Grammar of English Business Correspondence

1. The reduction of analytical forms is not admitted.

2. Sentences must be short and clear. Complex sentences should be necessary replaced with the short ones.

3. It is impossible to divide words into two parts while writing a letter.

4. Capitalization: the first word in the sentence, proper nouns, titles written before a name (Dr. Smith), the names of organizations and companies, the days of the week, the months of the year and holidays, the first word in the greeting and closing.

5. Common abbreviations: a period always follows an initial (Thomas Lee Preston – T.L.Preston)

p. – page

Co. – company

Corp. –

St. –

no. – number

int’l – international

Ltd. – limited

Inc. – incorporated

E.S.T. – East StandardTime

ASAP – as soon as possible

COB – close of business

PC

VP – Vice President

C.E.O. – Chief Executive Officer

DOB – date of birth

05/06/76, 08/11 – August, 11

c/o – in care of

D/d – delivered

O/S – out-of-stock

N/A – not applicable/not available

P.P. (P.p.) – per procuration (по доверенности) – when the author of the letter has no opportunity to sign it themselves. – P.p. Jane Robinson, P.p. Dr. Smith)

Enc(s) – enclosure(s)

c.c. (carbon copy) – To Jack Brown, cc: Paul Davis. – Джеку Брауну, копия - Полу Дэвису.

b.c. (blind copy) – электронная копия сообщения без персональной адресации и приложения списка рассылки

Punctuation

Use a comma:

1. before and after an abbreviation;

2. for a state, following a city;

3. before and after a year following a month and a date;

4. after words in a series, before the word “etc.”;

5. after introductory clauses, phrases or words (Because his mother insisted, he gave college a second chance. In July, Tailor was born.);

6. before “too”, “as well”, or “also” at the end of the sentence;

7. to set off conjunctive adverb like “however”, “likewise”, “at the same time”, “therefore” from the rest of the sentence (Nick, however, was early.);

8. to set off adverbial clauses beginning with “if”, “because”, “since” at the start of the sentence;

9. before “not” when showing contrast;

10. to set off a noun of the direct address (John, could you come to help me?)

Never use a comma:

1. before a subordinate clause The game was called off because it was raining.);

2. between adjectives when the second adjective is closely linked with the noun (a new stone wall);

3. around the abbreviations Jr. (junior) or Sr. (senior) after a name;

4. before “Inc.” in a company name.

Use a colon:

1. to introduce a list, a subtitle;

2. to show time if it is not an even hour (7:30 p.m.);

3. to separate chapter and verse in a citation of the Bible (Matthew 2:11);

Use a hyphen:

1. between compound adjectives that precede the word they modify (She is an out-of-state athlete.);

2. after some prefixes (re-elect);

3. when fractions or numbers from 21 to 99 are written out (two-thirds, eighty-seven).

Never use a hyphen after “very” or an adverb ending in “-ly”.

FORMAT

The format of correspondence is determined by office policy.

The format depends on where you place your margins and how you type the letter.

There are 4 margins in a letter: top, bottom, left and right. The width of them depends on your office stationery and office style. There are 3 formats of business correspondence:

1. Block style: everything begins at the left margin, even the letters head and date.

2. Semi-block style: everything begins at the left margin except for date and closing.

3. Indented style: each paragraph is indented.