摘　要

随着中国经济的发展，外贸英语函电成为了现代国际贸易双方进行商务沟通的一种重要手段，在贸易交流中起着不可替代的作用。作为函电的一种，外贸英语函电跟其他函电有着许多相似之处，但作为外贸英语函电，它又有很多自己的独特之处，如用词规范正确，专业性强，术语繁多等，这是外贸英语函电的语言特色。同时外贸英语函电在写作过程中需要遵循很多写作原则，如要遵循礼貌、完整、清楚、简洁、具体与正确等原则。本文将从不同方面结合例子探讨外贸英语函电的语言特色和其写作原则，以及在对外贸易的广泛应用。只有掌握了外贸英语函电的语言特色及其相关的写作原则，才能写出高质量的外贸函电，从而能进行有效的沟通。

关键词：外贸英语函电；语言特色；写作原则

Abstract

With the rapid development of China economy, English business correspondence has become an important means of international trade between the two sides of modern business communication, and it plays an irreplaceable role in the foreign trade exchanges. The intimate contacts with international economy bring requirements for the businessmen to know about how to communicate effectively in foreign trade. Thus the study of business correspondence is of great importance. As a kind of correspondence, it has the basic features of the correspondence; meanwhile, as the English business correspondence, compared with the other correspondences, it has its own special linguistic features, such as the standardization in diction, the specialty in language and using so many terms, it is called the linguistic features of English business correspondence. While during the English business correspondence writing process, it also requires a lot of writing principles to be followed such as courtesy, competence, clearness, conciseness and other specific principles. This article will discuss about the language features and the writing principles from the different aspects of business English correspondence. And this article also talks about the English business correspondence’s wide application in the foreign trade nowadays. Only to master the language features and principles of the English business correspondence, can we write out the high-quality English trade correspondence, and achieve the effective communication finally.

Key words: English business correspondence; linguistic feature; writing principles

1 Introduction
   This paper mainly talks about the linguistic features of business English correspondence and its application in the foreign trade. With the rapid development of China economy and the trend of globalization, more and more businessmen begin to do the import and export business. There are many ways for them to communicate with other businessmen, like face to face, make telephones, fax and so on. But now people prefer to choose the business English correspondence as the main method for communication in the foreign trade. Because it can convey the business information quickly and save the total cost and time.