How to write good Business letters?

Business letters should be formal, brief and to the point. All the rules of grammar and form discussed above should be seriously observed and applied in these letters.

It should always be kept in mind that the letter wall reflects your personality as a businessman to the person concerned. Hence a slight show of carelessness in language and unsystematised writing may lead to a negative impression of your personality, while much of the progress of a successful business can be traced to a careful handling of correspondence and painstaking and gentle regard for the requirements of its clients.

The main topic or content of the letter must be referred to in the beginning. Unnecessary details should be avoided. Reference number, if any, should be quoted. Although we cannot claim this particular style is a good style for writing business letters, but the following is all attempt to indicate those matters of form and arrangement that must be followed by the student who wants to write a good business letter.

a) Letter heading

b) Name and address of the person addressed

c) Salutation

d) Introductory paragraph

e) Body of the letter

f) Subscription and signature

The letter heading includes name of the firm, its postal and telegraphic address, its telephone number, and the nature of its business.

The letter should begin with the full address of the Person to whom it is directed. But sometimes the full address is placed at the foot of the letter in the left hand bottom corner.

The salutation which comes immediately beneath the recipient’s address includes, the most widely used ‘Sir’, Madam’, ‘Dear Sir’ or ‘Dear Madam’.

Contents of the letter should be courteously clear. A letter dealing with several points should be framed in different paragraphs each discussing the different points respectively. The most important point about the content of a business letter is that your attitude towards any business deal should be almost absolutely clear.

The closing paragraph, particularly in sales letter, should be as forceful and convincing as possible. But in an ordinary business letter the closing paragraph may consist simply of one or two phrases of courteous form.

The subscription in these letters is most usually- ‘Yours truly’, ‘Yours faithfully’, etc.