How to Write Effective Business Correspondence

The nature of correspondence has largely changed from a more formal to more informal, conversational, and personal writing. David V. Lewis suggests a few ways to “sell yourself and your company to the public.”
1. Write for him, not to him: the letter should be reader-oriented rather than writer oriented. So, use you, and your more than we and our. “The most powerful letters appeal to basic needs and emotions rather than to purely logical reasons.”
2. Personalize your letter: The letter should have human element in it. “In orienting your letter to the reader, fill it with ‘you,’ ‘your,’ and ‘yours.” Use ‘I’ and ‘me’ sparingly.”
3. Mastering tone: Use appropriate tone to avoid any negative effects on the reader. However, tone requirements may vary in different situations.
4. Write the way you talk: “The consensus clearly is that informal, natural business writing is in, stilted business writing is out.” You can use contractions, but carefully, as they give spontaneity to your writing.
The Royal Bank of Canada:
Business letter can benefit from informality and friendliness of family letters. A few techniques to write effective letters:
1. Know your reader, anticipate the question your readers may ask. Be aware about reader’s interest.
2. Know your product.
3. Let your personality show.
4. Show some style.
5. Use suitable formulas.
6. Selling needs ideas.
7. Use appropriate tone.
8. Read your letter critically.
9. Follow through.
Sum: “know why you are writing and what about; believe in what you are writing; be tactful and friendly, and truthful; base your appeal on the prospect’s interests … and check your letter and revise it.”

Proposal Outline and Analysis of Rhetorical Situation

A Website for Global Educational, Cultural, and Literary Support Association (GECLSA)
Some Nepalese social workers living in Nepal and the US and some US citizens are establishing a non-profit organization that will work towards improvement of educational situation of kids from all around the world who are deprivsed from proper education due to their poverty. These social activists have recently registered their organization in the state of Maryland. They have finalized their constitution, vision and mission statements, goals, and some future programs. However, they still do not have their own website to inform the public about their projects and to attract more people towards the holy goal of helping the kids in dire need of education. In this holy mission, as a student in technical communication, I think I can contribute to their mission by building their website as per their needs.
The audience for this website will be very diverse: those who are in desperate need for education and those who want to help them. As the audience of this website will be quite diverse, I will have to make it very user-friendly and simple to navigate. I will try to avoid any culture-specific symbols and references not to confuse the audience of different cultures. At the end, I will produce a website that has the following characteristics:
a. Easy to navigate by using proper buttons and hyperlinks
b. Use of simple design (The purpose of a website is to provide information. Fancy websites may look good but very difficult to use.) (Harty)
c. Proper positioning of visual and verbal elements
d. Adequate use of chunking through the use of spacing, bullets and numbers, and tables
e. Use of photos and videos
f. Use of flash slideshow to incorporate many pictures that will be necessary to capture the attention of the audience
g. A link to a blog that will be used by the organization to share people’s views and needs
h. Links to useful educational websites
i. Use of simple, clear, and precise language
I am planning to finish this project of building a website within two and a half months. The timetable for different stages of it is as follows:
1. Proposal -- Sep 24, 2009
2. Basic format of website – October 13
3. First draft of the website for review –November 10
4. Final deliverable –December 1
Qualifications
1. MA in English and Professional Communication
2. Editing Experience
3. Already built a website
4. Edited web content and helped in both editing and designing a brochure as a part of semester long project
5. Knowledge of technical writing theories and ethics
Conclusion:
So, I will make a website that looks simple but attractive. My knowledge of technical writing, experience of editing, and some, even if short, experience of making a website will help me make the website informative.

Analysis of Rhetorical Situation
I have already mentioned the exigence, the need for the Association to have its own website. It needs to publicize its programs and draw attention of as many people as possible to fulfill its mission of helping the poor to come out of their wretched poverty through education. In today's world, people want to see almost every thing online. So, besides having brochures and other promotional material, it also needs a good website to come out to its intended audience.
Similarly, I have also already mentioned the nature of audience for this project. The audience will be diverse. So, simple and clear website is a most.
In case of constraints, I have a limited time to make it. I will have to finish this by the end of November. As a graduate student, I also have several other tasks to be done simultaneously. Similarly, I will have some limitation in terms of my knowledge of technology too.

Ethics in Technical Communication

What is ethics? Do we find some fixed formula for deciding what is ethical and what is not? How about ethics in technical communication? Why should technical communicators be held ethically responsible for the consequences of the use of technology or any products? Is ethics universal?
We can ask several questions about rhetoric. But as Dombrowski says, we won't find any clear and fixed answers to them. This is primarily because ethics deals with values, which are not subjects of scientific inquiry and experimentation. Ethical questions are largely controversial and contextual. It is both individual and social.
How about ethics in technical communication? The notion of ethics in technical communication is fairly recent phenomenon. This is primarily because of the way technical communication was defined and understood. In the past, perhaps till 1980s, technical communication was defined in mechanistic terms as a tool of transmitting information. So, the focus of it was only on getting the message across without any intermediate distortion. So, the theorists of technical communication and general public understood it in terms of windowpane theory. So, "the ethical responsibilities involved in technical communication from this perspective are fairly clear and narrow: They are simply to relay faithfully information between transmitter and receiver." So, ethical responsibility goes to the producers or consumers of technology.
But in recent years, the way technical communication has been defined has changed significantly. Now, it is seen from rhetorical perspective. It is presentation of information to fulfill the needs of particular audience in a specific context. So, the job of technical communicator has become more creative and complex. Hence, the responsibility is also greater. Technical communicator has the responsibility to consider the broad influence of technology and the information he/she creates to the society at large.

The Plain Language

Stuart Chase's "Gobbledygook" makes a powerful case for plain language. Even today, in many of the legal and business documents, we can find the use of "windy and pretentious language." He defines gobbledygook as "squandering words, packing a message with excess baggage and so introducing semantic noise."
Avoid tautologies like "give and convey."
Clear language speaks of clear thought.
Clarity and brevity.
Avoid long-windedness, foggy meanings, cliches ....
Avoid gross neglect of the readers' point of view.

Zinsser "Writing in Your Job" has a similar point to make. The most important thing to be considered while writing customer documents is the "respect for humanity." That they need to talk to "real people."
Use sentences and words that are "short and have air around them" conveying "the rhythm of human speech."
"Use short words and vivid images from everyday life."
The writing should be "warm and personal."
Use active verbs avoiding "windy concept nouns."
Avoid generalizations.
In many documents customers have to translate every sentence because of the generalized and abstract writing.
Simple style is the result of hard work.
Alan Siegel's "The Plain English Revolution" has the same point to make. His point is "simplify, simplify." MAKE FUNCTIONAL DOCUMENTS FUNCTIONAL.
DOs: use personal tone, simplify, provide explanatory phrases for unfamiliar terms that cannot be eliminated, shorten sentence, improve design for enhancing understanding, provide illustrative examples.
University of Wisconsin's "Guide to Nonsexist Language" provides ways to avoid the use of sexist language. It provides two rules to check sex bias, "Would you say the same thing about a person of the opposite sex? Would you like it said about you?"
Lutz's "The World of Double Speak" also deals with the similar problem in various fields like government, business, and legal worlds. Doublespeak is the "incongruity between what is said and what is reality." He talks of four kinds of doublespeak:
1. Euphemism
2. Jargon
3. Gobbledygook
4. Inflated Language
Doublespeak is all around us. It is dangerous as it intends to mislead us rather than leading us to reality.

Brainstorming for Project Proposal

Some Nepalese people living all around the globe (including the US, UK, Australia, and Nepal) and some US citizens are in the process of establishing a non-profit organization that will work towards improvement of the educational situation of thousands of kids from all around the world who cannot go to schools due to their poor economic situation. To launch their project, they will first need one website to bring their goals, visions, programs and activities forward to the public. So, I am going to help them in making a website. The audience for this website will be very diverse: those interested to help those in need and those who are in a really difficult situation. That’s why, I will have to think about the issue of accessibility; it has to be user-friendly. But since the users themselves are so different in their needs and expectations, I would have to make it quite simple but well designed. The positioning of the visual and verbal elements will be quite important to be considered. I will have to use a lot of chunking through the use of spacing, bullets and numbers, and tables. Since it will be a website that will try to persuade people to work together to help the people in a difficult situation, we will have to collect the evidences of the helps provided to the people. Some people involved in it have already done great works that have started showing really great consequences to the targeted people. I will have to collect the photographs and videos that clearly demonstrate their works.

Purpose Statement

Global Education Foundation is a newly established non-profit organization. It does not yet have its own website to present its programs,policies, goals, and activities to the public. Since the audience will be diverse, I am going to build a website that is highly user friendly and accessible to the larger public.

Writing Process

The book's claim that it is one of the best resources from the best people is largely true. Sometimes simple looking ideas are really very important. This is true about the essays in the first part of the book. All of them deal with the idea of the process of writing from different angles or perspectives.
What I found interesting is the focus of almost all of the writers on the importance of "revision" in writing process. Normally many people submit their writings without going through it twice. If they do revision it is just nothing more than proofreading. But in all the essays here, the writers have given more importance to revision than "writing." Adelstein's division of time for the different elements of writing process clearly demonstrates this idea:
1. Worrying -- 15%
2. Planning -- 10%
3. Writing -- 25%
4. Revising -- 45%
5. Proofreading -- 5%
(Re)Thinking (worrying, planning, ...) prior to the actual writing and thinking after it (revising, proofreading) require more than 75% of the time. Thinking gives proper shape to the writing where as revising reshuffles it to adjust to the broader (global) rhetorical needs and local mechanical considerations.
"Revision is painful: removing pet phrases and savory sentences is like getting rid of rherished possessions" (17). But the end product after this painful process is quite satisfying. The fact that one of the best prose writers of the 20th century,Hemingway revised "the last page of A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times before he was satisfied" clearly shows how important it is.
I agree with Adelstein's idea that we need to be both the writer and a critic. We need to distance ourselves from our writing so that we can see the mistakes and improve it. If we see our own reading from the reader's perspective, we can make several changes to the rhetorical choices we have made to suit to the needs of the audience, which marks the successful writing. Elbow also supports this by dividing the total available time into two halves for writing and revising.