E-mail in business dealings represents the company's image, shows the company's level and strength, and directly affects customers' evaluation of the company. Therefore, the writing of business e-mail plays an important role in business communication. According to the survey, about 88% of Internet users use e-mail, and about 90% of employees in the business field contact official business through e-mail. So how to write a business English email? Learn from me!
First, the format of business English e-mail
Common business English emails include the following five parts:
The e-mail address of the writer, the e-mail address of the recipient, the e-mail address of the cc recipient and the e-mail address of the bcc recipient. 2 titles. (3) Address, beginning, body and ending sentence. 4. Polite concluding remarks. (5) the writer's full name, the writer's position and department, address, telephone number, fax, etc.
Among them, the subject of the email should reflect the main idea of the email, be eye-catching and clear, and preferably be a noun or gerund phrase; The address is polite and appropriate, which is in line with business English writing habits. If you don't know the other person's name, but only the title, you can use dear+title as the title. If you only know the other person's name and don't know the gender, you can use the full name of Dear+. If the email is a circular, you can use DearAll as the email address. The text should be clear and readable. If the text is long, you can use subheadings and paragraphs, or use asterisks, underscores and blank lines between paragraphs to make the email clear.
Second, business English e-mail writing should follow the 5c principle
The text writing of business English e-mail should follow the five C principles, namely, correctness, conciseness, completeness, clarity and politeness.
Accuracy principle
Because business English e-mail involves the rights and obligations of both parties in business activities, its accuracy is very important for business governance and communication. Specifically, not only the English grammar, punctuation and spelling of e-mail should be accurate, but also the content of e-mail should be accurately described to avoid misunderstandings and disputes.
Concise principle
Conciseness is the most important principle in business English writing, which means using simple sentences and short words as much as possible without affecting integrity and politeness. Long and verbose emails not only waste writing time, but also bring unnecessary trouble to readers. Therefore, conciseness should be the first priority of business English e-mail.
In specific writing, the syntactic characteristics of business English e-mail are simple and clear sentence structure, with a large number of ellipsis and incomplete sentences. Its lexical features are concise language and concise language.
In addition, in order to save time and space, abbreviations can be used in emails, such as U for you, Pls for please, Info for information, Qty for quantity, P? C stands for piece rate, l C stands for letter of credit, and FOB stands for delivery on board.
Selling manhole covers in France is very different. The product must have a quality certificate issued by France.
Price: US$ 96 FOB Shanghai? Personal computer
I hope you can accept it.
The two simple sentences in the example 1 have obvious causality, but no conjunctions, such as self and cause, are used to express causality. This syntactic feature of abandoning long sentences and complex sentences, choosing short sentences and simple sentences, preferring juxtaposition and abandoning subordination is very common in business English email writing. The use of abbreviations in Example 2 and the choice of incomplete sentences in Example 3 reflect that business e-mail is more informal and colloquial than ordinary business letters.
Integrity principle
The content of business emails should be specific, clear and complete, and provide readers with the information they need, especially the emails that need to be answered, such as inquiries and trade terms, because only emails containing specific information can achieve good communication results. Whether the email is complete or not can be checked by 5W 1H, that is, who, when, where, what, why and how.
Clear principle
Business English emails should be written with clear levels and accurate words. Specific performance in:
We will deliver the goods soon.
In example 2, the meaning of the word remarkable is obvious, not small, and the meaning is vague, so it can be replaced by specific numbers. The word "soon" in Example 2 means soon, soon, and the meaning is not clear. It does not show the specific "delivery time", so it can be changed to a specific year, month and day.
Politeness principle
Business English e-mail should follow the principles of propriety and politeness. In view of the fact that e-mail directly affects the success or failure of the whole transaction, both buyers and sellers should pay great attention to wording, be polite and make it easy for the other party to accept. When writing an email, you can use subjunctive mood, euphemistic tone and other methods to express your views and make demands tactfully.
Example 1 If we hadn't received a large number of orders from four regular customers, we couldn't have quoted at that price.
I would appreciate it if you could give me your best quotation for 65,000 pieces.
The use of subjunctive mood in example 1 and euphemistic mood in example 2 eases the tone of business negotiation, which not only clarifies one's position, but also protects the other party's face from damage. The tone is natural, sincere, polite and appropriate, which is easy to be accepted by the other party.
With the continuous expansion of international business activities, the importance of business English e-mail is becoming increasingly obvious. At the same time, with the popularity of e-commerce, writers tend to ignore the proper norms and formats of business English e-mail, which will inevitably lead to problems of one kind or another. However, accurate and standardized English mail can not only reflect the writer's English and professional level, but also reflect the writer's attitude and style in dealing with people, which is helpful to establish good business relations and ultimately plays an important role in reaching trade. Therefore, it is necessary to be familiar with the norms and formats of business English e-mail and follow the writing principles of e-mail.
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