Personal Letter And Business Letter

Introduction

No business transaction can take place without successful correspondence at some point. Enquiries must be answered, quotations given, orders placed, complaints dealt with, transport and insurance arranged and accounts settled. Letters must be written to customers, salesmen, agents, suppliers, bankers, and many others, they cover every conceivable part of business activity. Business letters are a company’s silent salesmen, and often enough, represent only contact with the outside world. .Hence, there is a need to learn how to write various types of letters. .

Commercial writing is a skill and like other skills it must be learnt. People need to be trained so that business communication is effective. Business letters are

The following are the basic differences:

• Personal letters are written to our acquaintances or with whom either we have had relationship or we wish to maintain some relationship. The objective of business letters is purely business activity. They are written for a definite objective like selling or purchasing, seeking information about products, goods and services etc

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• Personal letters because of their very purpose are informal in nature. The salutation may be for a relation or a friend and may start with “My dear”, “My very dear” and end up with “your only one”, “for you alone” etc. However, the business letters are formal in nature and follow a laid down procedure as also certain

Generally, no specific purpose is achieved, except renewing or reinforcing love and affection. Business letters have to be accurate to the point and are written in cool and calculated manner with a specific purpose or motive.

4.4 Functions of Business Letters As discussed earlier, business letters perform an important function in business activities. They are an accurate and an inexpensive way of communicating with vendors, customers, employees of the company, shareholders, government agencies and so on. Some of the useful purposes the business letters perform are:

• For keeping records and maintaining references.

Business dealings are not possible without records and references of interaction with outside agencies. A letter is a record of what was committed to a supplier or customer or what information was sent to a government department specially when an organisation is large and correspondence with outside agencies is of large volume, it is humanly impossible to depend upon memory. If there is a need to check back what the other agency had agreed to do, it is available on record and reference can be made to that particular letter or correspondence. Maintaining data in computer memory is a good idea, however, certain type of information, especially sensitive and confidential data where access has to be restricted may be retained in