Page 33 - How to write effective business English your guide to excellent professional communication by Fiona Talbot

22 How to Write Effective Business English

● ● spot mistakes at draft stage;
● ● remove them before sending writing out;
● ● present a totally professional corporate image.

Checking, even double-checking your writing before you send may
take more time but pays great dividends. That’s why many compa-
nies ask me to train staff to do exactly this, because although it
may be second nature to you, that’s not the case for many.

How readers can react to written
mistakes

Just take a look at two problematic sentences and let’s see how
readers might react.

1 Thank you for your order. You are demanded to send payment
within 30 days.

First of all, the expression ‘you are demanded’ isn’t correct English.
It’s better to write something on the lines of ‘Please send payment
within 30 days’ or ‘You are requested to pay within 30 days.’ In
English there is an expression ‘to demand payment’ but it has a
very strong connotation. It’s generally used for the final notice be-
fore a company pursues legal action, to collect money owing to it
in an overdue account. When the expression is used validly, it
would be on the following lines: ‘This is a final demand for pay-
ment (within 30 days) of your outstanding account.’
So in our first example we have an outright grammatical mis-
take. But the wrong tone can also count as a writing mistake.
Let’s look at the text again: ‘Thank you for your order. You are
demanded to send payment within 30 days.’ Although the reader
sees the initial words ‘Thank you’, the next sentence introduces a
harsh, accusatory tone. Yet this is clearly one of the first points of
contact between customer and company. The order has just been