There are a few important things to remember when writing a formal letter, so here’s some tips to make it perfect:
- Adresses: In every letter we write, there should be 2 different adresses. First one, your adress, that should be written on the top-right of the page. Second one, the adress to the person you are writing to, it should be written on the top-left of the page.
- Date: It should go underneath your adress. The date is very important and so is the format in which it is written, be careful and remember to write it in the full format.
- Salutation: when we begin a letter, the most important thing to do is great the person we are writing to. To do this, we’ve got 2 options: if we don’t know the name of the person we are writing to, we write Dear Sirs; if we do know the name of the person we are writing to we should adress them by name, for example, Dear Mr Smith (Mr: for male. Mrs: for a married female. Miss: for an unmarried female. Ms: for a female, when you don’t know her status. Dr: for a person with the status of a doctor.)
- Concluding: yours faithfully or yours sincerelly + your signature
This are the main things that every formal letter should have.
But we must not forget the main part of a letter, which is the content of the letter itself.
The content should be separated into 3 paragraphs:
- Introductory paragraph: it should be short and clear. This is the part of the letter in which you should explain why you are writing.
- Main body: in this paragraph is where you should express the different points you are trying to explain, it shouldn’t be too long, we don’t want the reader to get bored!
- Concluding paragraph: here you should outline the main points of the whole letter and what you would like the recipient to do about the point you just made.
This are all the parts a formal letter should have.
Aside from this, we shouldn’t forget the style we should use:
- Do not use contractions
- Try to avoid using phrasal verbs
- Avoid colloquial language
- Avoid subjective language
- Do not use vague words, look for adjectives
We hope you find this tips usuful for the next time you need to write a letter!