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Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services(Scotland) |
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Business Letter 5
Main body (contd)
Language
Write using language that can be easily understood and avoid jargon, buzzwords
and abbreviations.
Use a positive style rather than negative. People respond more favourably to positive messages and this reflects much better on the sender and employer.
Avoid negative statements such as 'won't happen', 'cannot be done', 'impossible to achieve' and words that perhaps convey unpleasant feeling or outcomes such as 'deficient', 'unfortunately', 'regret' etc.
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Compare these 2 statements as examples of style: |
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'We have reviewed your request for additional help for your small project and unfortunately and with regret we have to inform you that is impossible to supply any assistance within what we consider to be an extremely unrealistic timeframe.' |
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'Thank you for your recent letter enquiring about additional help for your interesting project. We are certain that we can be of assistance and would be fully prepared to allocate the resources you need if there could be a small amount of flexibility in the time-scale.' |
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Both statements say the same thing but statement two is much more positive than statement one. |
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