A Few Words in Your Eyes: How to Improve Your Business Writing

Business letters are intended to influence minds as well as record information. Letters are also competing for busy people’s time so how do you achieve results from your letters?

Personalise letters. Write to people by name and spell names correctly. If you are sending circular letters and do not have the names of your contact, instead of opening the letter with Dear Householder, try: Dear Potential Burglar Victim (if selling security) or Dear Overcharged Borrower (if trying to sell cheaper finance). Instead of Dear Sales Manager, try: Dear Business Leader or Dear Knight of the Motorway. No, perhaps not.

Make letters look good. Too many letters are "badly dressed" because of the clumsy use of typefaces and clip art and dingbats available on word processing programmes. The default setting on most computers is 12-point type. It would be interesting to know who made this decision and why because most newspapers and books use 10 point for body copy, as does this bulletin. Here are some typographic tips:

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