The Resume, Cover Letter, and Business Correspondence
The Resume and Cover Letter
The Curriculum Vitae
The curriculum vitae (“race of life”) is an established text in which an applicant for employment presents their training and experience. The curriculum vitae requires the use of formal language and a professional tone.
Structure of the Curriculum Vitae
- Personal Information: Surname, name, address, phone, etc.
- Education: Academic, complementary, and especially language training and information technology and communication (ICT).
- Experience: Indicate the company, position, and duration of each role, presented in reverse chronological order (most recent to last).
The Cover Letter
The cover letter accompanies the curriculum vitae to expose aspects of the applicant that do not appear in the resume, such as skills, interests, abilities, and reasons the company has been chosen. It must be written in a polite tone with careful and precise language.
Structure of the Letter
- Heading: Sender’s data, recipient’s data, date, and greeting.
- Body: Reason for sending the letter (if in response to an announcement, it should be mentioned) and the information the applicant wants the company to know.
- Farewell: Greeting and an indication that news is expected, followed by the signature.
The Commercial and Administrative Letter
The business letter is a document that a company uses to manage its clients, customers, suppliers, etc., to request (goods, information, etc.), demand, protest, bid, and so on. Business letters have a practical purpose, so it is recommended to address each case individually and clearly identify the sender (for which letterheads are increasingly used) and the date of the letter.
The administrative letter is one that an administrative body sends to the public, a private entity, or another organization to convey a general issue or one that affects its interests.
Structure of the Commercial and Administrative Letter
- Data from the issuing agency.
- Letterhead referring to the agency (symbol, shield, etc.).
- Contents of the letter, divided into: Welcome, introduction, case, and farewell.
- Signature and, if necessary, a postscript with attachments.
Style
The style of business and administrative correspondence should be formal, clear, and precise, and the tone should be cordial. This requirement is reflected in the choice of positive terms (kind request, estimated proposal, etc.) or the use of verbs like “to beg,” “ask,” “request,” etc., followed by the infinitive, to mitigate the requirement. The recipient must be treated respectfully, so formal means of address will be used.
Composition
Composition is the process of word formation from existing words in the language. Words are composed of a single lexical unit but may be presented graphically in various forms.
- One word: balaclava, black and white. The most productive of this type of composition is the combination of verb and noun (usually plural): stain removers, firewalls, etc. The composition of verb + noun is used especially in the description of machines and utensils (dishwasher, windshields), occupations (bodyguard, DJ), and derogatory terms, both professional (shyster) and moral (tomfoolery).
- Two words joined by a hyphen: ex-German. This procedure is productive in the formation of cultured-level adjectives, especially in the fields of journalism (floor-patera) and science (lexical-semantic), and in the indication of origin (Sino-Arab), to which the classic form of the adjective is sometimes preferred: Hispano-Luso, etc. This is a single lexical unit, as shown in the application of gender and number to the second element: Luso-Spanish (summit), Luso-Spanish (summits). Please note this feature since not all words joined by a hyphen are compounds: employer-employee (meeting).
- Separately: frogman. Compounds may, in turn, give rise to new words through composition (clean + winds) and derivation (South Africa – South African).
Terms that are considered compounds but do not form a single word, designating a specific reality or a named concept, are: swordfish, tall tale. The elements that make up this type of complex compound are always in the same order. If other elements are introduced, they lose their meaning: long swordfish, very Chinese tale. Syntactically, these compounds behave as a single word, and their components lack separate autonomy: I bought two fillets of swordfish, but not “fish fillet I compared two sword.” Typically, they are formed by combining the following categories:
- Noun + noun: swordfish, dinner theater, pirate pants.
- Noun + preposition + noun: weekend agenda.
- Noun + adjective: Chinese tale, wet paper, airlift.
The resulting element of this process of composition is always a noun. Its plural is formed, usually, only on the first element of the compound: swordfish, weekends, but tall tales. Compounds that are not a single word are used frequently in technical and scientific texts: abyssal pit, septic tank. In everyday language, their use is more related to expressions like: Capri pants.
Adverbialization
Although historically many adverbs are formed by composition (after + behind = behind / in + top = top), the most commonly used procedure today to create adverbs is derivation (only).
Derivative adverbs are formed by adding the suffix -ly to an adjective. If the adjective has one form for males and another for females, the suffix is added to the feminine form because this means “in that way” (fast – faster). Another resource for adverbialization is the use of adjectives or nouns as adverbs in specific sentences. To this end, the form of the word is frozen, preventing the change of gender and number (He plays guitar slow). The same applies to statements like “We had a blast,” where the noun has been adverbialized. The procedure is also maintained to create adverbial phrases: upside down, fear, vice, etc.