Communication tools have evolved over time. Today, messenger means a form of electronic communication, and not someone riding a horse (Pony Express). The fax machine, letters, and even the telephone are less frequent methods in a more fast-paced world. The SMS, text message, and email are often the quickest way to share ideas.
What You Will Learn.
In this lesson, you will learn how to write both business and academic emails, and the differences between formal, informal, and casual emails.
You will develop a format (or template) for your formal emails, consisting of a greeting, message content, and a closing.
We will examine the appropriate register (or style) for each type of email. First, we will consider three questions:
What register of English is appropriate for business or academic writing?
What is meant by academic voice?
The difference between expressing your opinion and presenting an argument.
The Plan:
1. Using the right register.
2. Being clear and concise.
3. Argument versus Opinion.
Using the Right Register.
Often, we are quite comfortable writing in an informal way, such as in emails to friends and family, or notes to colleagues at work, however, we may become a little anxious when writing in the more formal manner required in business and academic discussions.
So, what do we mean by `register’?
Context is the keyword when considering this meaning of register. The vocabulary, grammar, and phraseology that are appropriate in particular contexts or in particular situations constitute particular registers or styles.
So, if I’m chatting with a close colleague, it’s ok to use slang and idiomatic expressions.
However, if I am writing to business or academic colleagues about my subject, it is not appropriate to use such language.
When writing academically, we tend to look for alternatives to some of the words and phrases we use in our everyday, casual language. This is because academic writing requires not only greater formality but also greater precision of meaning.
In the following sentence, which of the alternatives in bold would you expect an academic or business writer to choose?
This assignment will look at the effects of globalization on economic stability.
This assignment will examine the effects of globalization on economic stability.
An academic writer would be likely to choose the second term, examine, firstly because it is more formal, but secondly because it possesses a more precise meaning than look at. This last term can mean simply observe, as well as investigate, whereas examine always denotes analysis.
What about the next sentence?
The fragmentary structure of the writing gets across to readers a sense of the narrator’s splintered consciousness.
The fragmentary structure of the writing communicates to readers a sense of the narrator’s splintered consciousness.
Here, communicates is the more formal term.
Greetings
What kind of grammar characterizes academic register? Note that academic writing is often a bit more formal than business writing.
Active and Passive Voice.
Academic work tends to be written in what is known as the passive voice. This refers to a process in which the subject of an active statement is omitted and its place in the grammatical structure taken by the object. Consider, for instance, the following versions of the same sentence.
I collected the data using quantitative methods. (Active voice.)
The data was collected using quantitative methods. (Passive voice.)
The passive voice depersonalizes an author’s discussion by removing any explicit reference to his or her activities and judgments (and is therefore particularly useful as a distancing device when addressing topics about which we have strong personal feelings). So, instead of: I interviewed four people, in academic work, we would tend to write: Four people were interviewed.
Apart from in reflective pieces that specifically require the reporting of first-person experiences and feelings, as a general rule employ the passive voice in academic discussion. However, the opposite is true in business writing.
Effective Use The Passive Voice In Business Writing
We all know about active verbs and how they make for more vibrant sentences. However, passive constructions exist for a reason, too — they are very useful in a variety of situations. For business writing, in particular, it will serve you well to know when to put them to good use.
Passive sentences put the focus on the object of the verb, rather than the person performing the action. As such, it will prove very useful when the actor carries less significance in the sentence compared to the object. For instance, declaring that “This year’s profits are a substantial increase compared to our previous numbers” puts the emphasis on “this year’s profits,” rather than the company or whoever is responsible for those results.
The passive voice can also be used to relay negative information without directly placing the blame on anyone (since the object is the focus, rather than the actor). When you write a report detailing the failure of a marketing plan, for instance, the passive voice can help you place the attention on the specific actions that caused the results, rather than the person responsible for them. This way, the report won’t feel like an attack on whoever’s to blame (it’s more diplomatic) — your superiors should be able to read between the lines about who actually caused everything, anyway.
While we still recommend avoiding the passive voice whenever possible, you have to pay attention to situations like the above. They can prove really handy in those cases.
Contractions.
Any two words joined together by an apostrophe that indicates the omission of a letter or letters, such as it’s or can’t, are known as a contraction, because their collective length has been contracted by the omission.
Although we often use such words in everyday speech, email/text messages, and written notes, they are largely inappropriate in academic work, as this demands a considerably higher level of formality and attention to detail. As a general rule avoid the use of contractions when writing for an academic audience. Also avoid note-taking or report-style abbreviations in academic work, such as i.e. (such as) and e.g. (for example).
One final point about it’s: remember not to confuse it with the third person singular possessive adjective its, as in: its cause is at yet unknown, its place in history is guaranteed or the quality of its binding is excellent. This is a fairly common error in written English so always be conscious of which form you are using in particular cases.
Compound Nouns.
Another feature of academic register is the use of compound noun phrases. This again results from the need in academic writing for precision of meaning. A compound noun phrase is one in which the noun that serves as the subject or object of a sentence is heavily qualified with adjectives. In other words, a good deal of further information about the noun is crammed around it into the phrase. For instance, consider the following sentence.
Austere twentieth-century French existentialism owes a considerable debt to eighteenth-century German Idealist philosophy of the Kantian school.
This sentence breaks down grammatically as follows:
Subject: Austere twentieth-century French existentialism
Verb: owes
Object: a considerable debt to eighteenth-century German Idealist philosophy of the Kantian school.
As you can see, both subject and object of this sentence, existentialism and philosophy, are heavily qualified adjectivally owing to the need for detail, or precision of meaning, in academic writing of this kind. Compare the above sentence with the following:
French existentialism owes a debt to German philosophy.
This makes essentially the same point, but without the additional information that the compound noun phrases provide.
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Much of the information presented in this lesson on writing emails was created by the Learner Development Unit, University of Bradford, UK and graphics from the Business English Academy, UK.