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2.1.1.7 Signature Block
It contains the writer’s handwritten signature followed by herhis name and position in the firm. Unless the writer has established a personal
relationship with the person she is writing to, both herhis first and last name are used.
2.1.1.8 End Notations
There are often several abbreviation or phrases that have important functions typed just below the signature block. They include:
2.1.1.8.1 Enclosures
Such indications as “Enclosure”,”Encl”,”Enclosures 2” are used to make sure that the recipient knows that items accompany the letter.
2.1.1.8.2 Copies
c.c. carbon copies is written when copies are sent to people other than the named recipient.
2.1.2 Style in Business Correspondence
Burne also suggests some important points to be considered when writing business letters.
1 When business people open a letter, the first concern is to know what the letter is about, what its purpose is, and why they must spend their
time reading it. Therefore, we should let the reader know from the first sentence what the letter is about.
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2 Busy recipients who wrote many letters themselves may not remember the letters to us. To avoid problem, we should identify the date and
subject of the letter to which we respond in the first paragraph. 3 The paragraphs of business letters tend to be short. Paragraphs which
are made up of only a single sentence are common and perfectly acceptable, while big, thick, dense paragraphs over ten lines which
requires more concentration may not be read carefully or read at all. 4 The content of the letter should be compartmentalized. It means that
two short separate paragraphs containing the same topic should be joined into one, while a paragraph containing different topics should
be split. 5 To give recipient clear sense of the content and purpose of each
paragraph, a word or phrase indicating the topic should be provided at the beginning of paragraphs.
6 To make it easier to pick up the important points rapidly, points should be listed or itemized.
7 Information in the first and last of paragraphs tend to be read and remembered better. Therefore, important information should be placed
in high-visibility points. 8 Often, business letters must convey bad news. Such bad news should
be conveyed positively in a tactful way in order to reduce the chance that business relationship with the recipient of the bad news will end.
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9 Recipient-oriented or “you attitude” should be adopted by focusing on the recipient’s needs, purposes or interests.
10 Pompous, inflated, legal sounding phrasing should be avoided. 11 To make clear what the writer expects the recipient to do and when,
the writer should give herhis business letter an “action ending”.
2.2 E-mail Business Correspondence
E-mail is another type used in business correspondence in addition to letters and faxes. Compared to business letters, business e-mail is
considered more conversational. Conducting a textual analysis research on e-mail business correspondence, R.P. Rice 1997 as adapted in Hyland
2002: 174 found out that e-mail messages often combine elements of formal and informal discourse and indicate a spoken flavour to official
messages. The results of the study point both to the essentially interactive nature of e-mail messages and a reluctance to abandon more traditional
elements of business communication. Moreover, the serial and chronological character of the medium pushes it towards the conversational
end of the spoken-written continuum and away from the patterns of more monologic discourse. Even, it is also claimed that e-mail tries to combine
aspects of informal speech, formal written communication and new ways of showing emotions and body language. However, as any other types of
business correspondence, business e-mail is formal in nature. Therefore,
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