Essential Conditions and Features of Business Letter
Well-drafted and well-structured business letter greatly contributes to business success. Business letter helps to create new relationships and to strengthen existing relationships. Therefore, such letter should fulfill certain conditions or qualities. The essential qualities or conditions of business letter are the following:
Simplicity of language: Business letter should be written in easy, simple and artistic language so that the reader can easily understand the inner meaning of the message. It should be free from ambiguous and unfamiliar words, outworn and stilted expression, vague terms, wordy phrases, complex sentences etc.
Definite structure: This letter should always be written by following a definite structure. Well-structured business letter can attract the attention of its readers.
Accuracy of facts: This letter should convey accurate information to the reader. Inaccurate information is worse than no information at all.
Specific purpose: Every business later should have a specific purpose. The language of the letter should be arranged in such a way so that the reader can realize the purpose of writing the letter.
Relevance: Only relevant information should be included in business letter. Irrelevant and excessive information irritate the readers and create negative impression about the letter and its writer.
Free from errors: This letter should be free from all sorts of errors and mistakes like grammatical errors, misspelled words etc.
Understandably: This letter will be meaningful only when it is clear and understandable to the readers. Clear writings require choosing the best words to express the idea and arranging these words logically.
Use of paragraphs: A business letter may contain several issues. To differentiate the issues and to make every issue understandable to the readers, the letter should be broken into several paragraphs.
Timeliness: In business it is commonly said that ‘time is money’. So letters should be written in due time. Untimely written business letters negatively affect business relationship and goodwill.
Neutrality: Acceptability of this letter depends on its neutrality and impartiality. So the writer should be neutral and impartial in arranging information in the letters.
From the above discussion, it is clear that the efficacy and success of a business letter depend on several factors. So the writer should be careful enough to the factors mentioned above in writing letter.
