A business letter is a written correspondence sent by an individual or a company to another individual or to a company’s clients or employees.
Business letter is meant to be written formally and businesslike.
Importance of a Business Letter
Business letter is very important as it serves as an official formal document detailing the agreements/requests (if applicable) between parties.
At first, it is challenging as you must have necessary skills to write but once done properly, it makes a huge competitive edge over the others and making one an asset to the corporate world.
Even up to this day, professionals are taught the basic of business letter writing as early as Grade IV or First Year High School. Such things include the basic letters format, margin, spacings, and main parts, so when they enter the corporate world, they already equipped and accustomed to the do’s and don’ts.
Uses of Business Letter
Business letters aims to presents business ideas, proposals, selling, among others. But it does not only involves monetary consideration, business letter is also made to express an explanation, friendship, goodwill, refusal, apologies, acceptance, refusal, suggestion, comments, complaints and others.
Moreover, a business letter may also serve as a permanent documents to the company for safekeeping.
Effective Business Letter
Business letter is considered effective if it is easy to understand. It is then ineffective when the writers utilizes overused phrases and expression and an overformal approach.
For it to be effective, this standard parts should be always present: the Heading, dates, inside address, salutation with proper punctuation, complimentary closing with proper punctuation, and signature.
Format/ Styles of Business Letter
A business letter format refers to business letters headings, indentation, margins, spacing, typeface, page numbering and division of letter sections. This is very useful to contribute the general appearance of the letter. As a result, might also attract the readers attention.
There are four known Formats for business letter. These are Semi-block, Full-block, Modified block and NOMA simplified letter style.
- Full-block Style – all parts of the entire letter such as The Heading, dates, inside address, salutation with proper punctuation, complimentary closing with proper punctuation, and signature are justified to the left. This is the most popular and easiest of all styles.
- Modified Block Style – Using this style, the body of the letter are left justified and single-spaced. However, the Date and complimentary close are justified to the right which gives a balance look.
- Semi-Block Style – much alike to the modified block style except that each of the beginning paragraph is indented. It is most balanced look of all styles.
- Simplified Letter Style – it is a well-known letter style and become popularized by the NATIONAL OFFICE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION (NOMA) which omits the salutation and the complimentary close, however, the subject line is written in a capital letters. All lines are flushed at the left margin. Whenever there’s a listing in the body, this is indented five spaces from left margin except if the items are numbered or lettered.
Comments?
Did you learn something from this article? Feel free to ask questions in the comment section should you like to clarify something.
Stay connected as well by liking our social media accounts at Facebook and Twitter.