Business Correspondence Critique (Post 3)

For this week’s blog, all the ES2007S students are required to post an email or a business letter which we wish to critique on. As such, the following is an email which I have selected for this week’s assignment:

Hey people,

Let me introduce myself briefly. I am Y, the new sectional leader for Chinese calligraphy society. I really appreciate the hard work the previous committee has put into in the exhilarating activities. For that, I believe that they all deserve a round of applause, don't they? Most important of all, it is YOU, our dear members that has supported and encouraged them through your participation; YOU have made all the committee members' work worthwhile and meaningful. Therefore, THANK YOU.

In this new term, I hope that you would continue to support the new batch of committee members and we, in turn, will provide the best that we can to serve you. After all, that is our committee's motto, "Everything is for YOU."

I am writing to you for another reason. There are a few vacancies for committee members. They include:
1 Secretary
2 Logistic Members
2 Marketing members

There will be an interview session for interested applicants.

I urge you to take up these posts. Join us in this year's journey, to learn and to serve together. And I am always there for you.

I am looking forward to seeing you soon.


Y

This was an email that I received one semester ago regarding the recruitment of members for particular positions in the Chinese Calligraphy Society. After reading it, I noticed that there were several mistakes that could have been corrected, making it a better piece of writing. One of the mistakes that I first noticed was the lack of courtesy in this email. The writer should have addressed his/her recipients as ‘Dear fellow members’ instead of ‘Hey people’. The choice of words used by the writer was rather informal and might have caused a feeling of disrespect to the recipients.

Besides that, there was lack of correctness in the terms of the language used such as punctuation and grammar especially in paragraph one. One of the examples which reflected my point of view was in this sentence- ‘I really appreciate the hard work the previous committee has put into in the exhilarating activities.’ The writer should have used ‘had put’ instead of ‘has put’ because the previous committee members had already retired from their positions and the contributions that they made were in the past.

Furthermore, some sentences in this email were rather verbose and lacked of conciseness (i.e. the first paragraph). It was written in a rather lengthy manner and the punctuations used were not correct. As such, I would suggest that the first paragraph of the email should be corrected to the following:

“I am Y, the new sectional leader for the Chinese Calligraphy Society. I wish to express my gratitude for the hard work of the previous committee members in organizing various activities. I would also like to thank everyone who has given us the support and encouragement through your participation in our activities.”

Some inconsistencies in terms of tenses could also be found such as in the first sentence of paragraph two. The writer should have written the sentence in simple future tense. As such, the corrected sentence should be ‘In this new term, I hope that you will continue to support the new batch of committee members and we, in turn, will provide the best that we can to serve you.’

Another mistake found in this email was the incompleteness of the information given. As the purpose of this email was to recruit new committee members, the writer should have included more details regarding the interview (e.g. date, time, venue, etc.), the deadline of the application, the particulars which the applicants need to provide in their applications and to whom the applications should be sent to. Without all these information, doubt and confusion might have occurred among the readers as they do not know what they should do if they wish to apply for those positions.

In conclusion, revising, editing and proofreading are the three essential steps that one should not miss when it comes to writing, be it a business letter or an email. Hence, we should take note and spare some time to read and re-read our writing before it is published or being sent out.