Writing Workplace Correspondence PDF

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Summary

• plan and organise workplace emails and letters effectively
• use accurate language and appropriate style and tone in emails and letters
• use appropriate formats and layouts in emails and letters...

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ELC3221 Workplace English for Business Students I

Unit 2 Writing Workplace Correspondence

Unit 2 Writing Workplace Correspondence

Learning outcomes At the end of the unit, you will be able to: • plan and organise workplace emails and letters effectively • use accurate language and appropriate style and tone in emails and letters • use appropriate formats and layouts in emails and letters

Introduction Knowing how to write workplace correspondence effectively and efficiently is very important in your professional life. In this unit, you will be introduced to some concepts for effective use of language and structures in written business communication and practise them in emails and letters. This unit is divided into four sections. Section 1

Business writing (p.2)

Section 2

Starting documents (p.5)

Section 3

Document flow and style (p.13)

Section 4

Useful tools (p.27)

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ELC3221 Workplace English for Business Students I

Section 1

Unit 2 Writing Workplace Correspondence

Business writing

The term business writing generally refers to emails, letters, reports, proposals and other forms of writing used for internal and external communication in organisations. In this section, you will develop your understanding of what business writing involves with regard to the context of communication. Activity 1 Business writing With a partner, read and discuss the statements below. Decide whether each statement is true or false, tick the appropriate box, and state the situations. Statement

True

False

Situations

1. Business writing is all about using set phrases. 2. Business writing should always be as formal as possible. 3. Business writing should involve long, complex sentences using the most formal vocabulary to give a professional image. 4. Abbreviations and short forms (such as ‘abt’, ‘pls’ etc) should always be used in business writing whenever possible to save time. 5. Passive forms should always be used in business writing whenever possible to give a formal, impersonal tone. 6. Business writing involves using templates. 7. Business writing can be mainly done by cutting and pasting from set phrases and previous documents.

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ELC3221 Workplace English for Business Students I

Unit 2 Writing Workplace Correspondence

Activity 2 Business scenarios Below are some scenarios in various business settings. Discuss in small groups how you would handle the situations using appropriate business writing strategies. Be prepared to share your thoughts with the class. Scenario 1: You have applied for annual leave of three days because you have got some personal commitments. Right after your submission of application, your boss sent you an email containing only one question: ‘Are you sure?’ How would you write an email to reply to your boss? Scenario 2: You are asked by your manager to draft an email to motivate every member in the team to work harder and accomplish more. How would you write an email to rejuvenate and foster team spirit and engagement in your team? Scenario 3: You are one of the committee members in a newly established small business company and recently you have received a complaint letter from a client who tried your pilot products. How would you write a letter of adjustment explaining the situation to the client? Scenario 4: Two of your subordinates refuse to communicate because of their personal disagreements over some issues involved in a project and therefore its progress has become stagnant. How would you write an email to inform your boss about this situation? Scenario 5: One day in the pantry you overheard some junior staff members grumbling about not having a channel to reveal to the higher level management their dissatisfaction with their immediate supervisors. How would you write an email to inform your boss about this situation? How would you write an email to all staff about this situation if you are asked to? Scenario 6: You are working with an impatient client who is often in a hurried mood and always responds to what you have said even before you have finished. This causes unnecessary misinterpretation every now and then. How would you make use of different types of business correspondence (e.g. memo pad, instant message or email etc.) to help you keep important business details clear? Scenario 7: A small local free newspaper sent your company an invitation to some in-depth interviews that probably take a couple of months, while your company does not seem to be interested. How would you write a letter or an email to the press to turn down the invitation? Scenario 8: Your supervisor once implied that you better cut corners and have the contract signed in time with your client by omitting some details regarding several terms. How would you write an email to your supervisor if you do not want to deceive your client into signing the contract?

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ELC3221 Workplace English for Business Students I

Unit 2 Writing Workplace Correspondence

Scenario 9: A potential customer sent you an email enquiring about your products/services and she implied that she had been struggling between your company and your major competitor in the industry. How would you write a letter of reply to this customer? Scenario 10: You have just entered a small family business as an outsider and soon you realise that other team members, who are family members or relatives of your boss, never pay effort into their job tasks while you are the only one sparing no effort. How would you write an email to your boss about the situation?

Activity 3 Business correspondence Select a business email/letter that you think is well/poorly written. Read through it and share in small groups how you feel about a) writing strategies, b) writer’s purpose, c) reader’s response expected, d) the presentation of information in terms of importance to the reader, and e) overall tone and style.

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ELC3221 Workplace English for Business Students I

Section 2

Unit 2 Writing Workplace Correspondence

Starting documents

2.1 Planning reader centred writing Planning is the first step in the writing process.

“Failure to plan is planning to fail” Planning is essential. Effective writers plan.

The following three questions are the basis for effective planning: 1. Why am I writing (Writer's Purpose)? 2. What do I want the reader to do (Reader's Response)? 3. What does the reader need to know/already know (Reader's Information)? As a writer, you must: • • •

identify your purpose identify your desired reader response gather the necessary information and present it in order of importance to the reader (what, when, how and why)

Spending some time anticipating the readers' probable questions and preparing answers before we write to them ensures less time spent on answering queries and reduces everyone’s workload in the longer term.

Planning with sub-headings Sub-headings can be very useful when planning a document, even simple ones such as ‘What’, ‘When’, ‘How’ and ‘Why’. You can remove them later if you feel they are inappropriate for your document. Advantages of planning and writing sub-headings include: • • • •

Reduced chance of omitting important information Clear and logical flow Easy document navigation for readers Less daunting feeling for long document writing

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ELC3221 Workplace English for Business Students I

Unit 2 Writing Workplace Correspondence

Activity 4 Planning documents Complete the following table with a partner, then compare it with another group. Document

Writer's Purpose

Reader's Response

Reader's Information

1. An email to staff about revised lunch break time

2. An email to all junior staff about change of location to an open plan office

3. An email notifying employees about maximum working hours, overtime limit and overtime pay

4. An email to a customer regarding an overdue invoice

5. A letter of enquiry about a company’s products and prices

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ELC3221 Workplace English for Business Students I

Unit 2 Writing Workplace Correspondence

2.2 Frontloading reader centred writing To show respect to our readers and save them time, energy and money, we need to consider carefully two fundamental questions all readers have when receiving workplace correspondence: 1. Do I have to do anything? 2. If yes, what, when, how and why? Ideally the reader should be able to answer both these questions within seconds of opening the document. This is called frontloading – putting key information first. If we fail to frontload and answer the reader’s questions quickly, they may not see the importance and/or relevance of our message and may not finish reading it. Information overload and the increasing use of handheld devices greatly increase the chances of this happening.

Activity 5 Spotting the frontload Which of the following texts is frontloaded? Are there other features that enable the reader to quickly find key information?

Text 1a If a company uses a registered trademark on its own products without authorisation from the trademark owner, and the turnover involved reaches RMB 50,000 or the relevant illegal income reaches RMB 30,000, the IP Infringement of this company will constitute a Crime of IP Infringement and the directly responsible Senior Management of the company could be subject to imprisonment of up to three years.

Text 1b A crime of IP Infringement is committed if: • • •

a company uses a registered trademark on its own products without authorisation from the trademark owner, and the turnover involved reaches RMB 50,000, or the relevant illegal income reaches RMB 30,000.

Senior management of the company could be imprisoned for up to three years.

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ELC3221 Workplace English for Business Students I

Unit 2 Writing Workplace Correspondence

Text 2a Our company has enjoyed the highest market share in the region for the last 10 years. Our excellent service has enabled us to expand into new markets and provide service coverage for the entire Asian region. We specialise in providing professional editing, proofreading and copy writing services for the finance and legal industry.

Text 2b For you, the financial and legal industry, we offer: • editing • proof reading • copy writing from the number one company in the Asian region in this field.

Activity 6 Practising frontloading Frontload and make the following reader-friendly: 1. For the past ten years the average monthly use of toilet rolls across all departments in our company has remained relatively stable at a total of 400 rolls per month. This represents, in a toilet roll per staff member ratio, a usage of 2 toilet rolls per person per month. However, for the last two months toilet paper usage has increased dramatically to 520 rolls per month. This is an increase of 30% and has substantially increased our operating costs with an add-on effect of reducing our profit margins. Management respectfully request staff to be more careful when using toilet paper and consider the costs, both to the company and the environment, of wasting toilet paper. In particular, the practice of laying paper out along the toilet seat must stop. We would like to remind staff that toilets are cleaned three times every working day and we believe this is sufficient in ensuring hygienic toilet seats and laying toilet paper on them is wasteful and unnecessary.

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ELC3221 Workplace English for Business Students I

Unit 2 Writing Workplace Correspondence

2. The CDOR department is pleased to announce to all staff and family members that at 7pm on Monday the 3rd of April, the University of Oxbridge’s esteemed senior academic, Dr Hurgen von Hurgen will deliver a free two-hour talk with Q and A session on the vital topic of “Being Concise”.

3. Having analysed alternative products and suppliers and compared tender notes as well as comparing general industry practices and prices, it is our company’s great delight and satisfaction that we are happy to inform you of the acceptance of your proposal.

4. As I have now achieved one of my long term personal ambitions and have booked my appointment for LASIK laser surgery for both my eyes to rectify my acute short sightedness at the Happy Valley Orthopaedic Centre on May 11th and as I also have a heavy workload of producing PowerPoint slides for our forthcoming global Human Resources Review conference I humbly request a big screen monitor for my office PC. This will help me to reduce eye stress and aid the healing process of my eyes as well as maintain my working efficiency.

When not to frontload In general, try always to frontload. Put key information first. Details, background, supporting evidence and explanations can come later. Readers are busy. Giving them the key information first allows them to choose whether to read the later details and explanations or not. This choice is a mark of respect. However, situations occur when frontloading may not be advisable: • • •

Bad/negative news Proposals/ideas that require a lot of persuasion Sensitive issues

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ELC3221 Workplace English for Business Students I

Unit 2 Writing Workplace Correspondence

Activity 7 Choosing a presentation style Which approach, frontloaded or backloaded, would you use in the following scenarios? Mark each of the following ‘F’ for a frontloaded approach or ‘B’ for a backloaded approach. 1. A request to your management board for an investigation into possible exaggerated expense claims by a member of the sales team 2. Granting of unpaid leave to a staff member with a sick relative 3. A letter from a retailer to a dealer requesting a further discount on the goods 4. A rejection letter in response to a staff member’s promotion application 5. Notification of a successful tender application

2.3 Using subject lines, headers and nouns The subject line can tell the reader whether they have to do anything, and if so, what. However, putting too much information in a subject line is not advisable. On many email systems the reader will not be able to view it all at a glance because of the on-screen display limitation. Too much information may also put the reader off.

Writing effective subject lines and headings Advantages of writing effective subject lines and sub-headings include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Fewer words, which means less space and higher visibility Rapid readability and understanding Easy key word searches and simplified filing Avoiding tricky grammar areas such as articles, prepositions and plurals Not being mistaken for spam when writing email subject headings

Putting nouns together involves using nouns as modifiers – nouns used like adjectives to describe other nouns. For example: Nike Air Jordan Hong Kong PolyU Business students

not not

Air Jordan of Nike students of business at PolyU in Hong Kong

As you can tell from the above examples, the techniques of using nouns as modifiers can be applied to speed up and simplify writing. This technique is increasingly used in business.

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ELC3221 Workplace English for Business Students I

Unit 2 Writing Workplace Correspondence

Activity 8 Writing noun combinations Tick ( ) the nouns (in italics) that can follow the nouns in the first column to make noun combinations. Cross ( ) those that cannot. a) b) c) d) e) f) g) h) i) j)

business management publicity labour corporate trade consumer student information government

company style campaign shortage image project goods information centre ordinance

cards technology department technology headquarters technology behaviour union force program

plan review trade market body fair awareness worker desk virus

Reminder: Nouns used with numbers to express duration or quantity are written in singular form. e.g. a programme which lasts for two months = a two-month programme a project which was given five million dollars = a five-million-dollar project

Activity 9 Using nouns as modifiers Rewrite the following as noun combinations. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

a product for the high-end market a contract worth six million dollars a meeting that lasts for 45 minutes a budget of 30,000 dollars a child who is eight years old

Reminder: It is not always possible to use noun combinations. Overuse could lead to reader confusion and misunderstanding.

Activity 10 Checking noun combinations Circle the noun combinations that you feel are correct. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

the general meeting held annually / annual general meeting / annual’s general meeting a credit letter / a letter of credit / a letter’s credit/ a credit’s letter a time for change / change time / time change / time’s change customer’s database / database of customers / customers database / customer database product’s presentation / presentation of product /products presentation / product presentation

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ELC3221 Workplace English for Business Students I

Unit 2 Writing Workplace Correspondence

Activity 11 Using noun combinations in subject lines Try using noun combinations to improve, shorten and simplify the following subject lines. 1. My request for approval of my application for leave which is unpaid

2. Report on our annual general meeting

3. Minutes from the meeting with the department of research and development

Activity 12 Using subject lines and headings Write subject lines for the five documents in Activity 4. Then compare your subject lines with a partner. Whose are the best? Document

Subject line

1. An email to staff about revised lunch break time 2. An email to all junior staff about change of location to an open plan office 3. An email notifying employees about maximum working hours, overtime limit and overtime pay 4. An email to a customer regarding overdue invoice 5. A letter of enquiry about a company’s products and prices Subject line tips For urgent messages and resending messages that have received no response, using UPPERCASE in the subject line is often more effective than colours or flags. For messages where you seek a response or answer, adding a ? at the end of the subject line could be sometimes effective.

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ELC3221 Workplace English for Business Students I

Section 3

Unit 2 Writing Workplace Correspondence

Document flow and style

3.1 Plain English Good writing is effortless reading. Plain English emphasises...