Importance Of Formality In Business Documents

As we have mentioned above, formality is one of the main features of business documents. Business correspondence writing belongs to the formal style, therefore words must be formal. These words have the feature of being accurate in meanings and they make business correspondence writing more formal. Formal language rigorously follows Standard English conventions and it tends to avoid personal opinions, feelings, and experiences from private life. It also avoids idiomatic language. This is the most acceptable level for most published or broadly disseminated documents, business documents, and academic documents. The formality of business correspondences is mainly expressed by the aspects presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Formality in business correspondence

Emails are necessarily one dimensional which makes it almost impossible to express subtlety. Supporters of emoticons have several reasons why these “faces” should exist. They consider that emoticons can help create emotional connection between communicators from both sides. In other words, they bring the two sides involved closer. During communication via plain text such as chatting online with customers, the message is usually neutral while the tone is absent. It is very likely for the customers to look at the message in a negative way. Therefore, emoticons are necessary to clarify the tone. On the other hand, opponents believe that it is not professional to use emoticons during a business conversation and it only makes the person writing the message seem childish. Also, emoticons may offend some of the customers who feel uncomfortable to see such icons during a business conversation and think they are not taken seriously. They strongly believe that well-structured writing is clear enough and has no place for any emoticon.
Whether or not emoticons are used in business communication, the writer’s aim should be to make sure that the messages are correctly interpreted by the customers thus reaching good customer

Tone is present in all communication activities. The tone of a message is a reflection of the writer and it does affect how the reader will perceive the message. Thus, the tone used in business documents is very important. Tone, as Obber (1995) states, refers "to the writer's attitude toward the reader and the subject of the message. The overall tone of a written message affects the reader just as one's tone of voice affects the listener in everyday exchanges. [...] The business writer should strive for an overall tone that is confident, courteous, and sincere; that uses emphasis and subordination appropriately; that contains nondiscriminatory language; that stresses the "you" attitude; and that is written at an appropriate level of difficulty" (Ober,