Abstract: This study investigates the stylistic features of English business e-mails from three perspectives: character features, lexical features, and syntactic features. It is based on a sample of 80 English business e-mails chosen from a trading company in Nanjing, which include inquiries, offers, counter offers and some negotiation letters. The findings finally show that English business e-mails are colloquial and concise. And the writer also offers some advices for English business e-mail writing, so as to help people better understand English business e-mails, improve the efficiency of business communication and better promote china’s development of foreign trade. Meanwhile, this paper suggests that English business e-mails writing courses should be classified into college English writing course.

Key words: English; business e-mails; stylistic features

CONTENTS

Abstract

摘要：

1. Introduction...1

2. Literature Review..1

2.1 Introduction of Stylistics

2.2 Introduction of Stylistic Features

 2.3 Previous Studies Abroad and at Home

3. Stylistic Features of English Business E-mails.3

 3.1 Character Features of English Business E-mails

  3.1.1 Non-standard Use of Punctuation

 3.1.2 Non-standard Use of Letter Case

 3.2 Lexical Features of English Business E-mails

 3.2.1 Using Simple Words

 3.2.2 Using Abbreviations

 3.2.3 Using Network Language

 3.2.4 Using Informal Words

3.3 Syntactic Features of English Business E-mails

 3.3.1 Frequent Use of Elliptical Sentences and Short Phrases

 3.3.2 Grammatical Errors in Sentences

 3.3.3 Incompleteness of Discourse Structures

 3.3.4 Attachments in E-mails

4. Conclusion.....9

Bibliography.10

Acknowledgements...11