Lesson 10: Business Letters
Business Letters
Despite the ever-lasting role played by the telephone and fax machine in the business world today, the business letters remains a very effective, popular and important medium of communication. This is likely to remain so for the following simple reasons:
- It is one of the cheapest forms of communication
- The letter serves as a permanent record of a transaction, agreement, warning or enquiry.
- A letter conveys a professional and business-like impression which gives your message more weight.
- A letter gives the business person time to think before replying. This allows a powerful, well thought-out and much more effective message to be formulated.
- Letters can be used to do business in places where no telephones or fax machines are available
The ordinary business letter can be used effectively for a variety of different purposes:
- to persuade: e.g. sales letter
- to express an opinion: e.g. letter to the press
- to get something done: e.g. letter of complaint
- to supply somebody else with information: e.g. letter of invitation/letter of application
- to obtain information: e.g. letter of enquiry
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