when communicating.