Occupation

Question 1

What are common features of letters in business and management?

Answer 1

Subordinate clauses, passive constructions, and impersonal forms

(e.g., It was felt that…, There are…).

Question 2

How do first-person forms differ in business writing?

Answer 2

‘We’ is used for collective decisions, while ‘I’ emphasizes individual decisions or attitudes.

Question 3

What is the typical writing style in e-mails or memos?

Answer 3

Writers are likely to use a demotic register, contractions, and incomplete sentence structures.

Question 4

What does Professor Crystal refer to in informal writing?

Answer 4

Crystal refers to the loose syntax of spontaneous spoken English or ‘minor sentence types’, found in informal writing.