Types of business correspondence in the contemporary office

We live in the computer age, and modern businesses have access to many more different means of communication than businesses had 20 years ago.

At first people thought that computers would eliminate (or at least almost eliminate) paper… Now we use much more paper than before computers. Paradoxes of everyday life…

The types of business correspondence we use today are:

• business letters
• grades
• faxes and
• Email

When someone mentions “business correspondence” around you, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? If you’re like most of us, you’d probably immediately picture business letters. Despite the fact that today business email is used much more than letters. But business letters have been the only type of business correspondence for far longer than any of us can remember, so “business correspondence” is still associated with them more than any other type. And like anything that has “been there” for a long time, business letters should only have very well-established rules and regulations. So none of us are surprised when today’s students are taught to use phrases like “this is to remind you,” “with regard to the above,” “I am writing to advise you” during their communication classes.

And then students become employees who need to write business letters and of course they write them in the way that they have been taught without a doubt. “If everyone does it, if my teachers do it that way, then it’s the only way.” “Creativity is not for writing business letters!” And business letters become “works of art” in the worst sense because people seem to compete in stuffing them with as many pompous and ambiguous phrases as possible.

Although this is gradually changing. More and more we try to write business letters using clear and concise language, a natural style and a conversational tone. People even use “I” instead of “we” when writing business letters these days, which makes the letters less flowery and allows the person behind the letter to be seen.

commercial notes they are not studied in school as thoroughly as business letters. They are probably considered a by-product of business letters and treated as secondary. Also, they appeared around the 1920s and are much “younger” than business letters. This is probably why they tend to be less formal and often sound more human. Every business uses a lot of business memorandums, and many of them today are sent via email, making them even more ubiquitous.

Business faxes it became common during the 1980s. Actually, they have been around longer than memos, but for a long time very few people had access to fax machines. So most of us would say that faxes have been a part of the business environment for about 30 years, which is nothing compared to the lifespan of business letters. Consequently, there are not many set rules for writing faxes. Each one wrote them in the way he saw fit. And now faxes are slowly dying. Of course, there is faxing via a computer, but it’s so close to email that it should probably be treated as such. But don’t be too quick to throw away your fax machine. The fax is still widely used, in some countries more than others, and it will be for at least a few years.

business email… the newest and most common type of business correspondence in today’s office. How could we have lived and even done business without him?! How can there be people who don’t use email at all? There are still some eccentrics like that, you know? Email is the blessing and curse of modern life, including modern businesses. It is very useful as a means of instant communication, but it becomes a burden for those who have thousands of unopened messages in their inbox. Spam is also a very big problem, although a little less lately when there are ways to take advantage of it (sort of). Email is still in its infancy, although we all know that it is here to stay and will be used more and more… if nothing better comes along, of course. The good thing is that little by little we are getting used to treating e-mail with care and realizing that, although it looks a lot like a telephone conversation, it is still a type of business correspondence, with “business” being the key word.

Business letters, emails, and memos will be widely used types of business correspondence for quite some time. Faxes still exist, too, and the next 10 years or so will show whether they’ll fully merge with email. Who knows, we might even have new types of business correspondence in a few years.