Please note...
In the interest of client privacy, we've changed company names in the copy editing examples at right to "Acme".

Business letters and queries present challenges:

Getting the reader's attention.
This is particularly important in unsolicited mailings (Letter 1, at right, for example). If you're lucky, you have an eye-catching letterhead doing some of the work for you; most often, though, your prose is on its own.

Consider Letter 1: Pixel Relish felt the original letter, while it made some very sellable points, muddled them a bit in its presentation. The authors knew it needed work, but they'd frankly looked at it too many times to be objective.

So they came to Pixel Relish. We simplified the opening paragraph to clearly establish the theme, then pared down the remaining content to more clearly relay the idea that retailers could profit from childhood being fun and Acme Fabrics embodying that fun.

Holding the reader's attention.
Letter 2, on the other hand, is a solicited mailing. The recipient requested the package and so will certainly open it and review its contents. The letter needs to spell out necessary instructions while fostering the professional relationship that's begun.

The "BEFORE" version shown at right was actually being sent out to clients when it came to our desk. While not everyone relishes language and presentation to the degree we do, the grammatical errors, clunky language, and mish-mash of colors certainly weren't helping the financial planner's professional image.

Pixel Relish cleaned up the language, generalized the opening to cover other-than home loans (construction loans, for instance), then typeset the letter in basic black with the "must see" information in bold.

More to come...
The above barely touch the surface of goals and issues to address within business correspondences. Each situation is unique, yet standards do exist. The art is in adapting the standards to the particular situation and target audience in a way that yields successful communication.

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