Guide to Commercial Correspondence and Business Composition [antikvár]

PREFACE.The object of this little work is to assist youths who are in-tended for a commercial career, or who have actually enteredinto business life, to a knowledge of Commercial English orBusiness Composition. The author realizes that the merecopying of a series of letters can teach very little. At bestit only produces a mechanical accuracy, turns the clerk intoa copying machine, and unfits him to cope with a matterdiffering even slightly from ordinary routine. Moreover, inthe effort to imitate certain stereotyped forms, the essentialsof the subject are apt to be lost sight of. Lucidity, concise-ness, and accuracy are sacrificed to formality. Now, SirAlbert Rollit declared to the London Chambers of Commerce," Commercial Education should produce mental alertness,ready adaptation, the quick seizure of new methods, andfrom a business point of viewup-to-dateness. True know-ledge should make active and able thinkers in relation to business 'and anything which militates against this ideal should becarefully shunned by the commercial student.The assumption governing the writing of this work is thatletter-writing is a branch, and a most difficult branch, ofEnglish Composition ; and that, therefore, the primary aimmust be the clear expression of thought in writing. In otherwords, the practice of composition should occupy the pre-liminary lessons even so far as to half of the first year's courseof instruction. It is, of course, desirable and quite possibleto give the examples and exercises a commercial bearing.