Business English: A Practice Book by Rose Buhlig

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Business English: A Practice Book This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: Business English: A Practice Book Author: Rose Buhlig Release date: November 18, 2011 [eBook #38046] Language: English Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38046 Credits: E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes, Emmy, *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSINESS ENGLISH: A PRACTICE BOOK *** E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes, Emmy, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 38046-h.htm or 38046-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38046/pg38046-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38046/38046-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). Due to the constraints of a plain text file, not all letters can be represented as originally printed. These letters are represented as follows: [+x] letter with tack above [)xx] two letters with a breve above [=xx] two letters with a macron above [x:] a letter with an umlaut or diaeresis below [)y] letter with a breve above [x=] letter with a macron below [\x] letter with a slash through it BUSINESS ENGLISH A Practice Book by ROSE BUHLIG Tilden High School, Chicago D. C. Heath & Co., Publishers Boston New York Chicago Copyright, 1914, By D. C. Heath & Co. 2FI PREFACE THE author of this book and the writer of this preface have never met. Their respective fields of labor are a thousand miles apart. Yet such is the force of ideas that many of their thoughts and sympathies are common. Business English! The very name is an anomaly. From a literary point of view there is no such thing. English is English whether it be used to express the creations of our imagination, our aesthetic appreciations, or our daily wants. There is no magical combination of words, phrases, and sentences that is peculiar and distinctive to business transactions. Business English as used in these pages means effective communication, both oral and written. The author's aim throughout has been to teach the art of using words in such a way as to make people think and act. To do this she has applied the principles of literary composition to the highly complex and ever increasing problems of our business life. She realizes that business is vital, and that the problems of commerce are not to be met and handled with dead forms and stereotyped expressions of legal blanks. To use our language effectively it is necessary to have an understanding of its elements. Thus the author has very wisely devoted much space to word-study and English grammar. This is a field commonly neglected in books on the subject. The people engaged in business are, on the whole, woefully weak in the grammar of our language. It is believed that the treatment herein will be a great aid in correcting this deficiency. If we have ideas, we must express them in words, and our words should be so chosen and arranged as not to offend, but to please and interest. This result can be secured by a systematic study of Part I.