... purpose of communicating are called “speech acts” In English, they are commonly given such specific labels as apologizing, complaining, requesting, inviting, informing, complimenting or promising ... de-emphasize the bad news: putting the refusal in the same paragraph as the reason, stating it implicitly, using as few words as possible for the bad news, subordinating the bad news in a complex ... You-attitude is a style of writing which looks at things from the readers’ point of view, emphasizing what the reader wants to know, respecting the readers’ intelligence, and protecting the readers’ ego...