Business English: A Practice Book

E-text prepared by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes, Emmy, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

BY ROSE BUHLIG TILDEN HIGH SCHOOL, CHICAGO D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO

Copyright, 1914, By D. C. Heath & Co. 2FI

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.