From: BioBiz 2008
To: Fabian Kong
Date: 26 March 2008 13:25
Subject: BioBiz 2008 Important Information
Dear Participant,
Thank you for joining us in BioBiz 2008.
Due to the large number of attendees we will be expecting, please remember to arrive promptly at 8am for the registration. All attendees are expected to be seated by 8.45 am. Please remember to bring your matriculation card and official receipt along for registration. Only those who present both will be admitted to the conference. The conference pass, which also admits you to the career fair, will only be given out during the morning registration.
Conference Pass MUST BE WORN AT ALL TIMES. Anyone without the conference pass will not be admitted.
The dress code for this event would be business wear (i.e. For females: shirt and skirt or pants; For males: shirt and tailored pants, tie not needed). Please be appropriately attired as there will be many distinguished guests present. Details on the conference are as follows:
Date: 29th March 2008
Venue: Matrix@Biopolis
Time: 8.45am to 4.30pm (Registration starts at 8am)
ALL ATTENDEES MUST BE SEATED BY 8.45AM
Please note that the career fair and resume collection will only take place after the conference. You are strongly encouraged to bring along your resume as we will be collating the resumes to send to the participating biomedical companies."
Please also note that attendee will only be allowed to hand in their own resume.
We look forward to seeing you at the conference and joining us in Exploring Singapore's Biomedical Horizon!
Sincerely,
BioBiz 2008 Organizing Committee
My Analysis with the 7Cs
Courtesy
The author started off with a good note. However, by using capital letters in the body of the email, it sounds that the author is shouting. Personally, I prefer important instructions to be in bold and underlined. Courteousness is lost when the author uses uppercase to emphasise certain instructions which are to be adhered to by participants of this conference. Take paragraph 4 as an example - ALL ATTENDEES MUST BE SEATED BY 8.45AM. It should be ‘All attendees are to be seated by 8.45 am.'
Correctness
I noticed a couple of minor mistakes in the aspect of capitalisation and reflexive pronoun use in paragraph four and six respectively. Usage of ‘please remember’ sounds informal and it is used twice in the same paragraph
Conciseness
It is reasonably concise without necessary elaborative sentences. Some minor redundancies still present.
Clarity, and Coherence & Cohesion
The second and third paragraph should be revised. The issue of conference pass should be put together in a paragraph. The same idea must be put together.
Concreteness and Completeness
The author has provided the information needed for me to attend the conference in this email.
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7 comments:
Hi Fabian,
That's a good way to categorise the 7Cs! It's very neat and clear.
1 thing I would like to clarify and learn is that is there such a word as "courteousness"? I thought it should be "courtesy"? :)
It's a good effort on their part to clarify what they say like for example, the paragraph on the dresscode for the event. They were precise in stating the proper form of dresscode expected from the attendees. I commend them on realising that just by putting the work "business wear", it has different notion to different people. Like for example, some girls may turn up in dress and explained that that is what they wear for business meetings.
Hi Grace,
Haha...My style of categorising things.
I read 'courteousness' from the textbook.
And yes, different people have different perspective in 'business wear'.
Yes, courteousness is an actual word. Fabian, I feel that your critique is well thought out and quite thorough.
Overall, I was satisfied with the sentence structure and the completeness of the letter. However, I feel that the first paragraph is overly elaborate and redundant since all the information stated in it is repeated in the middle of the letter. I also agree with what you said about using all upper case letters to emphasise key points. Since it is understood that using all capitals in online communications is akin to shouting at the recipient, this makes certain sentences in the letter seem offensive. It also affects the overall flow and readability of the content.
Apart from these minor mistakes, the letter gets the message across quite well and it seems well thought out and thorough.
I would agree with you that it is overall complete but I think the BioBiz Committee should show some professionalism as well. Thus, sending a good business correspondence is essential.
Hey Fabs,
Love the organisation for the 7C's!
I agree with you about the capitalisation of words as may come across as a little condescending at times. I do find bits of the first paragraph a bit repetitive, the middle part of the letter actually has the same information too. I prefer letters with a bit more flow rather than just sentences of information strung up to form a paragraph, especially the first one.
Also, one good thing about this email is the clarity. For example, the dress code is made very specific and in a way, is specifically crafted with the audience in mind, given the infamous reputation science students have for attire and dressing.
Hey Fabian,
I like the way you arrange your thoughts on the 7Cs, it makes it easy to read and understand.
Caps cAps caPs capS, i just hate them all when they arent at the right places. It is worse when they use CAPS to tell you what to do. I do wonder if the people sending the mails out do notice that there are functions that they can use to set text in bold, underline, italics, so on and forth. If you want to get your point across, bold is sufficient to get the reader's attention. CAPS just make reading the line annoying. Besides, you do need to register by 8am, so they could use that point of time to remind of you certain courtesy issues you'd need to attend to during that meeting.
In all, the mail is short and concise enough. I'm just wondering what's the difference between business pants and tailored pants. Arent they all the same?
Hey Jocelyn and Issac,
Thanks for your feedback.
I would agree that the letter requires more flow - one thing leads to another. CAPS is annoying enough but in this letter I find it a bit exaggerating.
I guess business pants and tailored pants are similar. Take business suits, overcoats and blazers for example. Blazers can be lighter and thinner in material, usually those worn by prefects.
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