Ch. 9: Additional Case 2

Shaping Correspondence To Meet Your Audience’s Needs

This case is best for groups.

Background

The Adult Education Center in your city offers a course in writing common kinds of business correspondence. The staff knows that a letter must meet the needs of its audience. Whether writers are responding to an inquiry letter or drafting a memo, they must demonstrate that they understand their readers’ needs and expectations. However, the staff members at the Adult Education Center are unsure whether they should develop a handout with only general advice that would apply to all types of letters or whether they should develop different handouts for specific letter types (for example, cover letter, complaint letter, and so on).

Your Assignment

To complete this assignment, perform the following tasks:

  1. Study Chapter 9 of the text for an introduction to writing letters, memos, and emails.

  2. Study several of the guides to correspondence writing on the Internet. Search for “letter writing guides,” and study the following sites:

    • Writing the Basic Business Letter, from Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab

    • About Cover Letters, from JobStar

    • Resignation Letters—Samples, from About.com

  3. Focusing on one correspondence-writing guide, identify the ratio of general advice on writing correspondence to particular advice for writers addressing a specific audience. For instance, urging writers to use clear, simple language is general advice that would apply to anyone writing any correspondence, whereas identifying your most relevant skills or experiences is particular advice for a letter of application. How effective is the correspondence-writing guide in communicating both general and particular advice? Would readers of this correspondence-writing guide need to consult additional resources? What changes might be made to improve the effectiveness of the guide?

  4. Present your findings in a 500-word memo to the Adult Education Center staff, and recommend whether a general-advice handout would be effective or whether handouts with specific advice will be needed.