Business writers often use--or may be taught to use--strategies for verbal interaction analogous to those they use in conversation. Unfortunately, much current composition theory discounts analogies between verbal interaction in speaking and writing and therefore disallows applying the results of linguistic investigations of spoken language use to writing. However, the logic of business writing resembles that of ordinary conversation because in both cases discourse participants have available a shared situational context from which to draw meaning-producing inferences. Since business writers and readers interact with one another, they must acknowledge the requirements of "face" in these interactions through linguistic politeness forms. Because students already know how to use a wide range of politeness markers that signify the requisite level of courtesy for any given situation, they need only be shown how they can make that pragmatic competence explicit so that they can apply it to their business writing tasks. (Appended are examples of verbal politeness strategies, some comments on writer-reader interaction in current composition theory, and descriptions of some types of speech acts.) (HOD)