Condolence Letter to Business Colleague for Lost Job

by Mary Cullen on June 30, 2009

in Business Writing Etiquette

For any type of loss, including job loss, even if you feel a little awkward, I recommend you err on the side of kindness and connection, and send a condolence note or email. So often in business communication, we forget that it’s really human to human connection. Your colleague will feel acknowledged at a difficult time. You may forge a stronger relationship that will benefit you later.

What to write when a colleague has lost a job?

When you work for the same company, and are still employed, and willing to recommend your colleague:

Dear Sandra:

I was so sad to see your office empty when I returned from my trip.

I know you were hoping to avoid the impending layoffs, so this must be challenging for you. I will so miss your wise insights, energy, and creativity. The office will be far quieter, and less interesting, without you here.

If I can help with a letter of recommendation, referrals, or to just to lend an ear, please know I  want to help. Best wishes finding a new position. With your can-do attitude and skills, I have no doubt your job search will be short.

Please let me know how I can help.

Best regards,

Dimitri

To a colleague from another company, with whom you had regular, but superficial contact:

Dear Javier:

I was so sorry to receive your email message that you are no longer with Federated Company. I will miss our monthly status reports.

Thank you for letting me know your current contact information so we can keep in touch. Best wishes finding a position that matches all your talents. No doubt, there is a lucky company about to hire a very skilled project manager.

Best regards,

Doreen

If a colleague leaves under conflict or duress:

Hi Carmen,

David told me this morning you are leaving Federated.

I know the past months have been challenging for you, and I’ve admired your grace and professionalism.

I wish you well. I hope your search is a short as possible.

Sincerely,

Dora

Some tips:

  • Don’t mention the poor economy. The news is full of this, so you would only be underscoring an obvious worry.
  • Two recently unemployed friends told me they were very annoyed when people told them, “I’m sure something will appear.” Be truthful. A new job doesn’t just appear. It’s a lot of work, and transition, to find new work. Don’t minimize their loss.
  • Do offer to make connections or write a letter of recommendation, if you are willing.
  • Do wish your colleague well.

Remember:

  • Job security is tenuous for everyone. Each of us can lose a job, so it’s a smart career move, as well as kind, to reach out when a colleague loses a job. Sadly, each of us can find ourselves in the same position. Stay connected.
  • Don’t forget to thank those people who helped you find a new job, once you are hired.

{ 2 comments }

Write for Career Success

by Mary Cullen on June 29, 2009

in Effective Business Writing

Alan Jacobs, writing in his blog, The New Atlantis, has great insights about the value of writing across many professions:

Again and again in my career I have seen that people who can write well — in almost any field — give themselves a great advantage over their competition. I have former students in the business world, English majors all, who have kept their jobs or even gotten promotions when people with business and economics degrees were being laid off: their ability to communicate, especially in writing, was always the key.

There is no doubt that strong writing skills enhance every career. As Peter Drucker stated, “As soon as you put one foot on the career ladder, your success depends on your ability to write clearly.”

{ 0 comments }

Customer Complaint Letter: Humor Works

by Mary Cullen on June 19, 2009

in Business Correspondence

This is one of the very best customer complaint letters I’ve ever seen. It is so funny. It was written to Richard Branson, Chairman of Virgin Airlines, by an unhappy customer in a long-winded rant, after a dreadful flight from Mumbai to London.

Dear Mr Branson

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at the hands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it:

I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes,it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in:

I know it looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn’t custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what’s on offer.

I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.

Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing. That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this:

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It’s mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird.

Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.

By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it’s baffling presentation:

It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.

I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point.

Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on:

I apologise for the quality of the photo, it’s just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson’s face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel:

Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the grueling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I’d had enough. I was the hungriest I’d been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.

My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations:

Yes! It’s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff.

Richard…. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I’d done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.

So that was that Richard. I didn’t eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can’t imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.

As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It’s just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to its knees and begging for sustenance.

Yours Sincerely

XXXX

PS After this letter was widely circulated on the Internet, the author was identified by the Telegraph as Oliver Beale, an advertising executive. Reportedly, Virgin has offered Mr. Beale a job choosing the food and wine options for the in-flight meals. As reported in the Telegraph, “ ‘While we investigated his complaint seriously, and following Richard Branson’s phone call we’ve invited him to our catering house to select the next range of meals and wines we serve on board,” said a spokesman for Virgin Atlantic. “Then we can ensure his personal taste is well and truly catered for.’”

Mr. Beale declined the offer. Meanwhile, his complaint letter has achieved the heights of what a complaint letter can do: focus attention on a problem and obtain correction. And, thanks to Mr. Beale, all of us who have endured awful flights are laughing after reading this.

Bravo and thank you to Mr. Beale.

{ 1 comment }

My Most Trusted Business Writing Style and Grammar Guides

by Mary Cullen on June 15, 2009

in Recommended Resources

I am often asked which sources I use for business writing style and grammar guides. These are my most trusted sources:

Business Writing Format and Style

Style Guides

Grammar Guides

Dictionaries and Thesaurus

Language Guide

Learn More in This Course: Effective Business Writing Techniques

Learn More in This Course: Business Grammar: Error-Free Writing

{ 0 comments }

Serial Comma in Business Writing

Business Writing Grammar

by Mary Cullen on June 12, 2009

in Grammar

Despite being asked many times about the correct use of serial commas (also known as Oxford commas), I dreaded writing this post. I was scarred by this subject while in graduate school, when I had to write a 10-page paper on the history and merits/detriments of the serial comma. It was so boring. And, grammarians love debating the “to use or not use”controversy of serial commas.

This controversy probably exists because there is no grammar “rule.” Just convention. Let this convention guide your usage.

To define: a serial comma is the optional comma used at the end of a list. The most common conjunctions in a list are “and” and “or.” The serial comma is the comma that comes before the conjunction:

I like cookies, cupcakes(,) and gumdrops. (The comma before and is the serial comma.)

Let me tip my hand, and give you my opinion on this business grammar issue, and then I’ll explain why:

  • The customary convention in business writing is to use the serial comma.
  • The customary convention in journalism is to omit it, historically to conserve space.
  • The British tend to use serial commas less than Americans.
  • It is both correct to use or not use a serial comma, so what is most important is consistency. (And, be prepared for some editors to correct you, regardless of which option you choose.)

I recommend using the serial comma in business writing, since it is the customary convention. And, to me, it is much easier to consistently follow this convention, than to omit it most of the time and add it in when clarity is needed. Keep it simple.

Let’s look at examples where the serial comma clarifies:

When stocking your desk, be sure you have pens, pencils, paper clips(,) and pins. (The comma after pens in parentheses is the serial comma.)

If you do not use a serial comma in this sentence, meaning is still quite clear, but you might wonder if you need to buy a box of paper clips and pins mixed together:

When stocking your desk, be sure you have pens, pencils, paper clips and pins.

Let’s examine a more ambiguous example:

The job involves restocking shelves, cleaning and serving customers. (Without a serial comma before and, the sentence suggests the person doing this job will be responsible for cleaning the customers in addition to serving them.)

Another example illustrating confusion that results by omitting the serial comma:

“To reduce stress, I like running, yoga, meditation and visualization and quiet time alone.” Notice I omitted the serial comma here. Let’s see how this example works:

  • No comma: To reduce stress, I like (running,) (yoga,) (meditation and visualization and quiet) time.
  • Comma: To reduce stress, I like (running,) (yoga,) (meditation and visualization,) and (quiet) time.

Recommendation

Use the serial comma consistently in your business writing. Only omit it in those rare instances when it muddies meaning. The two guide books I most value for business writing advocate its use: The Gregg Reference Manual and The Elements of Style. Only newspaper style guides advocate omitting it, to save space.

Grammarians love to debate this issue, and there will never be full agreement, but for business writing, the convention is clear: use the serial comma.

What is your opinion on this hotly debated grammar issue? Do you favor using the serial comma?

Learn More in This Course: Business Grammar: Error-Free Writing

{ 2 comments }

I Am Sorry: How to Write a Business Apology Letter

When I was a little girl, I remember my father howling in laughter at the antics of P.G. Wodehouse’s clueless literary characters. Wodehouse books are hilarious because hapless lead characters work so hard posturing to maintain a false status, causing them to fumble socially. The reader laughs in bemused amazement. It’s very funny social satire.
Here [...]

Read the full article →

Business Schools Mandate More Writing Courses

Today’s Daily newspaper from the University of Washington headlined an article entitled,”Writing Ability has Become a Marketable Skill, and That’s Scary.”
If you’re a good writer, you can actually use that to differentiate yourself from most other candidates. That probably says more about us than about our potential employers. Some people, their verbal abilities further atrophied [...]

Read the full article →

Capitalize Bible and Other Sacred Texts

Reader Question:
I noticed in your post about the power of short words in business writing, you capitalized “Bible.” Why?
Answer:
In that instance, I was referring to the Christian Bible, so it is a proper noun. Proper nouns are capitalized, just like London.
Additionally, works regarded as sacred should be capitalized (but do not quote, italicize, or underline). [...]

Read the full article →

Find Your Jargon and Gobbledygook

Do you want to test your documents to see if you are prone to using jargon and gobbledygook?
Hubspot has a helpful tool: Gobbledygook Grader. It gives you a score based on how many overused gobbledygook phrases you included. I tested two pages on Instructional Solutions’ website, and it did a good job flagging one overused [...]

Read the full article →

Power of Short Words in Business Writing

Clare Lynch of DAC Creative commented wisely on my last post that improving one’s vocabulary is laudable, but not with the intent of peppering our business writing with complicated words.
I’ve long admired Richard Lederer’s writing on language. In his 1991 book, The Miracle of Language, Lederer sings the praises of the short word:
When you speak [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries