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Manser, Martin H. "Letter-Writing Tactics." Writer's Reference Center. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 17 Apr. 2025. <http://fofweb.infobase.com/wrc/Detail.aspx?iPin=GTS059>.
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Letter-Writing Tactics


The basic tactics for letter writing have already been mentioned and relate to the basics of all good style. Plan and prepare carefully, keep it short, keep it simple, use a neutral style (using a more formal variant of neutral style where necessary and a more informal variant where circumstances warrant it), be as lively and vigorous as you can by avoiding the passive voice and addressing your comments directly to the reader, keep the reader and his or her interests in mind at all times, and revise and check what you have written carefully. Revise and double-check your spelling and your grammar, for, as has been said before, letters, especially those received by potential employers, are often used as tests of literacy.

There are certain other and more specific tactical maneuvers that are worth bearing in mind when writing a business letter or formal e-mail.

Beginning with a Bang

If you are "selling something," in the broadest sense, then it may be a good plan to dispense with the traditional form of introductory paragraph and to start with something that is calculated to grab the reader's attention immediately. Experts sometimes give estimates of how long a writer has to attract and hold the reader's attention, and these estimates almost invariably do not make for happy reading: The writer is usually given 20 seconds, at most. Perhaps this is a sign of how fed up the general public is with receiving sackfuls of junk mail and how ruthless businesspeople are with anything that might turn out to be a waste of their precious time. If you are sending a letter into a highly competitive environment, then it may be worth your while to try to think of an opening that will make your reader prick his or her ears.

However, though this is basically sound advice, the tactic is not exactly new. If, for example, you think of beginning your letter with a question—a tried-and-true attention-grabbing device—try to make it a question that your reader has not been asked a hundred times before. Therefore, you probably should avoid

Have you ever thought how much money you could save by changing your home insurance provider? [The reader yawns, and the letter is crumpled and thrown into the wastepaper basket!]
or

Wouldn't you like a free vacation in a remote island paradise? [Wouldn't we all? But just as there is no free lunch, there are usually no free vacations, either, when you look further into the matter.]
But you might consider

When did you last take a really good look at your fitted carpet? We don't mean standing up. We mean down on your knees, up close and personal—with a magnifying glass….
or

Do you have a mirror in the room? You do? Oblige me just for a moment. Take a look in it….
If you are going to grab your reader's attention, then you will need something reasonably imaginative and unexpected.

Again, if you are an ordinary member of the public trying to "sell" something, possibly yourself, to an organization, then before you try this tactic, you have to be very confident that it will work. Many ordinary folks think they have heard it all before; however, established businesspeople have heard it all so often that it is a wonder they can keep their eyes open at their desks. So, for example, if you are an aspirant writer who has just completed a first novel, it will probably cut little ice if you begin your cover letter to a potential publisher or agent (if you submit a manuscript, it should always be accompanied by a cover letter) like the following:

This novel is going to make you millions. This is a novel you simply cannot afford not to publish. My friends and family all say that it leaves Harry Potter in the shade…. [Oh yes? And when did an author's friends and family ever tell him or her the truth?]
or

Can you imagine what it is like to be turned into a cockroach? That is what happens to my main character on page one. The novel is actually a psychological study of a person's inferiority complex…. [Nice try! But have you never heard of the writer Franz Kafka? And how exactly did you do the research?]
or (beginning, not with a bang, but, as it were, with a whimper)

I know you must get hundreds of submissions like this from inexperienced novelists like me, but I am sure that this one is really special, and if you would only take the time to read it, I am confident that you would agree….
It is much easier, in this as in many other instances, to point out what is unlikely to work than to offer a suggestion that is guaranteed to bring success. If anyone could devise such a beginning to a letter to a publisher and patented it, he or she would stand to make a great deal of money.

If you are tempted to try this approach, then try to identify the "unique selling point" of your book and make that your opening gambit. It might be a very unusual situation in which your main character finds himself or herself (as with the cockroach in the example above) or it might be a particular geographical or historical setting, or the point of view from which the story is told:

My novel begins with the conception of my leading character and ends on her first birthday. The whole saga of her hilariously dysfunctional family is told from her point of view….
Generally speaking, however, the safer option is to begin with a more conventional opening paragraph:

I am sending you a synopsis and three sample chapters of my first novel in the hope that it will interest you sufficiently for you to consider it for publication….
Only "begin with a bang," if you feel very confident (or perhaps if you have tried other approaches without success). You will soon find space for your unique selling points (with respect to both your book and yourself) in subsequent paragraphs.

Giving Prominence

Since a letter is a relatively short document, the opportunities for exploiting the resources of your word-processing program to give special prominence to particular items is usually limited. One of the most useful resources in letters, and in longer documents, is blank space. The simplest way to give prominence to something is to isolate it:

There are four reasons why, in my opinion, the Dick Whittington Centre in London, England, is an unsuitable venue for next year's conference:

the Dick Whittington Centre is a recently opened facility and has no track record of hosting conferences of this type;
the dollar-sterling exchange rate is currently unfavorable to the dollar, which must add to the cost of holding a conference in the U.K.;
the majority of the delegates to the conference are based in North America—it would be more cost-effective to fly the European delegates to America than to fly the American delegates to Europe;
the Dean P. Sweetwater Facility in my home city, which does have a proven track record in providing conference services and hosted last year's event to the satisfaction of all delegates, is available for next year's dates.
I might further add that …
You can add a little to the effect of separating out items by prefacing each of the listed points with a number or what printers call a bullet:

There are four reasons why, in my opinion, the Dick Whittington Centre in London, England, is an unsuitable venue for next year's conference:
  • the Dick Whittington Centre is a recently opened facility and has no track record of hosting conferences of this type;
  • the dollar-sterling exchange rate is currently unfavorable to the dollar, which must add to the cost of holding a conference in the U.K.;
  • the majority of the delegates to the conference are based in North America—it would be more cost-effective to fly the European delegates to America than to fly the American delegates to Europe;
  • the Dean P. Sweetwater Facility in my home city, which does have a proven track record in providing conference services and hosted last year's event to the satisfaction of all delegates, is available for next year's dates.
I might further add that …
Another method of achieving a similar effect is to use boldface to call attention to key words or concepts:

We should not agree to an extension of the contract for one year only. I estimate that it would take us at least three years to make a reasonable return on the investment required if we are to meet the new specifications that Zorboyz are insisting on. I therefore propose that there should be a minimum three-year extension of contract.
Part of the purpose of using bold in a letter is to get the main thrust of your message across to someone who is skimming through your letter in order to extract the gist, as the person may be too busy (or too idle) to read the whole letter properly. You have to think of what you put into bold as a kind of "sound bite." You may need to exercise some degree of skill in constructing a sentence if you wish to highlight a particular phrase.

For instance, if the final sentence of the previous example ran

… I therefore propose that we should refuse to agree to an extension unless it runs for a period of not less than three years.
it would be difficult to find a sound bite. You would be faced with the choice of either putting the whole sentence into bold—which would perhaps work if this were the only point in your letter that needed highlighting, but might look heavy-handed if there were other areas of bold elsewhere in the text—or of creating an effect such as

… I therefore propose that we should refuse to agree to an extension unless it runs for a period of not less than three years.
which gives the impression that you have encoded your main message in a mass of less important material.

The same applies if you wanted to use bold with a list of points. Let us look again at the earlier example relating to the choice of a conference venue. It would work to put the opening words of the various objections into bold as they stand:

the Dick Whittington Centre is a recently opened facility and has no track record of hosting conferences of this type;
the dollar-sterling exchange rate is currently unfavorable to the dollar, which must add to the cost of holding a conference in the U.K.;
the majority of the delegates to the conference are based in North America—it would be more cost-effective to fly the European delegates to America than to fly the American delegates to Europe;
the Dean P. Sweetwater Facility in my home city, which does have a proven track record in providing conference services and hosted last year's event to the satisfaction of all delegates, is available for next year's dates.
The technique would be more effective if you introduced each of the listed points with a sound bite in bold that summed up the argument in a few words and then provided a brief explanation to back up your main point:

There are four reasons why, in my opinion, the Dick Whittington Centre in London, England, is an unsuitable venue for this year's conference:
The Dick Whittington Centre is untried. It is a recently opened facility and has no track record of hosting conferences of this type.
The dollar-sterling exchange rate is unfavorable. This will inevitably add to the cost of holding a conference in the U.K.
The majority of the delegates are based in North America. It would therefore be more cost-effective to fly the European delegates to America than to fly the American delegates to Europe.
There is a venue available in the U.S. The Dean P. Sweetwater Facility in my home city does have a proven track record in providing conference services. It hosted last year's event to the satisfaction of all delegates and is available for next year's dates.
I might further add that …
Effective highlighting depends on your knowing the purpose for which you are writing and being able to distinguish between the more and less important elements in your sentences.

The Soft Soap Sandwich

This heading is intended to be memorable rather than cynical. It relates to a tactic that serves a very important secondary purpose of a great deal of letter writing, which is to retain good relations with the person to whom you are writing, even if your main purpose is to rebuke, refuse, or disappoint him or her. There are a great many business and personal situations in which you have to disoblige somebody, but you can never predict when you might need a favor from that person in future. Self-interest, consequently, dictates that you should not antagonize somebody unnecessarily, and common decency and politeness do the same. You should, therefore, endeavor to say something nice to a person, in order to mitigate his or her possible feelings of disappointment or humiliation.

The "soft soap" usually constitutes the bread in the sandwich; the bad news that you have to give forms the sandwich's filling. The informal letter from Professor Gordon Banks shown above is a case in point:

Dear Kathryn Jones:
I'm sorry, but the college is going to have to cancel its subscription to the IJSIA, with the last number of this volume (26:4). By the way, wasn't that scheduled to be published last month?
It's the usual reason, I'm afraid. Our student numbers are falling, our funding is being cut back, and if we can save a few dollars on our publications budget, we have to do it. I have to say, though, that the IJSIA isn't quite what it was. One or two of the articles in recent issues have been, to be frank, shallow, poorly researched, and full of grammatical errors. But it was a great magazine in its day, and I shall miss it.
Sincerely,
The letter begins with an apology and ends with a tribute to the magazine. The apology is intended to soften slightly the news that the college is canceling its subscription. You will notice also that the main paragraph suggests that the main reason for the cancellation is a failing on the part of the college, rather than a failing on the part of the magazine. Furthermore, the informal tone of the whole letter enables the writer to make light of the magazine's shortcomings to some degree.

The more formal version of this same letter is consistently harder on the magazine and, by extension, on Ms. Jones, but even it manages a slightly stiff, "more in sorrow than in anger" tribute at the end:

… May I say in conclusion, that it gives me no pleasure to bid farewell to a magazine that I once used to look forward to with eager anticipation.

Answering Letters

It ought to be a truth generally acknowledged that any letter, e-mail, or other type of communication, unless it happens to be the one that closes a correspondence, deserves an answer. Everyday experience shows, however, that there are many people for whom this is not an obvious truth. They ignore everything that is sent to them and are apparently unconcerned about irritating or antagonizing the people who are trying to contact them, for there are few things more annoying than to send off a letter that seems to disappear straight down a big black hole.

If you are somebody whose job involves dealing with correspondence or if you are a person who regularly receives mail at home, then it is worth taking practical steps to ensure that you are not personally responsible for one of these black holes. These steps are simple:

  • Look at your mail as it comes every day. Immediately discard anything that is junk mail. Sort the remaining mail into letters that require an answer and letters that do not require an answer but contain valuable information. File or store the latter.
  • Sort the letters that require answers into those that are urgent and those that are less urgent.
  • Set aside a period of time for dealing with correspondence. It need not be every day; it ought to be at least every week.
  • Answer the urgent letters first, then move on to the less urgent ones. Make urgency your main criterion. It is tempting sometimes to write the pleasant answers first, which often leads to the unpleasant answers being repeatedly deferred with the result that any pain that, for example, a letter of rejection or refusal inflicts is increased by the recipient's having to wait to be rejected.
It is often easier to reply to a letter than to initiate a correspondence. You should always have the letter you received beside you when you reply to it for two reasons: First, your memory may fail you, and you may forget to deal with some point that your correspondent considers very important or may supply information or comments that are irrelevant to your correspondent's concerns; second, the original will almost certainly provide general assistance to you in framing your reply.

The assistance you receive from the original comes in two forms: tone and format. Regarding the former, your correspondent will have written to you with the degree of formality and/or friendliness that he or she thinks appropriate. In most instances you will take your cue from this and respond in the same vein. But you have the option of taking a different tone in your reply.

If you decide to adopt another tone, this will immediately send a signal to the other person, above and beyond any explicit signals contained in what you say. If, for example, somebody writes to you in an informal tone, and you write back more formally, your reply will most likely be interpreted as a "back off" signal, and any criticism will seem more severe for being delivered from a lofty height. If, on the other hand, a person writes to you in a fairly formal tone, and you adopt a more informal tone, this might be seen as an attempt to make friendly overtures, an invitation to "lighten up" a little, or as an ingratiating gesture, as if you were being friendly in order to make up for some wrong you have done and to divert wrath from you. The safest course, generally, is to reply in the same tone.

You can also often reply in the same format. If a person has made a certain number of points in a certain order, it will often make sense to deal with those same points one by one in the same order. Where the writer of the "Dick Whittington Centre" letter a few pages back listed four objections, you might, if you were replying and arguing against those objections, provide what could be called a counter-list of your own. To mirror your correspondent's format shows a considerable degree of attention and respect. It is as if you were saying to him or her: "As you see, I have taken your points seriously. I am giving them the respect they deserve by responding to them one by one." On the other hand, this approach may suggest finality, as if you were implying: "I am showing respect for your views; here are my answers; that is the end of the matter."

If you wish to open up the discussion or take it further, it may be a better tactic to move away from the format of the original. For example, you could deal with those four points in a continuous paragraph and then adding further paragraphs, or possibly a list of points of your own, to show your wish to engage in further discussion or to move the argument forward.

Clichéd Formulas

Since the writing of business letters is for many people a routine task, a set of routine formulas has been developed over the years to assist managers, clerks, and secretaries with the sometimes tiresome business of answering letters. Many of these stock phrases now have a distinctly old-fashioned ring:

Pursuant to your request of …
Further to yours of April 15 …
Enclosed herewith, please find …
Your request will be taken under advisement.
It has come to my attention that …
In addition to sounding old-fashioned and being clichés, these phrases have an additional disadvantage in that they all belong in the formal register and will require you to continue in that register for the rest of your letter. The best thing to do is to treat them like any other kind of cliché and avoid them whenever possible.

Let us now move on to discuss specific types of letters and letter-writing situations.

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