Communication Skills and Business Correspondence
This domain tests whether you can write business messages that get a reply: letters, emails, notices, minutes and reports. Marks come from format, tone and completeness as much as from language.
Principles and process
- Seven Cs: clear, concise, concrete, correct, coherent, complete and courteous.
- Process: sender → encoding → message → channel → receiver → decoding → feedback, with noise distorting any stage. Barriers are semantic, psychological, organisational and physical.
- Formal writing avoids slang and contractions; the receiver, not the sender, decides whether a message is clear.
Letter layout
Letterhead, reference number, date, inside address, subject line, salutation, body in three paragraphs (purpose, detail, action), complimentary close, signature block and enclosures. Common types: enquiry, quotation, order, complaint, adjustment, collection and circular.
Notices and minutes
A notice states date, time, place and agenda, and for a general meeting requires 21 clear days. Minutes are written in the third person, past tense, and record decisions and resolutions - not the discussion that produced them.
Worked example
An order arrived with 20 of 200 units damaged. Weak opening: "You always send defective goods." Corrected opening: "Our order no. 412 dated 6 July arrived today; 20 of the 200 units are damaged in transit (photographs enclosed). Please replace them by 20 July or credit our account." The revision states reference, defect, evidence, the remedy wanted and a deadline - the five facts a complaint must carry - while staying courteous enough to keep the supplier cooperating.
Traps
- Omitting the subject line, which loses the reader immediately.
- Writing minutes in the first person and present tense.
- Mixing complaint and adjustment letters: one asks for remedy, the other grants it.
- Vague deadlines ("at the earliest") instead of a date.
- Sending an email with a blank subject and an unreferenced attachment.