All business papers, both correspondence (letters), telexes, enquiries, offers, claims (complaints) and contracts (agreements) are normally associated with striking business deals and their procedure. Such documents are made up and signed “by a judicious authority and are of legal importance” [5, P.7]. As a result of it, business documents are written in accordance with some officially accepted forms, common for everybody who wants to do business.

The official business language is sometimes called officialese and differs from other kinds of the English language, mostly because of specific character of its functional usage, which can be illustrated in classical terms of style, its predestination, and main features.

A functional style of a language is characterised by the greater or less typification of its constituents and supra-phrasal units, in which the choice and arrangement of interdependent linguistic means are calculated to secure the purpose of communication [3, P.312].

The style of official documents is divided into sub-styles of the language of business documents, legal documents, diplomacy, and military documents. The aim of the style of official documents is to state conditions binding two parties in an undertaking and to reach agreement between them.

General features of the style of English of documents’ writing are the following:

1) conventionality of expression;

2) absence of emotiveness;

3) encoded character of the language system (including abbreviations);

4) general syntactical mode of combining several pronouncements into one sentence [3, P.316].

The syntactical pattern of business correspondence style is made up from compositional patterns of variants of this style which have their own designs. The form of a document itself is informative, because it tells something about the matter dealt with. From the viewpoint of its stylistic structure, the whole document is one sentence. It looks like separate, shaped clauses often divided by commas or semicolons, and not by full stops, often numbered. Every predicate construction begins with a capital letter in the form of a participial or an infinitive construction.

e.g. 3. Claims

3.1. In case of non-confirmity of the quality of the goods actually delivered by Sellers with the contract specification, any claim concerning the quality of the goods may be presented within two months of the date of delivery;

3.2. No claim to be considered by Sellers after expiration of the above period;

3.3. No claim presented for one lot of the goods shall be regarded by Buyers as a reason for rejecting any other lot or lots of the goods to be delivered under the present contract;

3.4. ……… [6, P.202].

This structurally illogical way of combining definite ideas has its sense. It serves to show the equality of the items and similar dependence of participial and infinitive constructions or predicate constructions.

One of the most striking features of this style is usage of words in their logical dictionary meaning. There is no room for contextual meanings or for any kind of simultaneous realisation of two meanings. Words with emotive meanings are not to be found there either [3, P.31].

Every type of business documents has its own set phrases and clichés which may sound strange in colloquial English, e.g. invoice, book value, currency clause, promissory note, assets, etc. If a person wants to avoid misunderstanding, he / she should use glossary of commercial terms, and vice versa.

Indeed, there are many differences in the vocabulary of formal and informal business correspondence. Much vocabulary of formal English is of the French, Latin and Greek origin. They are often translated into informal language by replacing them by words or phrases of the Anglo-Saxon origin.

e.g. Formal style Informal style

commence begin, start

conclude end, finish, stop

prolong, continue go on

Let us compare examples where these words are used in different styles.

e.g. I am informing you that the meeting will commence at 4 p.m. (formal)

I’d like to remind you that the meeting will begin at 4p.m. (informal)

The meeting concluded with signing the contract. (formal)

The meeting ended with signing the contract. (informal)

Phrasal and prepositional verbs are characteristic of informal style, that is why they are not used in business correspondence. Their formal equivalents are used in official texts instead.

Formal style Informal style

discover find out

explode blow up

encounter come across

invent make up

investigate look into

e.g. In case of discovering discrepancy of quality and quantity of the product inform us immediately.

Spoken English is full of various vocabulary, both standard and slangy. We also have here different connectors, such as well, you see, a kind of which cannot be used in written business English, both logically and stylistically. They are logically excluded because of a little amount of information they convey. Business documents, on the contrary, convey a lot of information in almost any word. Thus, a person should be aware of these factors and not mix up colloquial and business English, drawing up a document.

Informal terms have emotive qualities which are not present in formal language. Formal language often insists on a greater deal of preciseness. But the problem is that there are not always proper equivalents in formal and informal English. The informal word job, for instance, has no formal equivalent. Instead of it, we have to look for a more restricted in usage and a more precise term, according to the context, among possible variants: employment, post (esp. Br.E.), position, appointment, vocation, etc. [16, P.12 – 13]

Business English is formal. We use it in business correspondence, official reports and regulations. Actually, it is always written. Exceptionally it is used in speech, for example, in formal public speeches. There are various degrees of formality, like in the examples:

e.g. After his father’s death, he had to change his job. (informal)

On the disease of his father, he was obliged to seek for alternative employment. (formal)

These sentences mean roughly the same idea, but would occur in different situations. The first sentence is fairly neutral (common core) style, while the second one is very formal, in fact stilted, and would only occur in a written business report.

In general, grammar rules of spoken sentences are rather simple and less constructed than grammar of written sentences, especially in agreements. It is more difficult to divide a spoken conversation into separate sentences, and connections between one clause and the other are less clear because the speaker relies more on the hearer’s understanding of the context and situation, as well as on his ability to interrupt if he fails to understand. The speaker is able to rely on features of intonation which tells us a great deal that cannot be reflected in written punctuation.