Beverly L.

Pecante EM8
BSED English

A business letter is usually a letter from one company to another, or between such organizations and their customers,
clients and other external partyes. The overall style of letter depends on the relationship between the parties
concerned. Business letters can have many type of contents, for example to request direct information or action from
another party, to order supplies from a supplier, to point out a mistake by the letter's recipient, to reply directly to a
request, to apologize for a wrong, or to convey goodwill. A business letter is sometimes useful because it produces a
permanent written record, and may be taken more seriously by the recipient than other forms of communication.
Indentation formats
Business letters conform to generally one of six indentation formats: standard, open, block, semi-block, modified block,
and modified semi-block. Put simply, "semi-" means that the first lines of paragraphs are indented; "modified" means
that the sender's address, date, and closing are significantly indented.
Standard
The standard-format letter uses a colon after the salutation and a comma after the complimentary closing.
Open
The open-format letter does not use punctuation after the salutation and no punctuation after the complimentary
closing.
Block
In a block-format letter, all text is left aligned and paragraphs are not indented.
Modified block
In a modified-block format letter, all text is left aligned (except the author's address, date, and closing), paragraphs are
not indented, and the author's address, date, and closing begin at the center point.

Salutation and Closing

Business letters can feature one of two types of punctuation based on the punctuation marks you use after your salutation
and closing. Mixed punctuation uses a comma after the salutation and a comma after the closing:
Dear Mr. Robert Edmunds,
Sincerely,
Open punctuation omits any type of punctuation after the salutation and closing:
Dear Mr. Robert Edmunds
Sincerely
Business Writing Proper Punctuation
SEMI-COLONS
Semi-colons (the comma with the dot above it) are most often used in two main places: lists where the items
in the list have commas in them and to join two sentences together. We covered joining two complete
sentences with a semi-colon in Lesson 1, so now let’s take a look at long, complex lists.
Example – Developing healthful habits includes many things such as eating foods that are nutritious, but that
fit your medical needs as well; exercising daily, within your current health parameters; and balancing the four
main aspects of life: mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual.
The example is punctuated correctly. Note that if the list used commas to separate its elements, the commas
within the elements plus the others would create confusion as to which phrases went with each element.
COLONS
A good rule of thumb to follow on using a colon is that there should always be a complete sentence on one
side or the other, and perhaps even both. Typically, a colon signals that additional clarification is coming after
it.
Example – The importance lies in balancing the four main aspects of life: mental, emotional, physical, and
spiritual.
The example is correct in that it contains a complete sentence to the left of the colon. Notice that the
information after the colon helps clarify something before it, what the four main aspects of life are.
Colons are often used incorrectly, especially to lead into bulleted or numbered lists.
Example – The top priorities are: o mental o emotional o physical The example is punctuated incorrectly due
to the first rule listed above for colons. to the left of the colon is a sentence fragment “The top priorities are.”
and to the right of it is just a list. In order to keep the colon, the fragment on the left needs some kind of noun
phrase or subject complement to turn it into a complete sentence. A common and easy way to correct this is
to change it to “The top priorities are listed as follows:” However, you might also choose to just leave the
colon out completely, but leave the text as is. (Also, note that a bulleted or numbered list does NOT have
punctuation at the end of each item unless that item is a complete sentence and requires a period at the end.)
QUOTATION MARKS
Quotation marks are used for a variety of things in writing, the most common being dialogue. That subject
could take up a lesson by itself, but suffice it to say that business writing doesn’t have much call for dialogue.
The other place quotation marks are often used in writing, and especially business writing, are to offset a
particular word or phrase. This is becoming less and less common with the advent of word processing
programs that allow for easy insertion of a bold, italicized, or highlighted font type. However, quotation marks
can still form a useful part of any writer’s toolbox.
Example – In the previous sentence, the words “bold,” “italicized,” and “highlighted” all refer to methods of
offsetting particular pieces of text to give them emphasis.
The example is punctuated correctly. Note the commas after “bold” and “italicized.” One of the most common
mistakes writers make is placing those other punctuation marks behind the second half of the quotation mark,
like this: “…the words ‘bold’, ‘italicized’, and ‘highlighted’…” Another common – and lazy – error is to just
include the entire list in quotation marks: …’bold, italicized, and highlighted’…” Neither of these is correct
according to conventional usage rules. Also note that, regardless of whether a double or single quotation mark
is used originally, singles always go inside doubles.
HYPHENS
On your computer keyboard, the key after the 0 (zero) on the top row is a hyphen. It’s a shorter punctuation
mark than a dash. A dash is actually comprised of two hyphens put together and is used completely
differently.
Hyphens were previously used to break a word into syllables – and still connect it – when it wouldn’t fit on one
line. With computers, that problem is alleviated completely due to automatic spacing of letters. However,
there are still hyphenated words in the English language, and more are coming into use as various disciplines
progress.
Example – “State-of-the-art” is a hyphenated word that’s been around for while, but “high-speed” and “voice-
over,” from the Information Technology field, are fairly new.
You can typically check the spelling of hyphenated words that have been around a long time with a standard
spell-checker. From the example, the first hyphenated word will likely be spelled the same way no matter
where you check. But hyphenated words that have only recently come into being – like the second two in the
example – likely aren’t in them. For that matter, the newer words probably don’t have an actual convention
for spelling/punctuation yet! A general rule of thumb is that when two words commonly go together as a
noun, they aren’t hyphenated. But when you use those same two words together as an adjective, they have a
hyphen between them. (Example – Our connections run at high speed VS. We offer high-speed connections.)
DASHES
As noted above, dashes are actually two hyphens, side-by-side. Most word processing programs today have a
feature that allows you to always link two hyphens so that they form a long dash. Dashes are used for a variety
of things, the most common being to replace commas around non-restrictive phrases and clauses and to
connect two ideas – or even sentences – together.
Example 1 – The payments – disability and retirement – come from the same Social Security Trust Fund
account.
Example 2 – The software provides security from intermediate level hackers – and peace of mind for you!
In example 1, you can see that the text between the dashes is just additional information and not needed to
restrict the “kind” of payment being discussed. And example 2 connects two dissimilar ideas. The first part of
example 2 is a technical statement, but the writer has chosen to connect the personal statement – almost as
an afterthought. The method in the second example helps create variety in sentence structure, and variety is
one of the things that helps keep your readers’ interest levels high.
ELLIPSES
An ellipsis is a series of three periods in a row. In the “old” days, an ellipsis (notice a single one ends in “-is”
and the plural ends in “-es”) was only used to say that information was missing. For example, let’s say I wanted
to write part of the above sentence in order to discuss it. I might choose not to write out the entire sentence
again: “In the sentence above, the section that reads “In the ‘old’ days…” The ellipsis says that in the original,
there was more text after the word “days.”
However, the Computer Age has again made inroads into the possible use of the ellipsis. The ellipsis is
commonly used…in internet chat rooms and instant messenger programs…to replace a variety of punctuation
marks.
Example – Some people now use it virtually the same as the dash…it might replace a comma, a semi-colon, a
colon, or even a period.