SPCC 2 Marks Each

Letters written for business, administrative or governmental matters are called formal letters. There are two types.
1. Commercial letters. 2. Official letters.

The characteristics of effective business correspondence are : (i) Clarity (ii) Conciseness (iii) Completness (iv) Concreteness (v) Consideration (vi) Correctness (vii) Courteous.

The popular styles of business correspondence are: (1) Fully Blocked Form (2) Modified Blocked Form.

Business letters are written for business transactions, understanding contract, financial transactions, production, sales, advertisement, misunderstanding, explanation and reconciliation.

Business letters make the business transactions speedier. It informs the customers about various products and sales promotion, thus creating prestige of firm. In this way business letters play a role of a salesman.

To increase the social stakeholders of business, letters are written to various stakeholders of business like customers, debtors, creditors, businessman, suppliers, manufacturers, agents, employees andther government offices for various matters. Thus effective letter writing helps to create prestige of the firm.

The seller informs the buyer through circulars about various sales promotion tools like discounts, free gifts etc. This motivates the buyer to places more oder. Thus, business letters help in increasing sales.

The buyer writes letter of order and seller writes letter accepting order. This is considered as an ‘agreement” in eyes of law. In future if any dispute arises these letters can be considered as evidance thus business letters are helpful from legal viewpoint.

When a firm sells goods on credit and buyer does not pay money on time then seller needs to send him statement as reminder along with the due date of payment. This helps to collect dues on time. So, letter writing is helpful from accounting viewpoint.

Characteristics of letter writing are: (i) Easy and less expensive method (ii) Useful to both the parties. (iii) Legal evidance (iv) Secrecy can be maintained (v) No limitation of place, distance and time.

Examples of informal letters are (1) letters of greetings (2) letters of condolence (3) letters of congratulations (4) letters of invitations. etc.

Correspondence that serves the purpose for which the commercial correspondence is intended is called effective correspondence.

In other words, correspondence for commercial purposes in a special format and using a special type of vocabulary is commercial correspondence.