Bad News Letter

Bad News Letter
07/20/2006

Some further help writing business letters from the University of North Carolina's Writing Center.

Bad news letters deliver negative messages, messages with news that people often don't welcome, and the writer doesn't relish giving. Furthermore, there are varying degrees of bad news. A bad news message could be a postcard telling you that an item you ordered is temporarily out of stock, a letter telling you that you've been denied credit, or an eviction notice.

This assignment should teach you the following things:

how to write a business letter
how to use reader-centered writing
how to deliver bad news or negative messages.

Usually when business writers have to deliver negative messages, they want to retain good will with the reader whenever possible. A company telling customers that an item is temporarily out of stock still wants those customers to think that business is a generally reliable provider of merchandise. And a bank denying credit to a potential customer often wants that person's business under other circumstances (unless that person has really terrible credit). Given this reality, writers often employ rhetorical strategies designed to soften the blow of the bad news. The writer may begin with a buffer (a neutral introduction to the topic), or give the reader options along with the bad news.

However, be aware that there are some situations where the writer must deliver a strong negative message, and no longer cares about salvaging a future relationship with the reader (an eviction notice, for example).

Elements of Bad News Letters

Submission Guidelines

When you have completed your document, name the file in the following way: your last name_bad (for example, Joe Blow's file would be called blow_bad). Then e-mail your document to me at jpullia@lsu.edu as an attachment file by the due date. Put the heading "Bad News Letter" in the Subject Field of your message so that I know that this is a legitimate e-mail (rather than a spammer using your name).

Please also remember to include your name in both the body of your e-mail and in your document itself. For the purposes of this assignment, your name should appear in the letter's signature file. Once I receive the file, I'll delete your e-mail and won't be able to identify your assignment if you don't include your name. Also, I never open attachments if I don't recognize the sender.

Academic Honesty

Plagiarism is academic dishonesty, and I will not tolerate it in its various and sundry forms. Plagiarism is when you represent someone's writing as your own. It is plagiarism to take material verbatim from another source without surrounding it with quotation marks and properly documenting the source. It is also plagiarism to paraphrase words from another source without giving it credit. It is plagiarism to have someone else write a paper for you or submit someone else's work for a grade. Plagiarism isn't limited to information found in books or assignments previously submitted by other students. Taking sources from the internet without attributing them is also plagiarism. I expect my students to have a clear understanding of how to document outside sources (and we'll even go over this concept in Freshman Composition), so there's no excuse for failing to give credit where it is due.

I will keep out a sharp eye for plagiarism and may randomly audit a set of assignments by submitting some of them to turnitin.com or checking the internet or the vast files kept by my colleagues to ensure that everyone is doing his/her own work. Students suspected of plagiarism will be turned over to the Dean of Students for disciplinary action. If the Dean of Students rules that a student has plagiarized an essay, that assignment will receive a zero, and thus, the student will receive an F for the course since one of the class requirements is that students not have a zero on any major assignment. Students who plagiarize have basically lied to me, and will be dealt with harshly.