Synopsis, pl. Sunopses [sɪ'nɔpsiːz] конспект, краткий обзор; синопсис

Compression of the text: eliminating details, generalizing the main part.

Annotation is the shortest form of a secondary scientific text, which:

1. Gives a general statement of the essential thought of the original, i.e. the main communicative intention.

2. Generalizes the information given and presents it in a condensed form;

3. Mentions the addressee sometimes.

Descriptive Annotation: clear-cut and definite structure, presents the headings of the original in the same order they are given in the text.

E.G. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English language

Provides a unique survey of the history, structure and use of the English language throughout the world;

• Written by the world’s foremost expert in language matters;

• Visually outstanding – illustrated in full colour throughout;

• Fully indexed, with a comprehensible glossary and further reading provided.

The Style of Official Documents and its Substyles

a) Diplomatic documents;

b) Business letters;

c) Military documents;

d) Legal documents;

The aims of the Style of Official Documents and its Substyles

1. To reach an agreement between two contracting parties;

2. To state the conditions binding two parties in an understanding.

Each of substyles of official documents makes use of special terms.

The Style of Official Documents is marked by:

1. Conventionality; (традиционность)

2. Unemotiveness;

3. Encoded character (symbols, abbreviations).

4. A general syntactical mode of combining several pronouncements(заявление, утверждение) into one sentence.

5. Formulas of greeting, parting, politeness, gratitude.

The structure of the business letter:

• The heading;

• The reference;

• The date;

• The inside address;

• The opening salutation;

• The body;

• The complimentary close;

• Enclosure.

It is characterized by special business terminology:

extra-revenue, taxable capacities, liability to profit taxes;

Red-tape clichés: I BEG TO INFORM YOU; I BEG TO MOVE;

Abbreviations: MP, GVT, HMS, LTD.

Dear Sirs:

We are pleased to have received your order of Sept. 15 and would like to welcome you as a new customer of Payton’s Plastics.

Legal documents, military documents, diplomatic documents. The documents use set expressions inherited from early Victorian period. This vocabulary is conservative. Legal documents contain a large proportion of formal and archaic words used in their dictionary meaning. In diplomatic and legal documents many words have Latin and French origin. There are a lot of abbreviations and conventional symbols.

The most noticeable feature of grammar is the compositional pattern. Every document has its own stereotyped form. The form itself is informative and tells you with what kind of letter we deal with.

Syntactical features of business letters are: the predominance of extended simple and complex sentences, wide use of participial constructions, homogeneous members.

Morphological peculiarities are passive constructions, they make the letters impersonal. There is a tendency to avoid pronoun reference. Its typical feature is to frame equally important factors and to divide them by members in order to avoid ambiguity of the wrong interpretation.

All the above-mentioned styles are singled out within the literary type of the language. Their functioning is characterized by the intentional approach of the speaker towards the choice of language means suitable for a particular communicative situation and the official, formal, preplanned nature of the latter.