Commitment to Standards of Writing Letters and Minutes at Hamadan and Isfahan Universities of Medical Sciences, Iran

Survival of any organization requires administrative communication through correspondence and conversation. Since official correspondence is one of the organizational tasks, it is necessary to provide a set of uniform principles for correct writing of administrative letters and minutes. This article aimed to appropriately guide the administrative staff in writing minutes and letters. In a descriptive study, 410 administrative letters and 55 official minutes written during 2007-2010 in Hamadan and Isfahan Universities of Medical Sciences were selected by census sampling. The frameworks and writing rules of the letters and minutes were reviewed. Data was collected in tables whose validity was confirmed by relevant experts. Data was finally analyzed by descriptive statistics. The standards of logo designing and placement were not followed by any of the reviewed letters and minutes. Meeting agenda and attendees were missing in 43.63% and 45.45% of the minutes, respectively. Most errors occurred in writing "Hamzeh" (a Persian letter) (n = 228), application irregular plural forms (n = 148), and using correct forms of shortened Arabic words (n = 147). The commonest grammatical and punctuation mistakes were omitting verbs at the end of sentences (n = 90) and improper application of comma, respectively. The most frequent comprehension-related issue was using redundant words and long sentences (n = 90). Our findings indicated low organizational awareness of writing standards. Since, well-written administrative letters and minutes would facilitate information exchange, employees of different organizations need to participate in related training courses.