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Title: Business English: A Practice Book
Author: Rose Buhlig
Release date: November 18, 2011 [eBook #38046]
Language: English
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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.