The Stylistic Features of Business English Writing

高森 谷青松

Abstract: In this paper, it describes the stylistic feature of business English writing and points out that it owns five characters: plainness, clearness, conciseness, formalness, courtesy.

Key words: business writing；stylistic；feature

中图分类号： H319文献标识码： A文章编号：1672-1578（2011)09-0005-02

It is generally accepted that:“ Business circle is like battlefield”. In the business circle, time and efficiency are both the struggling aims for both sides. Therefore, business English writing needs conciseness and pursuit of efficiency. Turning over business English writing, we can see obviously that most of them is coming straight to the point, frankly to the subject matter. It has no polite or seasonal greeting or salutation, nor does unnecessary pleonasm. And the body of it also keeps to the principle of plainness, clearness, conciseness, formalness and courtesy.

1 The Stylistic Feature of Business English Writing

1.1 Plainness

Generally speaking, business English writing is not like literatural English or advertisement English. It does not pursue shining words, especially avoiding the use of flaring ,deserted or obscure words; It does not aim at the artial beauty of language so it employs seldom the rethoric methods. Such as trope, exaggeration, personification and so on. The language is unadorned even if it is a sale letter for commodity.

Please look at the following sale letter for mens suits:

Gentlemen:

Last year we achieved 30% increase in the sales of our businessmens suits. We believed that this happy state of affairs can be attributed to two causes. First, we managed to avoid passing on any part of our increased manufacturing costs. Second, we believe our designs and colors are the most attractive that we have ever produced.

And so we are happy to be able to tell you that our new seasons suits are, if anything, more attractive than last years and our prices will compare very favourably with those of any of our competitors. We believe that you will agree that our samples prove the truth of our claims.

We look forward to an even larger order than the one you favoured us with last year.

Yours truly

In this sale letter, it only uses 1 number ( 30%) to show the improvement of the rate of sale; it just makes use of 2 facts to account for the reason of this situation. In the letter, it totally employs 4 adjectives and 1 adverb, in which it only has 1 adjectives superlative degree( the most attractive) and 2 comparative degrees.( more attractive, larger). It is no flowery, flaring words or exaggeration words. Indeed, the language is unadorned and simple.

1.2 Clearness

To meet the needs of improving the communicative efficiency in the both trade sides, the sentences are natural and straight, the attitudes are clear and explicit. And to reach the accuracy, the meaning will never cut both ways, let alone be obscure and difficult to understand through which it avoids causing the misleading and error of information.

Business English writing has the following characteristics in the organization of sentence pattern, verb tense, paragraph so that could make the meaning clear:

(1) Use more imperative sentence.For example,there are plenty of imperative sentences in the sale letter. Its aim is to advise or urge to the customer to act immediately, and place an order to the goods hurrily.

(2) Use fewer exclamation sentence and tag question

sentence, instead of more use of statement sentences to make the narration much clearer.

(3) Use more complete sentences, less omit sentence so as not to lead to misunderstanding because of the other sides guess the content of omitting.

(4) In the letter for introducing the products capability,the present tenses using frequency is very high which give people a kind of the sense of reality and urgency.

(5) The paragraph in the business English writing is very short, strong in epitome, and usually at the one or two sentences in the first paragraph it will summarize the reason for writing it and the main content, and then directly enter the subject matter after the other side gaining the main threads of an affair.

1.3 Conciseness

In order to pursue time and efficiency, and not to pull out trade partners energy in analyzing the difficult structure, guessing or pondering the letters meaning which will waste time, lower efficiency even lose precious opportunities, the sentence structures in the business English writing are all comparatively easy and simple and seldom use overlapped clauses. Basically it will not appear that too complicated sentences like in the literary English, news English and science English. Furthermore, it is clear in the logic and accurate, strict in thought. Take that sale letter for mens suit for example again, it mentions “First”, “Second” two adverbs in the explanation of contributing the rise of rate of sale, which is concise in word usage , almost no superfluous words and precise in the narration.

1.4 Formalness

In the business English writing it usually uses more formal words, for example, “购买” use “Purchase”, not “buy”; “开始” use “commence”, not “begin”; “告知” use “inform”, not “tell”; “要求” use “require”, not “want or need”; “叙述”use “state”, not “say”; “足够的” use“sufficient”, not “enough”, these examples has many more. It chooses these formal words to make the business writing full of the stylistic color of formalness and to keep the serious, grand style.

Another embodiment of word usage in the business

English writing is: it uses few adverb in forming the“adverbial of manner” , but uses more the prepositional phrase which is made up of preposition and the root word of the adverb. Such as:

We thank you for your order of Sep, 25, which we accept with pleasure.

(谢谢贵公司九月二十五日寄来的订单.我们很乐意接受。)

We are also sending you by separate post some samples and inform you with confidence that when you have examined them you will agree that the goods are both excellent in quality and reasonable in price.

(今另封邮上一些样品, 相信经查阅后你方会同意我方产品质量上乘, 价格合理。)

Furthermore, when expressing “reason”, “result” concepts, the formal business writing frequently makes use of “ on account of; accordingly; thus; hence; consequently; owing to( the fact that···)” these words or phrases, “so; because” adverb or conjunction words will be used as few as possible. For example:

On account of the Sterling devaluation and the rising tendency in the market price of Bitter Apricot Kemels, we have to adjust our price to the level prevailing in the world market.

(由于英镑贬值和苦杏仁市场价格看涨, 我方不得不将价格调整到国际市场的水平。)

It is regrettable to see an order dropped owing to no agreement on price; however, we wish to recommend you another quality at a lower price for your consideration.

(很遗憾, 因为无法就价格达成协议,失去了一份订单. 但我们仍建议你们考虑较低价格的另一品级。)

1.5 Courtesy

The writer of business writing always keeps “You-attitude” so as to embody the principle of politeness. In the narration, it will take “You-centered” method to show the other side in order to make know of their respect and understanding, through which it is easy for the other side to accept your opinion.

On account of this, business writing uses less first person

(I, we) as subject, conversely, it uses more second person(you) or second persons owner pronoun plus noun(your + n.) as subject, or it usually uses passive voice, omitting first person

(I, we) these behavior subject. For example:

You are expected to send us some samples in time.

(望贵方及时寄给我们一些样品。)

Your early offer will be highly appreciated.

(早日发盘为感。)

Your attention is drawn to the facts that the price we quoted is on an FOB Seattle basis instead of on either FAS Seattle or CIF Hong Kong basis.

(请贵公司注意, 我们所报的价格是西雅图离岸价, 而不是西雅图船边交货价或香港到岸价。)

At the same time, business writing frequently uses the sentence pattern of “it” as the form subjective so that could make the diction smooth and mood euphemistical. For instance:

It is generally considered not advisable to act that way.

(这样做一般认为是不妥当的。)

It is a great pleasure to hear from you that you have marketed the new product.

(欣闻贵公司新产品已推出上市。)

It is with great regret that I learn the difficulty you experience in disposing the textiles, and the delay that is likely to occur.

(非常遗憾地闻知贵公司销售纺织品时很不易脱手,故此延误似乎必然会发生。)

2 Conclusion

To sum up, business English writing has its own stylistic features: plainness, clearness, conciseness, formalness, courtesy.

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作者简介：高森，上海体育学院外语系教师，硕士，讲师。

谷青松，上海工程技术大学基础教学学院外语部教师，硕士，讲师。