Abstract

Business English letters as an indispensable communication way in import and export trade play an extremely important role in the process of bilateral trade cooperation. Previous studies of commercial English letters are mostly around the letters’ stylistic and textural expression. But in business letters, there are still many syntactic impropriety and pragmatic failures. Therefore, the syntactic features of the business letters will be studied in this paper.

A sentence is a fundamental component of a business letter and also the sentence in a business letter is expressed in a specific way to meet the requirement successful commercial communications, and also to meet the needs of both sides to reach a consensus. Business letters with its own formats need follow some writing principles, so the business letters will share some sentence features. This paper, which is based on the cooperative principle concluded by Grice’s cooperative principle and Leech’s politeness principle, studies the syntactic features and syntactic construction of business letters. The author first analyzes some examples and then put forward the skills and strategies for business English writing.

This paper aims to provide a reference to write an effective business English letter, to help those who are engaged in foreign trade work, especially to reduce the syntactic mistakes in business English letters and finally contribute to the smooth cooperation and avoid the suspension caused by improper syntactic expression.

Key Words: Business English letters; sentences; syntactic features

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1 Introduction-1

2 Business Letters-2

2.1 Definitions-2

2.2 Formats-2

2.3 Styles-3

2.4 Principles-3

3 Syntactic Features-4

3.1 Sentence patterns-4

3.1.1 Imperative and question sentences-4

3.1.2 Conditional sentences-5

3.1.3 Passive sentences-6

3.1.4 Affirmative sentences-7

3.1.5 Short sentences-8

3.1.6 Complex sentences-9

3.2 Special expressions in sentences-10

3.2.1 Deleted sentence patterns-11

3.2.2 Inverted sentence patterns-11

4. Fixed Sentences Expression-12

4.1 To begin a business letter-12

4.1.1 Showing appreciation-12

4.1.2 Making a request-12

4.1.3 Giving quotations-13

4.1.4 Placing an order-13

4.1.5 Giving bad news-14

4.1.6 Making complaints-14

4.1.7 Apologizing-14

4.2 To end a business letter-15

4.2.1 Showing friendship.-15

4.2.2 Making a request-15

4.2.3 Wishing for cooperation-16

4.2.4 Others-16

5 Suggestions-16

6 Conclusion-17

References-19