Write craft – 2
Sometimes there are incidents in our everyday life that are unpleasant. We may be disturbed during exam time by midnight music over a loudspeaker; we may encounter a garbage bin that is never cleared on the road near our house…
Just talking to the people concerned may not remedy the situation. We may have to resort to formal letters of complaint, either to the people in question or the authorities or the newspapers/media.
Letters of complaint are not friendly or light-hearted. Complaints have an official tone and are meant to be taken seriously. They, therefore, require considerable thought. You do not want to be considered a ‘whiner’ who does not wish to adapt or adjust, nor do you want to annoy the person to whom you are sending the letter and make them decide to dig in their heels and say, ‘Do what you like! I will not change!’
To start with, an effective letter of complaint must…
Here is a sample problem: Imagine you live in a gated community with one large playground. You and your friends play there every evening (decide for yourself whether you play football/cricket/basketball or something else). On weekends and holidays, you hold special matches with the children of neighbouring colonies/building societies.
Recently, however, the playground has been given out for events like exhibitions, festivals / fairs with food and fun stalls, etc., and you have been forced to stop your matches.
You plan to write a letter of complaint to the management of your gated community asking them to look into this. Can you identify which of the following statements are right or wrong in this context?
The writer is the author of Fun with Creative Writing, a series of workbooks from level 1 to 8, and has co-authored Anyone Can Write, a teachers’ resource book, both published by Foundation Books (Cambridge University Press)