Inquiry Letter

• Understand and communicate the letter’s intended purpose/exigency
• Organize ideas logically
• Strategically use textual features to focus the reader’s attention
• Understand and employ genre conventions of a professional letter
• Employ verb tenses as well as active and passive voice appropriately
Description The Inquiry Letter is an intermediary assignment. As an intermediary assignment,
this letter is designed to help you write your Recommendation Report because
you will use the information gained from this assignment to inform the
recommendations you ultimately suggest in your final report. Since you are
addressing an external audience, this inquiry letter must convey the importance
of the feasibility study and the implications for any findings that come from your
report. Additionally, it is important to practice explaining fully and concisely your
study’s design, the rationale behind this study (besides getting a specific grade),
your specific request for information, and how this information will be used.
Since the information from the Inquiry Letter should be integrated into your final
Recommendation Report, this letter will be written to an individual(s) who has
expertise in this subject matter. For example, if you are focusing on client #2, you
might write an inquire letter to companies, organizations, and
professional/graduate school admissions to inquire about skills they look for in
applicants. Remember: the aim of this assignment is to receive further
information which can inform the recommendations you make in your report. For
the purposes of our class, the information received from the Inquiry Letter is
considered a form of primary research.
The Inquiry Letter should follow the guidelines in Markel and Selber’s chapter 9:
“Correspondence in Print and Online.”
The format of an inquiry letter should include:
1) a header appropriately addressed to an intended recipient
2) a salutation to the intended recipient
3) an introduction which provides context for the feasibility study
4) a clear request for additional information or clarification
5) an explanation concerning how this information will be used
6) where the recipient should go to ask further questions
7) a sign off and signature block for the writer
Format The Inquiry Letter should be 1-2-pages, 250 words (with possible variations in
length, dependent upon unique contextual requirements) and single-spaced.
Grading Criteria See “Inquiry Letter” for specific grading criteria.