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Writing Letters (or Emails)

Basic Principles

Most architects who are interested in architecture are uninterested in writing letters. I don't know any schools of architecture that teach letter writing, although some may do so. Most architects of my acquaintance simply picked up (or failed to pick up) the art of letter writing as part of their experience. Just as important is email writing. In business matters, it is best to treat emails like letters and compose them accordingly. There is no place for sloppy informality in business emails. No matter how your correspondent writes emails, yours should be models of clarity. Although below I refer only to letters, the same principles apply to emails. You will have your own style of writing and that is good, but it is important to observe certain principles. These are the principles which I have picked up, analysed and which have served me well over a long career, only part of which was as a practising architect:

• Know why you want to write the letter. That may sound obvious, but many people have only the vaguest idea why they are writing a particular letter.
• Always write letters to confirm what is agreed.
• Always write letters to answer questions or to confirm your oral answers.
• Always conclude a long letter with a reminder of the purpose of the letter. For example, 'Therefore, if I do not receive your response to the above by the 8 May 2019, I will be obliged to .'
• If writing a long letter, prepare notes first so that everything is in the correct order. That makes the letter easy to write and to understand. Many people start writing a letter with an imprecise idea of what they want to say, much less how they want to say it. The finished letter will often demonstrate the same imprecision.
• One occasionally still encounters business shorthand such as 'thank you for your letter of even date'. At best this is sterile. Say 'Thank you for your letter of the 8 May 2019'.
• Do not dictate letters. Although it takes longer to draft either by hand or by computer, the results are much better than dictation and save time in the long run. Good dictation usually requires notes prepared beforehand and a great deal of experience in dictation. Since one can only gain that experience at the expense of dictating a lot of very poor letters, it is not acceptable. Dictated letters can often be recognised by their rambling nature, repetition of the same things, and obscurities of meaning (see below).
• When dealing with contract administration, always try to use the words of the contract.
• When being harassed by receiving long and complicated letters or several letters from the same person on the same day, try and write a one-line reply such as: 'Thank you for your six letters dated 8 May 2019. I will respond in due course.' Or 'Thank you for your exceptionally long and complicated letter dated 8 May 2019. I have difficulty understanding what you are trying to convey. I should be grateful if you could rephrase your letter to make it comprehensible.'
• Always try to sound reasonable. On no account give vent to anger in writing.
• Write clear letters.
• If your letter is going to be very long, consider whether it might be better written as a report sent with a brief covering letter.
• Remember that your letters may be read out in court one day and you may be asked to explain them.
• Do not fill your letters with abbreviations and acronyms. Much better to write the word in full. If you are going to have to refer to a complicated name several times in letter, write it in full once and put the abbreviation or acronym in brackets which you can then use throughout the rest of the letter.
• Never simply acknowledge receipt of a letter: it may be taken as agreement. Either respond fully or in one of the ways above or simply say that you are considering the contents and will reply in due course.
• Never say that you expect to hear from the other person 'in a week's time' or 'a fortnight' or even '7 days'. Always state the actual date, e.g. 'I expect to hear from you by 8 May 2019'. That leaves no room for dispute over the actual date.
• Never accept letters containing ambiguities. Press for a clear, comprehensible answer.
• Neither you nor your correspondent can assume anything from silence unless the contract states that you can. If someone sends you a letter containing a proposal and says 'If you do not reply by 8 May 2019, you will be deemed to have agreed with my proposal' it is meaningless.
• Never answer what you assume the other person intended to write. If you are not sure what they are trying to say, tell them and ask for clarity.
• Sometimes a correspondent (solicitors are often guilty of this) will say that they require you to respond by a certain date. They may even refer to it as a 'deadline date'. Generally, it is just another bullying ruse to obtain a reply quickly. Unless there is some good reason, for example to comply with a legal requirement, it is a good idea to wait until a few days later before sending a reply. That will send a message that you will not be bullied. Of course, if it is an offer of payment which says that if it is not accepted in X days it will be withdrawn, that will suggest a prompt reply if you or your client wishes to accept.
• Never make a threat that you are not prepared to carry through or you will look silly at best when your correspondent ignores it and you have to write again.
• Always give yourself manoeuvring space.
• Read through your letter as though you were the person who will receive it.
• When trying to get someone to do something which they are resisting, try giving them an honourable way out of the difficulty.

Is Dictation a Good Idea?

Although nowadays most business is carried out by email and letters tend to be the exception, there are certain communications that should be by letter and post. Many people now type their own letters but there are people in all walks of business life who always dictate letters because they say it is much easier and better than drafting by hand. I have witnessed and experienced two kinds of dictation: dictation to a secretary or to a machine. If it is a very simple letter, dictation is certainly a quick way to achieve it, especially by machine. But most letters are complicated and anecdotal evidence is that, when faced with having to dictate a complicated letter, there are various approaches which do not vary even when a secretary is employed:

• The whole letter is virtually written out before being dictated thus largely or wholly nullifying the use of dictation.
• The letter is set out in rough notes so that the structure is clear. This is the best way.
• A few random notes are scribbled so that they are not forgotten. This ensures that all the points are included but not necessarily in the right order, which is at best confusing and at worst misleading to the reader.
• There are no notes and the dictator indulges in a stream of consciousness, mentioning things as they come to mind; if indeed they do. This can be a fun way to write letters; fun that is for the dictator but not for the recipient because it gives rise to those incomprehensible letters one often receives and about which one has to seek clarification, thus wasting time for everyone. This kind of letter often takes longer to dictate than it would to write out because the dictator often has to stop and either get the machine to replay what has been said or get the secretary to read it out.

Whichever approach is adopted, dictation to a machine has the disadvantage for the typist that, unless the dictation is given with the utmost precision and clarity, there are bound to be words that are difficult to understand - thus wasting more time. So, the moral (or at least my moral) is that letters should normally be drafted and only dictated if they are very short.

Facsimile (Fax)

Sending something by fax is now the exception and many, perhaps most, offices no longer have a fax machine. Even if they have a fax machine, it may not have seen a fax in years and the few sheets of paper in the stack are probably curling with age. Faxing has now almost vanished and it has been replaced by the sending of documents by email. Faxed documents are poor in quality and do not compare to scanned documents by email. However, solicitors still seem to maintain a love affair with faxes and often draft agreements which permit faxing but not emailing.

Emails

Most communication is carried out by email, which in certain circumstances is now accepted as a good way to send a notice intended to have legal effect. Emails are often used as a means to form a contract, although I do not recommend forming a contract by email. As noted above, care must always be taken to make sure that the contract in use allows emails.

There are several problems with emails, which stem from the ease with which they can be sent. Here are some of them:

• They encourage the sending of trivial messages.
• It is as essential to retain print-outs of all emails, which are other than trivial, as of other correspondence. The paperless office is a myth. We all know that a computer or a server will let us down at important times.
• Emails are often treated by the writer as though they were the equivalent of the spoken word. They are not. If printed they are...