Critique on Business Correspondence

From: Frederick Wong
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 6:08 PM
To: GR-MAPL All Staff
Subject: Building Announcement: Car Park Barrier

To all staffs,

Please be informed that the Car Park Barrier will be turned ON during Friday Off Days, Weekends and Public Holidays.

Please reduce speed when approaching the barriers and be cautious when maneuvering through the barriers.

If you need any assistance or have any feedback for improvements, pls kindly contact Tan Sin Bee (ext 28726 / 91 16 16 15) or Fred (ext 28688 / 961 62 123).

regards,

fred...

This is an email written by a company facility manager who intended to inform the company staffs about the setting-up of car park barrier during company off days.

This business letter supposed to be formal since it’s delivered to all the staffs in the company regarding the changes made. The tone used in this email sounds rather instructive. Nevertheless, the reason why the car park barrier is turned on was not mentioned here. Besides that, some important format which is supposed to be included in this email was missing, for instance a proper salutation. To my opinion, it’s advisable to start the email with “Dear XXX (Company) Staffs” instead of “To all staffs”.

Apart from that, it was found that the grammar in this email has violated the rule of Correctness in the 7C principles. Both the first alphabet of the word “regards” and the name of the writer “fred” at the end of this email are supposed to be written in capital letter. And I suggest that the word “Regards” could be replaced with “Yours Faithfully” if the salutation used above is Dear Staffs. Short form like “pls” and the dots present at the back of the sender’s name seems inappropriate as well.

In terms of clarity of the information given in this email, the manager who wrote this message also did not mention clearly what is the actual date that the implementation of this measure is going to be started. Meanwhile, the actual post of the sender is not stated here as well. Thus, it’s advisable that the 7C’s need to be revised again in this context to generate a more effective writing of business correspondence.

Anyway, overall the whole message is considered concise; hence it’s believed to be able to enhance reader’s interest to finish reading it at the first place.

Love Never Fails

I always feel that the relationship between mankind is very delicate. Mankind is destined to cling to each other throughout our whole life and find the satisfactory from our relationship with each other. However, the closer we are to each other, the more often we would experience the conflict that turns our relationship unpleasant to both parties. Anger is always the fuse that touches off the war.

There was an email I read before that is still vivid in my mind, which was about the delicacy of human relationship. It questioned why people tend to speak louder or shout to each other when quarreling. While the answer given made me stunned and prostrated. The reason is that our hearts are getting far apart from each other during the moment when we quarrel with each other, thus we hardly can listen to each other.

We can find that most of the time when we get angry, the person who is close to us especially our family will be the victims that we usually give vent to. I have two close friends who are twin brothers. We always have a wrong perception that twins are close to each other. However, this stereotype has to be changed now. These two brothers are physically close in their life. They are studying in the same university, taking the same course, having the same interests. But somehow they are far away from each other spiritually. Maybe due to some unknown psycho reasons, they tend to compare with each other in many aspects. They are also sensitive to each other’s way of speaking and behaving. Moreover, both parties could be easily got hurt or provoked by each other for even a very trivial thing. Every now and then one of them will confide to me about their relationship problems, which I don’t know how to advice other than asking them to tolerate and understand each other. One of the twins seems aware of and very concern about this conflict, whereas another one seems much more passive in this situation. I can see that the latter one tends to avoid talking about this problem. Neither of them wants to bow and gives way in this situation. To some extend, I feel that I am in the position to do something in order to break the ice between them. However, I am lacking the communication skills as a third party to bring reconciliation between them. Nevertheless, I am contradicting myself by believing that no relationship is so entangled that nothing can bring its reconciliation, provided that they are willing to hold back a bit and be humble to each other.

In my personal point of view, forgiveness is one of the best remedy to cure broken relationship or reconcile a quarrel. But my friends always laugh at me saying that it’s not as easy as what I expect. Anyway, I have tried and it works. Apart from that, we must accept the fact that we are made different from each other in many aspects from cultural background to perceptions to things. So it’s nothing more regrettable than not appreciating people (who care for us) in our life. Truly hope that the two twin brothers will reconcile and start to appreciate each other in the future.