Professional Documents
Culture Documents
(EWC662)
GROUP ASSIGNMENT
LECTURER’S NAME :
MADAM RUSILAWATI BT AMIRUDDIN
PREPARED BY :
A good business letter can be your public relations officer (PRO). Well-written and
imaginatively drafted letters can play the role of a salesman, a relationship officer, an
ambassador and a PRO for business establishments. This is true especially for small
businesses which cannot afford to employ people specifically for carrying out these
functions.
Let us now briefly discuss the requisites or essentials of a good business letter.
1. Clarity:
A letter must have clarity. The underlying message should be expressed in clear
terms. Care should be taken to avoid ambiguity. The purpose of communication should
be made clear. Whether it is to inform, invite, reiterate, emphasize, remind, announce,
seek participation or clarity and correct the earlier message, the purpose should clearly
be stated.
If a letter writer is writing a letter on behalf of somebody else, it should be done after
obtaining clear instructions. There are occasions when one may receive a letter
informing the date and the venue of a meeting without an accompanying invitation or
request to attend.
Just imagine the embarrassment that is caused when people not meant to be invited
turn up at the venue and have to be turned back or when people who have to attend
the meeting feel there is only intimation and no invitation and hence fail to turn up!
When this happens due to lack of clarity in communication, any business suffers.
2. Impact:
The letter should create the necessary impact. Behind every letter there is an objective
and the letter should have a clear purpose. The purpose of writing a letter is not just
to reach out to the customer. Every letter has an intended impact which must be felt.
To create the desired impact, it is often necessary to lay emphasis. Emphasis can be
laid in many ways. It can be done by proper positioning—placing them in an important
position. It can be done by repetition.
It can be done by underlining or using a larger type or font. Similarly, to create the right
impact, the letter writer should address the letter to the right person. The right person
is the specific person who is the target of the communication, and whose action or
response the business considers to be of value.
Creating an impact also calls for establishing an appropriate wavelength. The letter
writer should write keeping in view the skill, knowledge, and status and comprehension
ability of the reader or the addressee.
3. Relevant Information:
The letter should provide the relevant details forming part of the message. Facts,
figures, illustrations and other such information, which are accurate and reliable, as
well as relevant to the context of the communication, should be incorporated in the
letter.
Not giving all the required details leads to protracted correspondence, loss of
customers or lack of response. Worse still, although non-submission of full details
maybe due to an oversight or inadequate attention to details, the receiver may infer
that there is a deliberate attempt to withhold or conceal facts and figures.
Imagine a letter received from a departmental store announcing the opening of a new
branch and seeking your patronage that does not give details of the new address or
timings. Another requirement of a business letter is concreteness.
The time that one can allot for reading business letters is certainly limited. The receiver
does not have unlimited time to spare towards reading and re-reading the letter and
drawing out the message in its entirety.
On the contrary, any business letter is competing with a huge mass of business-related
and other communication targeted at the receiver, waiting to catch attention and time.
Recognizing this, any business will have to value the receiver’s time. Brevity in letter
writing, therefore, is a must. Long letters, whatever are their merits, are often kept
aside for ‘later reading’. Brevity in communication is also referred to as conciseness.
Conciseness refers to the skill of conveying what one wants to convey in the fewest
possible words, without sacrificing completeness or courtesy. Conciseness eliminates
unnecessary words and phrases, repetitive sentences and keeps the letter focussed.
A good letter makes economical use of words. Brevity is a skill that a business
communicator must develop. As people move up in an organizational hierarchy, their
ability to condense messages into brief and focussed letters counts for a lot.
In typical bureaucratic and hierarchical work situations, one can see the ‘drafts’ of
letters prepared by the junior staff moving upwards tier by tier ‘for final approval’ and
much time and effort are wasted if brevity is not ensured.
2. FORMAT FOR MEMO
Company Name
Company Address
Date of Memo
Engineers and scientists use memos to make requests, to give announcements, and
sometimes to communicate reports. Memos that make requests or announcements
are read quickly. For such memos, get to the point in the first paragraph--the first
sentence, if possible. In other words, state what you want up front. In the format
suggested here, you should single space your memos and use a serif typeface. Skip
a line between paragraphs. The following link shows this format in a pdf display.
In memos that make requests or announcements, keep the sentence lengths and
paragraph lengths relatively short. Sentences should average fewer than twenty
words, and paragraphs should average fewer than seven lines. Also, keep the total
memo length to under one page, if possible.
Sometimes companies use memos to communicate short reports (two pages or more).
For these types of memos, the format changes, as shown in the following
example. For instance, you often include illustrations, attach appendices, and break
the memo's text into sections. If references arise in the memo, you include a list at the
end. In memos that act as reports, the style changes as well. For instance, the
sentences and paragraphs are typically longer than in memos that simply provide
announcements or make requests.
For all types of memos, space your memo on the page so that it does not crowd the
top. Also, send copies to anyone whose name you mention in the memo or who would
be directly affected by the memo. Finally, remember that final paragraphs of memos
that make requests or announcements should tell readers what you want them to do
or what you will do for them.
Attachments.
Copy to:
Name to Receive Copy
Name to Receive Copy
Dear sir/madam,
I am writing to enquire about the timings for the conference centre at {place}. Our
company is hosting a delegation from {place} and is interested in booking the centre
for an important corporate event on {date}. I checked your website but could not find
the information I require.
If you could kindly send across the timings when the conference centre is available,
we can design an itinerary at the earliest and share the schedule with you to initiate
the booking procedure.
Thanks,
{Your name}
{Phone nmber}
{Designation, company}
4. FORMAT FOR LETTER
Your Name
Your Job Title
Your Company
Your Address
City, State Zip Code
Your Phone Number
Your Email Address
Date
Recipient Name
Recipient Title
Recipient Company
Recipient’s Company’s Address
City, State Zip Code
Title
I would like to invite you to attend our upcoming Liberal Arts department job networking
event. The event will be held on the afternoon of February 1, 20XX. We wish to provide
our graduating seniors with an opportunity to meet business leaders in the area who
may be looking for new hires who hold degrees in the Liberal Arts.
The event will be held at the Cox Student Center at Northern State University, and will
last about 2 to 3 hours. If you have an interest in attending or sending a company
representative to meet with our students, please let me know at your earliest
convenience and I can reserve a table for you.
Thank for your time and I hope to hear from you soon.
Respectfully,
To : Mr. Baron,
When we attended the Jakarta Fair (PRJ) in Kemayoran in July, we visited your booth
and we are very interested in your product is water paint brush motors. We are very
interested in old motorcycles during a demonstration painting be like new again and
be dimensional colour. Quality can rely on for the long term. We believe that the
consumer market is ready to accept paint. We have a store in Bogor.
Our store already has many branches with well-recognized name in the ranks of
motorcycle accessories shop.
Can you send us a price list and literature of this cost? either way, we are pleased to
provide general credit and a great appreciation for the customers if we decided to order
from your company.
Management department
6. E-MAIL OF ENQUIRY
23 July 2010
Dear Madam
ISD has received to purchase new computers for the Pittburg’s Accounting
department. However, not all of the requests have been made through Widgets
procurement/chain web site.
We like to stress that using the new chain supply websites is easy and allows for
quicker turnaround time. As we learned in the training sessing, the websites is easily
accessible from our internal Widget internet via the “Chain Supply” link. To use :
Warm regards,
Jack
Sincerely,
(Signature)
James Hall
13. EMAIL REPLY OF PROCUREMENT
14. LETTER REPLY OF PROCUREMENT
As the credit terms are 2/20, net 40, we will appreciate proper remittance from you.
For your convenience, we have sent Invoice and Railway Receipt (RR) through
standard chartered Bank, station Road Branch, Chittagong. You can receive’ such
documents from Standard Chartered Bank, Head office, Dhaka
We thank you for this order and hope to be benefited with your further order-in
consideration of the quality of our product, please confirm the arrival of goods sharply.
Yours faithfully,
Probir Roy
Sales Manager
Star Trading co Ltd.
15. MEMO OF COMPLAINT
Official memo
It is used to tell you all that the farewell ceremony in honour of Aldi Dafian, Assistant
Manager, will be held at 07:00 PM on June 25, 2013. All people in this company are
required to attend the ceremony.
MEMO
Dear Sir,
Thank you very much for the shipment you have made yesterday, but when I unpacked
the new refrigerator. I received from you, I surprised to see that, it was red colour
instead of while colour as specified in the order (invoice no: 1234). I am expecting
customer on October 25; I would like to have this white colour refrigerator before 25
October 2012. I should appreciate your taking care of this matter as quickly as possible
and tell me what should I do with the red one.
Purchase department
16. EMAIL OF COMPLAINT
To: howard@mail.com
Subject: Complaint regarding cookies and chips with receipt number T 6789
I had purchased a box of cookies and a packet of chips from your outlet located at 23
Regina High Road, New York, New Jersey 4578 on 10th of March 2012. The receipt
number of the purchase is T 6789.
When I reached home and opened the box of cookies I found that they were all
crushed and as a result I could not eat the cookies and throw them in the dustbin. I
have been purchasing products from your outlet since last two years but have never
faced such problem. I am very dissatisfied this time and I want a complete refund of
my purchase.
I would be highly grateful if you could look into the matter and make an arrangement
for the refund of my purchase amount. I would request you to take immediate action.
Regards,
Scot Ridley
17. LETTER OF COMPLAINT
AJ Bregman
8 Kennedy Circle
Sydney
NSW 2010
11 November 2015
Yours truly,
Jenny Hawkins
18. EMAIL OF ADJUSTMENT
Dear Mr Sir
Thank you for your email dated 18 May, regarding the day trip on 9 May. We very
much regret that you are so dissatisfied with our service. We have investigated your
complaint about the driver arriving late at the pick-up point. The driver has explained
that his watch was out of order, but of course, he should have consulted the office
clock, and has been given an official warning not to let this happen again. We
sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused to your company and the
tourists. We will take every step to make sure that this does not occur again.
In the email, you also mentioned that the air-conditioning system only worked
sporadically during the bus trip, making the passengers uncomfortable. We are
terribly sorry about that. It is due to the lack of maintenance. Therefore, after the trip,
we immediately examined and fixed the air-conditioning system and other parts of the
bus. We have also enforced our policy to examine and fix the buses more
frequently. Please accept our apology.
For your inconvenience, we would like to offer a partial refund to all the passengers,
as you have suggested. However, before that, I would like to clarify a few points first.
I greatly regret the trouble that your company has been put through due to the delay
of the tour, and I fully understand the dissatisfaction of the passengers, but it is not our
policy to cancel or skip any activity listed on the itinerary. We admit that the guide
might be a bit impolite. However, he was just doing his duty to ask the passengers to
do some shopping because shopping at the jewellery shop was listed on the travel
schedule.
Yours sincerely
Chris Wong
We received the claim letter you’ve sent last May 12, 2013 and regret the inconvenience
that it has caused the operations of your Accounting firm. Our company will find a way to help you
avoid in encountering this problem.
After the investigation, we found that the error was due to the volume of files stored in
your computer that results to computer performance interruptions. To address the problem, we will
provide you with our technician to address the problem. We advise for you to check the data storage
meter in your computer often.
Thank you for letting our company know your concerns. This will help us in the advancement and
upgrading of our services to our clients.
Sincerely yours,
AJ Bergman
209 20th St NW
Grand Forks, MN, 56300
(407) 554-8922
Tessa Mae
YMCA Family Center
211 Demers Ave
Grand Forks, MN, 56730
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the years of enjoyable and fulfilling
employment. I have learned a lot during my time here and will be leaving with many
great experiences and fond memories.
I would be happy to help find a replacement and train them, as I know this is somewhat
short notice and out of the blue. I hope you realize my quitting is in no way a reflection
of your ability to manage, but I must move on for personal reasons.
Best regards,
AJ Bergman
AJ Bergman
References
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