The paper deals with directivity in the administrative functional style of Croatian, Macedonian and Serbian standard languages. In the theoretical framework of the paper, the beginnings of functional stylistics are analyzed and definitions, characteristics and divisions of functional styles compared. Particular attention is given to the description of the administrative functional style and to the presentation of its morphological, syntactic and lexical features. Next, theory of speech act is presented, with special focus on the directivity – its characteristics and the means of its expression. Given that imperativeness is a significant feature of the administrative functional style, the paper presents types of imperatives with regard to their function, their means and ways of expression. Furthermore, the theory of politeness and its application in the context of interpretation of directivity are presented. The practical part of the paper presents the results of the analysis of the ways and means of expressing directivity, carried out on the sample of written letters for an unpaid debt in Croatian, Macedonian and Serbian languages. The aim of this paper is to investigate the features of directivity in the administrative functional style in the three South Slavic languages and to explore the reasons why is it preferable to use secondary means of expressing imperativeness in those languages.