Summary
Highlights
This chapter focuses on brief correspondence in technical writing, including electronic correspondence, memos, and letters. It covers planning, formatting, and composing these various forms. Key steps include audience analysis, pre-writing, determining the appropriate format, and understanding strategies for good news, bad news, and persuasive messages. Effective communication is essential for business functions, with instant messages, texts, and emails being the fastest methods, while memos and letters require more time for composition and approval.
Brief correspondence is used to foster goodwill, promote positive collaboration, and demonstrate effective communication principles. Goodwill is built on mutual respect, trust, honesty, and politeness. Effective communication principles include using concise, accurate, and complete language, maintaining a professional appearance with conventional formats and standard English. While a conversational and informal tone with humor can build goodwill, it's crucial to consider the audience, situation, and relationship when employing it.
Everyone in the workplace reads correspondence, expecting it to be brief, targeted, purposeful, and formatted conventionally. Workplace correspondence differs from personal communication. Instant messages and text messages may go to known or unknown readers, should be brief, informal, clear, and informative, without creating future communication barriers. Emails, like instant messages, can be internal or external, and should be relevant, clear, and brief, focusing on one topic per email. Formatting options like bolding or underlining can highlight key points. Blogs also involve give-and-take communication, where a writer presents information and readers can comment.
Memos are typically printed and used for internal organizational correspondence, requiring writers to consider the diverse backgrounds and agendas of their internal audience. Letters, on the other hand, are for external audiences and represent the writer's organization, making a good impression crucial. Both forms require the author to define their purpose, what they want the receiver to think or do, and if any background information or simplification is needed for the reader's understanding.
For text messages and emails, subject lines are vital for scanning and searchability. Consider reader expectations for formality and length, clearly explain context, and avoid writing when angry. Adhere to 'netiquette' for online interactions. Memos should be brief, cover one topic fully, and include essential details like names, dates, and locations, typically not exceeding one page. Letters demand formal writing, relevant information, avoidance of jargon for external audiences, careful word choice, appropriate tone, and a clear focus on purpose to avoid becoming overly long.
Text messages are simple text blocks. Emails are similar to memos in format, with programs often auto-inserting names and dates, but requiring a 'to' and 'subject' line. Strong subject lines are crucial for business communication to prioritize and scan emails. Memos begin with a standard heading: To, From, Date, and Subject. Letters are more formal, including a heading, dateline, inside address, salutation, body, closing, and signature, often on business letterhead in block or modified block style. Colon after salutation and comma after closing are standard. All brief correspondence must have a clear purpose.
There are three main types of messages: informative/good news, bad news, and persuasive. Informative/good news messages should present the main idea first, followed by explanations and background. Bad news messages should open with a positive 'buffer' statement before delivering the bad news in the middle, and then close on a pleasant, future-oriented note. Persuasive messages aim to convince the reader to agree or act, requiring attention-grabbing content, convincing arguments, and motivation to act, without assuming the reader is receptive.
The assignment for Chapter 5 involves analyzing two documents: a memo from "Kendall Developers LLC" and a letter from "Landover Community College." Students need to answer four questions: identify the main idea of the memo and determine its ease of finding, explain how the memo aids the organization, identify the main idea of the letter and its ease of finding, and explain how the letter aids the organization. Both documents are available in the textbook and e-learning platform.