In many cases, this process of change had led to the situation in which writers have a range of alternatives available to them regarding aspects of letter-writing style. Forms and Functions: mainly written material, especially commercial correspondence – offers, orders, invoices, claims and complaints, dunning letters, business agenda – functions of business style is to inform, to persuade and to cooperate.

Characteristic features: traditional, sometimes bookish, syntactically and lexically stereotypical, unambiguous, lack of emotionality

LANGUAGE OF LEGAL DOCUMENTS:

Forms and Functions: legal texts having performative character and serving as everlasting commands, language of legal documents must avoid opportunities for misinterpretations – functions are specific graphic layout, emphasis of visual aspects – capitalization, interpunction, etc.

Characteristic Features: frequent repetitions, omission of personal pronouns him/her/it, sentence pattern, post modification is preferred to pre modification, pre determiner “such” used without an indefinite article; frequent use of pair synonyms one of domestic and one of latin origin (terms and conditions, use and exercise), words with abstract meaning (request, proposal), modal verbs (may, shall), archaisms (herein, before, aforesaid), less readable, complicated; syntactical features – long, complex, yet clearly built up sentences, due to the legal practice of earlier times we also find so extremely long punctuated sentence structures; use of capital letters at the crucial points of the document – the text then becomes more easily survivable; officialese is sometimes found in various legal contracts

POPULAR SCIENTIFIC STYLE:

Forms and Functions: Written form, textbooks, manuals, descriptive form, frequent usage of graphics – illustrations, graphs, sketches, etc.