A.T. Auezova, Candidate of Pedagogics

L.N.Gumilyov Eurasian National University

PECULIARITY OF MISTAKES IN BUSINESS LETTERS

Annotation

This article covers the problem of business letter making, as the ability to make up an official text and a commercial proposal and to respond to a request determines organization performance. Currently there is a main factor that cannot be ignored by a writer. First of all it is to detect typical mistakes.

Key words: typical mistakes, business letter, lexical, structural, stylistic mistakes.

Nowadays there is evidence that the concept “competitiveness” in the market economy goes hand in hand with the concepts “competence” and “professionalism”. Professionalism of a manager or a head of any level comprises language competence. Skills of popular genres both in oral and written business communication rank among most important professional skills.

Organization external relations are realized in business letters. The ability to make up official text, commercial proposal, and to respond to the request determines organization performance as a whole. Moreover it determines its reputation and culture. Letter, request, commercial proposal without any stylistic standards disclosing writer’s illiteracy are except for functional target mismatch to be considered as a subvertisement leads to the reduction of seriousness to the perceived information. Business letters help to set up a deal, important meetings, negotiations. They contain proprietary information, claims, proposals. So business correspondence being a written dialogue between entities solves main issues of organization economic and legal activities. [1]

At the moment there is a serial of factors that cannot be ignored by the writer. Unfortunately the writers make too much mistakes. The last ones are divided into the followings: structural, syntactic, morphological, lexical, stylistic, technical.[2]

The source of structural mistakes is incorrect building of the business letter and disproportionate position of its parts. It is important when each content aspect takes a definite position at the logical structure of the business letter and doesn’t correspond to another aspect. Fail to follow such criteria leads to longer introduction and complex motivation systems.

Morphological mistakes are done when using full or short adjectives. It should be noted that short adjectives are frequently used in official business language. Full adjectives are out of place in such texts; we can even distinguish colloquial words and slang.

Stylistic obstacle is an artificial speech lengthening. Experts advise “Don’t write in a manner you wouldn’t say in oral speech”. However, examples of artificial speech lengthening quite often occur in our modern official correspondence. Too long speech pattern are not allowed in the language of business correspondence.

Technical obstacles are faux-pas words, mistakes, mechanical damage to the text integrity (tears, bonding with an envelope, etc.). The main reason for such technical obstacles is negligence when making up the business letter.

Lexical mistakes are related to poor awareness in the meaning of the words and set expressions, and to their consequent misuse in letters. Choosing a word, don’t pay attention only to the literal meaning, but to the lexical combinability too. Not all words can be combined with each other. Lexical combinability borders are determined by the word semantics, their stylistic membership, emotional colouring, grammatical features, and so on. The following lexical mistakes are widespread in business letters:

1.Incorrect use of terms. Generally, the terms are assigned to one specialty. However they can move from one field to another keeping its original meaning or enriched with new connotations. The terms with wide use in various fields lose their specialized nature. Quite often they go into the category of “bookish” words that are not assigned to a narrow use sphere or any particular kind of writing speech. For example, “Частично доставленные заготовки зубчатых колес не имеют маркировки и свидетелей. Прошу принять меры к обеспечению”. Under the word “свидетели“ the addressee understood the layouts of parts attached to the batch. This term “образцы-свидетели” (witness-samples) is used in a limited number of experts. So the recipient hadn’t understood the text of the document.

2.Inappropriate or unreasonable use of foreign words. Now a lot of people are addicted to use foreign words, sometimes without being aware of their exact meaning. Sometimes the context doesn’t accept s foreign word. For example: Работа конференции лимитируется из-за отсутствия ведущих специалистов. “Лимитировать” (to limit) is to set a limit on anything, to restrict. In this sentence the foreign word “лимитировать“ (to limit) is to be changed with the following words: идет медленнее, приостановилась, etc. Example: Срок выполнения задания может быть пролонгирован (продлен). There is no sense to use a foreign word, if there is a Russian term for this concept. The use of foreign language should be subject to the required necessity, the relevance and the accuracy of word usage.

3.Use of archaisms. Archaisms are words naming the existing realities, but displaced from active use by synonymous lexical units due to any reasons - must conform to the text stylistics, or they become completely irrelevant. Example: Ныне в университете был день открытых дверей. The archaism „ныне“ (сегодня, теперь, в настоящее время) is completely inappropriate. The following words and phrases are nowadays to be related to archaisms historically peculiar to business letters.

4.One of the common mistakes in official texts is pleonasm - use of redundant, unnecessary words in the context of text meaning. For example: тонкий нюанс – the noun “нюанс” is derived from French word “nuance” – shade, subtle difference; main essence is – “суть” (“essence”) and this is the main thing. Another problem is tautology – repetition of cognates within a word-combination. Such stylistic mistakes make the text be overloaded and difficult to understand.

5.Inefficient differentiation of paronyms.

6.Synonym mistakes. Synonyms enrich the language, makes it more figurative. Synonyms may have various functional and stylistic colouring. The use of one of the synonyms without regard to the stylistic colouring can cause speech mistakes. Different shades of lexical meaning, synonyms can express different degrees of characteristics, actions. But even denoting the same thing, interchanging in one case, in other one it cannot be replaced by synonyms - this leads to the speech mistake.

The following syntax mistakes are widespread in official texts:

1.Case misuse. The most common mistake is use of noun in Genitive case instead of Dative case.

2.Mistakes when declining surnames. You should remember:

1) Surnames of Slavic origin with inflexions -a, -o are indeclinable. They often coincide with inanimate objects in phonetic composition.

2) Surnames with -аго, -яго, -ых, -их, -ово, -ко(-енко) are indeclinable too.

3) Generally, non-Russian surnames with unstressed -а, -я are declinable.

4) Russian and foreign-language surnames with consonant endings are declinable, if they refer to a man. But if they refer to a woman or a married couple, they are indeclinable.

3.Mistakes when using short and full forms of adjectives.

Short forms of adjectives are used as predicates in official business speech more than the full ones. Full forms in such phrases are likely to be as colloquialisms, or even slang.

4. Mistakes with quantitative numerals.

5. Infringement of rules when using verbal adverb phrases.

1) The beginning of the document is to be started with verbal adverb phrase.

2) Writers usually make mistakes without paying attention to the fact that both actions in the sentence with verbal adverb phrase are to be done by the same person, and this person and his (her) action in the sentence are to be shown in the position of subject and predicate.

6. Improper use of prepositions

Word-combinations with preposition “o” are widespread in business communication (вопрос о доверии; решение о кадрах. etc.). However there are cases with excessive use of the preposition “o”.

7. Mistakes related to the the wrong word order in the sentence.

Thus business letter writing is an act of speech art, whether it is regulated or unregulated. It is a work with a high level of language competence. You cannot learn how to write business letters correctly and clearly without practicing and learning such a difficult art, without being aware of peculiarities of official and publicistic styles. Nowadays, there is increasing number of business correspondence genres and reasons for making up and sending business letters. Language standard in business correspondence coexists with expressions and elements of dialogs. So the manager is required to have greater speech knowledge rather than fifteen years ago, in the epoch of model and cut-and-dry texts. Ability to think for yourself and to express your thoughts, conduct written dialog with a good competence are more and more appreciated in the business world.

Russian standard language is one of the richest and most expressive languages in the world. It has accumulated invaluable experience in written business communication presented by standardized and stereotyped forms of language, traditions of using the etiquette means.

At the moment it is important not to lose these treasures and not to copy Westerns models, but to respect our ancestors, who had been burnishing such forms and style of business letters for the centuries. Moreover we are to develop domestic traditions in business correspondence successfully. So these are the objectives for today and future generation of business people.

Резюме

В данной статье рассматриваются типичные ошибки, характерные для делового письма. Составление текста делового письма - это труд, предполагающий достаточно высокий уровень языковой компетентности.  Нельзя научиться писать деловые письма правильно и убедительно, не имея представление об особенностях официально-делового и публицистического стилей речи.

Түйін

Бұл мақалада іскери хатты жазу барысында кездесетін қателер қарастырылады. Іскери хат мәтінін құрастыру – тіл құдыреттілігінің жоғары деңгейін білуді қажет ететін еңбек. Тілдің іскери-ресми және публицистикалық стилінің ерекшеліктерін білмей тұрып іскери хаттарды дұрыс жазуға үйрену мүмкін емес.

Resume

This article explores typical mistakes that are for specific a business letter. Forming a business letter of the text - it is work, assuming a sufficiently high level of language competence. You cannot learn to write business letters correctly and convincingly, with no idea about the features of official-business and journalistic style of speech.

REFERENCE LIST

1.Vessyolov P.V. Modern business letter in industry / P.V. Vessyolov. – M.: Publishing House of Standards, 2010. - 160 p.

2.Zagorskaya A.P. Letter Book for business correspondence / A.P. Zagorskaya, P.F. Petrochenko, N.P.Petrochenko. – M.: Moscow worker, 2002. – 247 p.

3.Rakhmanin L.V. Stylistics of business communication and official document editing / L.V. Rakhmanin. – M.: High School, 2011. – 259 p.

4.Tepper R. How to master the art of business communication: 250 notes for manager / R. Tepper. - M.: Audit: UNITI, 2004. - 231 p.