Different ways of business communication

 

In a business letter, the emphasis is on a high quality appearance. Letters have to be typed or word-processed accurately on the company's headed paper with a smart, clear layout. International mail tends to be slow and in some countries the post is unreliable. Important documents or valuable items can be sent by registered mail — or they can be sent by courier.

A FAX is facsimile copy of a document which is transmitted by normal telephone lines to another fax machine. Some faxes are exactly like letters, some are printed on special fax forms rather like memos, others are simply handwritten messages. The sender of a fax can't be certain if the message has been received perfectly — sometimes lines get missed or are illegible. A fax is not usually a legally binding document.

E-MAIL (electronic mail) is a way of sending messages between computers. The message appears on a screen and can be printed out if necessary. To make e-mail more "personal” some people use punctuation to add happy {: -) or unhappy {: -(faces to their message!

SKYPE is a software application that allows users to make telephone calls over the Internet. Calls to other users of the service and to free-of-charge numbers are free, while calls to other landlines and mobile phones can be made for a fee. Additional features include instant messaging, file transfer and video conferencing (this requires a web-camera)

In a TELEX readers often overlook some errors of spelling and grammar. Abbreviations such as TKS (Thanks) and RGDS (Regards) are common in telexes. The sender knows when each telex has been transmitted and received. A telex can be a legally binding document.

International mail within a company or between branches of the same firm is usually in the form of MEMOS: These may be brief handwritten notes or longer, word-processed letters. Most firms use special memo pads for internal message. A memo to a senior English-speaking member of staff may need as much care as a letter to a client. The style that is used depends on the practice within the company and on the relationship between the people involved.

 

E-MAIL ELECTRONIC ADDRESSES

E-mail addresses are very interesting. At first glance, they are not properly understood to novice, but these short sets of numbers, letters, and symbols can assure their owners of e-mail from anywhere in the world. The most important symbol in an e-mail address is the @ sign, which separates the personal user's identification (user ID) on the left, from the domain, or machine address, on the right. Here's an example of e-mail address:

[e-mail]

The part to the left of the @ is a personel user ID (AHBSC), which stands for Alan H. Brown, Somewhere College. The part immediately after the @ shows the machine. Many universities use VM machine (VM = virtual machine), so the machine address is CUATVM, which means "City University of Any-Town Virtual Machine". Then there is a dot to separate

the different "domains" or "subdomains" within the address. After thedot, we have the name of the institution, City University of Any-Town (CUAT), andfinally we have the domain EDU which stands for "education".

Domains can be:

EDU — for education

GOV — for government

COM — for commercial

MIL — for military

NET — for Internet or related network service provider

ORG — for organisation, probably non-profit.

ComputerServe addresses are all @cornpuserve.com.

 

There are searching servers:

www.yahoo.com

www.infoseek.com — to search different information

www.altavista.com

wikipedia.org/wiki/

www.rambler.ru — to search essays

www.muzic.ru —for searching music

Exercise 8. Complete the sentences according to the text:

1. Important documents or valuable items can be sent by…

2. A fax is…which is transmitted by….

3. Faxes are printed on…

4. …. is a way of sending messages between computers. The message appears on … and can be …...

5. …can be a legally binding document.

6. International mail within a company or between branches of the same firm is usually in the form of…

7. …separates the personal user's identification (user ID) on the left, from the domain, or machine address, on the right.

8. the domain EDU stands for…

 

Exercise 9. Answer the questions:

1. How must a good business letter look like? Why are important documents often sent by courier?

2. A fax is not usually a legally binding document. What is the reason?

3. What is Skype?

4. What are the peculiarities of telex?

5. What does the style of memos depend on? How do they look like?

6. What does an average e-mail address consist of?

7. What domains are used in e-mail addresses? What do they show?

8. What are the purposes of searching services?

 

V. Writing