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Business Writing in History: What Caused the Dictamen's Demise?

dc.contributor.authorThomas, Janeen_US
dc.date.accessioned2010-04-14T13:57:44Z
dc.date.available2010-04-14T13:57:44Z
dc.date.issued1999en_US
dc.identifier.citationThomas, Jane (1999). "Business Writing in History: What Caused the Dictamen's Demise?." Journal of Business Communication 36(1): 40-54. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/68754>en_US
dc.identifier.issn0021-9436en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/68754
dc.description.abstractMany of the earliest business and administrative letters written in English fol lowed a set of rules called the ars dictaminis, a formal and complex model that prescribed a certain writing style and organization. The necessary pattern of organization was the following: address, salutation, notification, exposition, dispo sition, valediction, and attestation and date. The dictamen almost completely dis appears in the sixteenth century. Did the dictamen disappear suddenly? If so, why? In this paper, I argue that the dictamen disappeared slowly by attrition over the hundred years previous, and further, that it was never universal, as previous scholars have argued. The evidence for the claim that the dictamen was widely used and suddenly disappeared consists mostly of Chancery and government docu ments. When we take into account the mass of business documents involving ordi nary business people, including the largest surviving collection of business docu ments in English before 1500, the Cely papers, we see that by the late fifteenth century, ordinary business people were not following the dictamen's conventions.en_US
dc.format.extent3108 bytes
dc.format.extent855622 bytes
dc.format.mimetypetext/plain
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.publisherSage Publicationsen_US
dc.titleBusiness Writing in History: What Caused the Dictamen's Demise?en_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
dc.subject.hlbsecondlevelCommunicationsen_US
dc.subject.hlbsecondlevelManagementen_US
dc.subject.hlbsecondlevelEconomicsen_US
dc.subject.hlbtoplevelBusinessen_US
dc.subject.hlbtoplevelSocial Sciencesen_US
dc.description.peerreviewedPeer Revieweden_US
dc.contributor.affiliationumUniversity of Michigan, Ann Arboren_US
dc.description.bitstreamurlhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68754/2/10.1177_002194369903600102.pdf
dc.identifier.doi10.1177/002194369903600102en_US
dc.identifier.sourceJournal of Business Communicationen_US
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dc.owningcollnameInterdisciplinary and Peer-Reviewed


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