Greetings and closings in business letters and emails

Image by Luigi Diamanti

An area of common confusion in South African business English is how to start and end business letters and business emails.  To clear matters up, here is your definitive guide to “salutations” and closings.

Let us start with business letters.  If you know the person’s name, to greet the person in starting the letter, always use Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms/ or Miss (Insert Surname) followed by a comma.  Be very careful of titles with ladies, if you are unsure, rather use “Ms.” as us ladies can tend to be a little sensitive regarding our marital status. 
If you are unsure of the name of the person to whom you are writing, start with “To whom this may concern”.

Matters become a little more complicated with the closing of the letter.  If you do not know the person to whom you are writing, you cannot end the letter with “sincerely”. It is only once you have formed a relationship with your addressee that “sincerely” is appropriate, so until that time you will need to end your letter with “Yours faithfully”.

Business emails should follow the same protocol, however there is a common practice in South Africa to end emails with “Kind regards.” Is “Kind regards” acceptable? This is a topic for debate, as can “regards” be “kind”? Personally, I prefer “Yours faithfully / yours sincerely”, however at the same time we must acknowledge that email etiquette is constantly evolving, and in South Africa, we seem to be evolving our own! As “Kind regards” is now so commonly used and culturally accepted, I do not anticipate anyone will have any major issue with you using this as your email closing line, but do not use it to end your business letters.

And on that note, let me say “Kind regards” everyone, let me know if you have any other questions regarding business letter or email salutations and closings.

Image by Luigi Diamanti http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

For more information contact us on www.minutetakersclinic.co.za

Speak better, present better and make some friends along the way!

I went along to Toastmasters the other night to find out what it's all about, and to see whether the compliments and criticisms I had heard were true.  As a facilitator, presentation skills are an essential part of my business, in fact I help people improve theirs, therefore it is important I learn as much as I can too!  So here is my humble review of my first encounter with Toastmasters!

Over 270000 members and 13000 clubs in 116 countries

Firstly some background. Toastmasters are an international organisation that have been helping people with public speaking since 1924.  They have no instructor, and encourage a supportive environment whereby they evaluate each other's performance according to set criteria and members participate in a series of challenges in accordance with the 'Competent Communication Manual' and 'Competent Leadership Manual'. They are called Toastmasters because it is tradition to toast the speaker although one does not have to consume alcohol, and it is also important to applaud the speaker to encourage and show appreciation.

I have heard some criticisms that Toastmasters is 'formulaic'. I have to disagree. As a skilled evaluator, I did not feel the talks last night were formulaic at all, in fact I have to say the speakers who ranged from relatively new members to more experienced, were fantastic! No filler words, great body language, engaged with the audience and overall great talk!  I must say that the sources of the negative comments have a lot to learn from their Toastmaster peers.

The group I attended is the 4th Dimension at the Campus at Dimension Data Fourways - http://4thdimension.org.za/.  There are many groups in SA and each group is said to have its own 'vibe'. For some people, it may be important to spend some time finding the right group, I must say I think 4th Dimension are fantastic for me! I feel humbled and look forward to learning from all these wonderful and talented people.

What I appreciated is Toastmasters appoint a 'Grammarian' for the evening to comment on the usage of grammar.  Even if your written usage is excellent, often when one speaks things tend to fall apart so this is really useful! There is also the word of the day, something I really enjoy with my daily free subscription from dictionary.com, and Toastmasters use the same concept and encourage usage of the word of the day throughout the evening to reinforce its usage and ensure by the end of the evening everyone has incorporated it into their vocabulary.

I would certainly recommend Toastmasters to anyone who wants to improve their confidence, their presentations or even just network and make some friends.  I think there is great scope for self development here and it is affordable, fun and intelligent. I am very impressed with this well coordinated organization and look forward to becoming a Toastmaster in my own right too.  Why not pop along for a visit to a group near you, find your nearest club using this link http://reports.toastmasters.org/findaclub/.

For more info contact us on www.minutetakersclinic.co.za

How to ease some of the pain of meetings!

I recently wrote this article for my time management blog, and realised that I really should share it with my Business English readers!  I'm sure that most of you have to spend some time in meetings as part of your function, and may even be required to take minutes of meetings.

This is a fantastic time saving gadget that takes the pain out of meetings by not only recording them, but by assisting you in transcribing them. Have a look, if you can get your hands on one of these, life will be so much easier!

http://timeclinic.blogspot.com/2012/05/fantastic-time-saving-gadget-for.html

For more information contact us on www.minutetakersclinic.co.za

Beware the homonyms!

Image by Chris Sharp

Words that are similar to each other are known as ‘homonyms’, and it is these little gremlins that make daily fools of us in our English communication.  Spellcheckers will not pick up your misuse of these words as they are acceptable and similar to the ones you are really looking for, but are spelt differently and often have disastrously different interpretations.

Here are some of my favourite most commonly misused homonyms in South Africa.

• Stationery and stationary. You cannot order stationary, folks! You could order a vehicle to be stationary, which would mean that you are requesting it to stop moving! The type of stationery that you wish to order in the office is the variety that contains an ‘e’ in the spelling of the word.  Think of ‘e’ for envelopes.
• Site and sight.  Nothing involving your vision must ever be described as site. A site is either a place, or a website! Your eyes give you eyesight!
• Conscious and conscience.  If you are conscious you are awake, congratulations! Conscious is the opposite of unconscious or asleep - or maybe even in a coma! You cannot have a guilty conscious. Your conscience is the mechanism that enables you to tell right from wrong and prevents you from eating the last chocolate in the bag (or not).
• Dependant and dependent.  The first version of the word is a beneficiary you would add to a policy, such as a spouse or a child.  The second version is the opposite of independent.

The differences may seem slight, but consider with horror the consequences of the following sentence. “My conscious prevented me from being dependant upon my business partner, I preferred to pay for my own stationary and always kept a list of my expenses incurred on sight.”

I will post more homonyms shortly, and if there are any you wish to share, please comment on this post.

For more information contact us on www.minutetakersclinic.co.za

Image by Chris Sharp http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=584

Increase your vocabulary - the easy way!

Image by digitalart

Let's be honest.  When we learn new words, we do so 'intuitively' most of the time.  We seldom check the actual meanings of these words, resulting in our often incorrect usage based on assumptions.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a fun way for all of us to improve our vocabulary. Please read on.

One of my favourite sites is www.dictionary.com.  You can also access their thesaurus version of the same site using this very link, or by typing www.thesaurus.com. (I really do believe that in order to learn a new word, we need to consult both the dictionary and the thesaurus.)  Not only is this site one of my favourite resources, but it also has a very useful free subscription service to "Word of the day".

Simply enter your email address and you will shortly receive a word with a full definition and examples of its usage each and every day.  You can make this fun inside your organisation by forwarding this email amongst your friends with your own examples of sentence usage with the word of the day.  Not only does this become highly amusing, but I can guarantee you that you will always remember that word.

I am sure we can  all agree that an increased vocabulary is extremely useful, however, remember to avoid alienating your audience when writing by using large and uncommon words.  Whilst understanding the meaning of every word in the English language is very beneficial, using all of them will probably not be appreciated!  Keep it simple wherever possible. 

Enjoy www.dictionary.com!

For more information contact us on www.minutetakersclinic.co.za

Image by digitalart http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2280

Starting sentences with conjunctive adverbs

In South Africa, we tend to follow British English rather than American English.  You will find that American English is more lax when it comes to following rules such as starting sentences with 'joining words' or conjunctive adverbs.  The conjunctive adverbs I am referring to are my two pet hates, "therefore" and "however".  

Image by David Castillo Dominici

It is best practice to place these words in the middle of a sentence, preceded and then subsequently followed by commas.   There does seem to be a big debate surrounding when it is appropriate to start a sentence with 'however', you can read more here http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/starting-a-sentence-with-however.aspx. 

My advice is the following.  Life is hard enough as it is.  Let us keep it simple.  To avoid over-complicating matters I simply avoid starting sentences with 'therefore' and 'however' - if I am writing business correspondence.

I was asked if it is correct to start a sentence with "due to"?  I have to admit I have been unable to find any evidence to indicate that one should not, but please do share with me if you disagree.  Based on my findings, one can start a sentence with "due to" provided that a noun follows thereafter.  "Due to" should be used in stead of 'because of" in formal writing where possible.

For more information contact us on www.minutetakersclinic.co.za

Image by David Castillo Dominici http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=3062

Addressing clients in writing - interesting complications!

Image by Markuso

Two very interesting questions I was asked the other day were "how does one address a client in writing if I do not know the sex of the person?", and secondly what if other cultures differ to our own and the person's first name is, in fact, stated as their last name?  Feeling confused? I don't blame you! Let's discuss.

Firstly, if one does not know the sex of the client as their name might be a little unusual, write the salutation to them, leaving out the title.  So, instead of writing "Dear Mr. Po Wi" (please forgive my totally random example here), rather write "Dear Po Wi".  That will also rescue you from any potential embarrassment regarding professional title and marital status.

And now for the issue of different cultures. You are going to have to do your homework here and make sure you are certain of the nationality of the person in question.  The cultures that traditionally place the person's first name last - which is known as the 'Eastern Order' - are China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam,  Hungary, Romania and even some African countries.  In some Indian states, the same rule would also apply.

This makes addressing Indian people confusing for some of us.  It would be best to use caution and ask politely if the last name is the first name or family name if you are in doubt before writing any official correspondence.

Please note that Japanese names are often observed to be followed by "-san", "-kun", or "-chan" and these words do not form part of the name, but are titles that you may drop when addressing people in written correspondence.

Did this help you? Please feel free to comment and let's discuss any other interesting scenarios you may have encountered!

For more information contact us on www.minutetakersclinic.co.za

Image by Markuso http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1913