The Book of Business Etiquette - Nella Braddy Henney (top 10 non fiction books of all time TXT) 📗
- Author: Nella Braddy Henney
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It is astonishing how many letters go out every day unsigned, lacking enclosures, carrying the wrong addresses, bearing insufficient postage, and showing other evidences of carelessness and thoughtlessness. In a town in New England last year one of the specialty shops received at Christmas time twenty different lots of money—money orders, stamps, and cash—by mail, not one of which bore the slightest clue to the identity of the sender. Countless times during the year this happens in every mail order house.
The initials of the dictator and of the stenographer in the lower left-hand corner of a letter serve not only to identify the carbon, but often to place the letter itself if it has gone out without signature. The signature should be legible, or if the one who writes it enjoys making flourishes he may do so if he will have the name neatly typed either just below the name or just above it. It should be written in ink (black or blue ink), not in pencil or colored crayon, and it should be blotted before the page is folded. The dictator himself should sign the letter whenever possible. “Dictated but not read” bears the mark of discourtesy and sometimes brings back a letter with “Received but not read” written across it. When it is necessary to leave the office before signing his letters, a business man should deputize his stenographer to do it, in which case she writes his name in full with her initials just below it. A better plan is to have another person take care of the entire letter, beginning it something like, “Since Mr. Blake is away from the office to-day he has asked me to let you know——”
The complimentary close to a business letter should be “Yours truly,” “Yours sincerely” or something of the kind, and not “Yours cordially,” “Yours faithfully” or “Yours gratefully” unless the circumstances warrant it.
In writing a letter as a part of a large organization one should use “We” instead of “I.” A firm acts collectively, no one except the president has a right to the pronoun of the first person, and he (if he is wise) seldom avails himself of it. If the matter is so near personal as to make “We” somewhat ridiculous “I” should, of course, be used instead. But one should be consistent. If “I” is used at the beginning it should be continued throughout.
Similarly a letter should be addressed to a firm rather than to a person, for if the person happens to be absent some one else can then take charge of it. But the address should also include the name of the addressee (whenever possible) or “Advertising Manager,” “Personnel Manager” or whatever the designation of his position may be. The name may be placed in the lower left-hand corner of the letter “Attention Mr. Green” or “Attention Advertising Manager,” and it may also be placed just above the salutation inside the letter. Sometimes the subject of the letter is indicated in the same way, Re Montana shipment, Re Smythe manuscript, etc. These lines may be typed in red or in capital letters so as to catch the attention of the reader at once. If a letter is more than two pages long this line is often added to the succeeding pages, a very convenient device, for letters are sometimes misplaced in the files and this helps to locate them.
A business letter should never be longer than necessary. If three lines are enough it is absurd to use more, especially if the letter is going to a firm which handles a big correspondence. Some one has said with more truth than exaggeration that no man south of Fourteenth Street in New York reads a letter more than three lines long. But there is danger that the too brief letter will sound brusque. Mail order houses which serve the small towns and the rural districts say that, all other things being equal, it is the long sales letter which brings in the best results. Farmers have more leisure and they are quite willing to read long letters if (and this if is worth taking note of) they are interesting.
All unnecessary words and all stilted phrases should be stripped from a letter. “Replying to your esteemed favor,” “Yours of the 11th inst. to hand, contents noted,” “Yours of the 24th ult. received. In reply would say,” “Awaiting a favorable reply,” “We beg to remain” are dead weights. “Prox” might be added to the list, and “In reply to same.” “Per diem” and other Latin expressions should likewise be thrown into the discard. “As per our agreement of the 17th” should give place to “According to our agreement of the 17th,” and, wherever possible, simplified expression should be employed. Legal phraseology should be restricted to the profession to which it belongs. Wills, deeds, and other documents likely to be haled into court need “whereas's” and “wherefores” and “said's” and “same's” without end, but ordinary business letters do not. It is perfectly possible to express oneself clearly in the language of conversation (which is also the language of business) without burying the meaning in tiresome verbiage. And yet reputable business houses every day send out letters which are almost ridiculous because of the stiff and pompous way they are written.
The following letter was sent recently by one of the oldest furniture houses in America:
Dear Madam:
Herewith please find receipt for full payment of your bill. Please accept our thanks for same.
Relative to the commission due Mrs. Robinson would say that if she will call at our office at her convenience we shall be glad to pay same to her.
Thanking you for past favors, we beg to remain,
Yours very truly,
Contrast that with this:
Dear Mrs. Brown:
We are returning herewith your receipted bill. Thank you very much.
If you will have Mrs. Robinson call at our office at her convenience we shall take pleasure in paying her the commission due her.
Yours very truly,
Here is another letter so typical of the kind that carelessness produces:
Dear Sir:
I have your letter of the 27th inst. and I have forwarded it to Mr. Stubbs and will see him in a few days and talk the matter over.
I remain
Yours sincerely,
Would it not have been just as easy to write:
Dear Mr. Thompson:
Thank you for your letter of the 27th. I have forwarded it to Mr. Stubbs and will see him in a few days to talk the matter over.
Your sincerely,
In the preparation of this volume a letter of inquiry was sent out to a number of representative business houses all over the country. It was a pleasure to read the excellent replies that came in response to it. One letter reached its destination in the midst of a strike, but the publicity manager of the firm sent a cordial answer, which began:
Your very courteous letter to Mr. Jennings came at a time when his mind is pretty well occupied with thoughts concerning the employment situation in our various plants.
We shall endeavor, therefore, to give you such information as comes to mind with regard to matters undertaken by the company which have contributed to the standard of courtesy which exists in the departments here.
We select another at random:
It pleases us very much to know that our company has been described to you as one which practises courtesy in business. We should like nothing better than to have all our employees live up to the reputation credited to them by Mr. Haight.
As for our methods of obtaining it——
Contrast these two excellent beginnings with (and this one is authentic, too):
In reply to yours of the 6th inst. relative to what part courtesy plays in business and office management would say that it is very important.
Routine letters must be standardized—a house must conserve its own time as well as that of its customers—but a routine letter must never be used unless it adequately covers the situation. There is no excuse for a poor routine letter, for there is plenty of time to think it out, and there is no excuse for sending a routine letter when it does not thoroughly answer the correspondent's question. The man who is answering a letter must put himself in the place of the one who wrote it.
This is a fair sample of what happens when a letter is written by a person who either has no imagination at all, or does not use what he has.
A woman who had just moved to New York lost the key to her apartment and wrote to her landlord for another. This answer came:
Replying to your letter, will say am sorry but it is not the custom of the landlord to furnish more than one key for an apartment. Should the tenant lose or misplace the key it is up to them to replace same.
The woman felt a justifiable sense of irritation. She was new to the city and thought she was taking the most direct method of replacing “same.” Perhaps she should have known better, but she did not. Buying a key is not so simple as buying a box of matches and to a newcomer it is a matter of some little difficulty. She was at least entitled to a bit more information and to more courteous treatment than is shown in the letter signed by his landlordly hand. She went to see him and found him most suave and polite (which was his habit face to face with a woman). He explained the heavy expense of furnishing careless tenants with new keys (which she understood perfectly to begin with) and was most apologetic when he discovered that she had intended all the time to pay for it. It would have been just as easy for him in the beginning to write:
I am sorry that I cannot send you a key, but we have had so many similar requests that we have had to discontinue complying with them.
You will find an excellent locksmith at 45 West 119 St. His telephone number is Main 3480.
Or:
I am sending you the key herewith. There is a nominal charge for it which will be added to your bill at the end of the month. I hope it will reach you safely. It is a nuisance to be without one.
Imagination is indispensable to good letter writing, but it is going rather far when one sends thanks in advance for a favor which he expects to be conferred. Even those who take pleasure in granting favors like to feel that they do so of their own free will. It takes away the pleasure of doing it when some one asks a favor and then assumes the thing done. Royalty alone are so highly privileged as to have simply to voice their wishes to have them complied with, and royalty has gone out of fashion.
At one point in their journey all the travellers in “Pilgrim's Progress” exchanged burdens, but they did not go far before each one begged to have back his original load. That is what would happen if the man who dictates a letter were to exchange places with his stenographer. Each would then appreciate the position of the other, and if they were once in a while to make the transfer in their minds (imagination in business again) they would come nearer the sympathetic understanding that is the basis of good teamwork.
The responsibility for a letter is divided between them, and it is important that the circumstances under which it is written should be favorable. The girl should be placed in a comfortable position so that she can hear without difficulty. The dictator should not smoke whether she objects to it or not. He should have in mind
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