International Written Communication: Identify Culture

"All right, we are going to correspond with someone who has a cultural difference than we do. Well let's talk about this for a minute. The first thing that we have to do, before we write anything, letter, email, anything, is we have to talk about culture and customs. Now, culture and customs--that's basically where is this person from? Where is this country that you're writing? How do they do things there? We have certain culture and customs here in America. We write a certain way, we read a certain way, we eat dinner at a certain time, generally. There are certain norms that are acceptable. Well it's that way for everybody. And everybody has different customs when it comes to the way they write letters, or the way they read, or whatever it is that they do. It is very important for you as the person communicating with that other person, regardless of which end you're on, that you understand a little bit about the culture and the customs of that person that you're going to correspond with. It will help you as you write this letter. Because--or maybe even a presentation for this other culture. Because what you're writing this for is to pass on information, and you want them to understand it, right?"