電子郵件的寫作原則及其在國際商務中的積極作用

　　The Writing Principles of Email and Its Positive Influence in International Business

　　本文主要探討電子郵件的寫作技巧及其在國際商務中的積極作用。首先闡述了商務英語電子郵件寫作的基本原則：正確原則、簡潔原則、完整原則、清楚原則，指出這四個原則是電子郵件寫作中不可或缺的基礎;然后進一步闡述了郵件寫作的另兩個更重要的原則-合作原則及禮貌原則，這兩個原則不但能進一步提高寫作技巧，而且有助于實現更高效的溝通;最后討論了電子郵件在國際商務中的積極影響，并提出若想發揮電子郵件的積極作用，關鍵是遵循其寫作原則以達到高效溝通，實現兩贏的目標。

　　This thesis mainly explores the writing principles of Email and its positive influence in international business. Firstly, it elaborates the primary principles: Correctness, Conciseness, Completeness and Clarity, which are the basic skills for writing Email. Secondly, it further elaborates the most important principles which enable Email writer to reach a high level of writing and achieve high quality of communication. Finally, it discusses the positive influence of Email in international business and indicates that these six principles are the keys to bringing the positive influence of Email into full play in international business.

　　隨著電子技術的飛速發展，電子郵件已經成為現今商業社會中最常見的通訊工具。據一項調查顯示，大約有90%的人使用電子郵件來聯系業務。當我們走進自己的辦公室，做的第一件事就是檢查我們的電子郵件，而不是拿起電話。

　　With the rapid development of electronic technology, Email has become the most frequent communication tool in commercial society nowadays. According to a survey, about 90% of people are using Emails to contact business . When we get to the office, the first thing we do is to check our Email instead of picking up the phone.

　　Electronic mail (abbreviated "e-mail" or, often, "email") is a method of composing, sending, storing, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems.

　　But people is hard to have the experience of the high efficiency of Email now, as it takes so much time for people to read, write and manage these Emails???. Inefficiency is never a good thing; it means people are wasting their talents. The statistics from American Management Association and The e-Policy Institute indicate that people have to spend 30 minutes to 4 hours or more time to deal with Emails. Why? Junk mail is one of the reasons, but another important reason is that as so many people don’t know the writing principles and skills, it makes receiver waste much time to understand the meaning of the Email. What would be in the result if an Email is full of wrong information or mistakes? It at least may cause misunderstandings and confusions, but worst of all, it probably results in huge economic loss!

　　These writing principles–Correctness, Conciseness, Completeness, Clarity, Courtesy, Cooperation and Politeness -with practical Email examples will help you more fully integrate what you will learn into your daily work. The principles specifically what they mean and how they can be applied are discussed individually and presented as a coherent model that mirrors issues facing you. The thesis also suggests how to apply the principles to day-day business topics, and explains how to manage the essence of an Email. The mastery of this thesis will make you self-reliant, more insightful and more effective when it comes to actual business Email writing.

　　When you are writing an Email for business purposes, there are four primary principles that you should always follow. What are the four primary principles of business writing? We have four ‘C’, if you can write mail according to the below four ‘C’ and do well, you can save so much time and get your work done more smoothly and efficiently.

　　Normally, an Email involves the relationship of rights, obligations of both parties in business activities; so its correctness plays a crucial role for business management and communications. Generally speaking, not only the English grammar, contents, spelling, but also the punctuation marks must be accurate to avoid misunderstandings or disputes.

　　Conciseness means to use simple sentences and simple words when writing an Email. It will waist so much time and cause unnecessary trouble to both sender/receiver to write/read an Email with prolix sentence, complex wording. In daily writing, the syntactic feature of the Email is simple sentences with lots of abbreviations and incomplete sentences. And, the lexical feature of the words must be concise and straightforward.

　　In order to save time and room, abbreviation can be often used in Email writing, such as: U=you, Pls=please, Info=information, Qty=quantity, PC=piece，L/C=Letter of Credit，FOB=Free on Board.

　　Example 1: It is very difficult to sell manhole covers in France. This product must have the quality certificate issued in France.

　　Example 2 Price：FOB Shanghai USD 96PC.

　　Example 3 Hope you can accept it.

　　In example 1, obviously, there’s a cause and effect relation between 2 single sentences, but the linking words, such as “since”, “because” are not used in the sentence, it is very common in business Email writing.

　　In example 2 & 3, the using of abbreviation reflects that business Email is more oral and tends to use unofficial literary style sometimes.

　　Business strives for specific, clear, complete Email which can provide the information the reader needs. Completeness is a must, especially in Email sent for offer, terms of trade. How to check the Email is complete or not? 5W and 1H -when，where，what，why and how are the keys for us.

　　Find the essence of your mail, make it self-evident, describe it simply and economically, structure it logically and make the whole thing flow, use clear hierarchy and accurate wording, specific performance in the below examples:

　　Example 1: The figures show a significant increase.

　　Example 2: We will deliver your goods soon.

　　In example 1, “significant” means “important in effect or meaning”, but it’s indefinite and should be replaced by a specific figure.

　　In example 2, soon means “quick, fast”, it’s also indefinite and it should be replaced by a specific date.

　　The above 4C are the primary principles we should obey in business Email writing. The emphasis here is ‘basic’, in that the application of the first four principles is effective but not enough. To achieve more, we need to learn another 2 most important principles - Cooperation Principle & Politeness. http://ukthesis.org/jsjwl/ These 2 Principles are widely accepted by international business organizations. They enable us to communicate skillfully with people who are speaking different languages from different countries, help us achieve the goal of high quality communication.