RGI News - Tips for Writing Instructions

RGI News

Guidelines for Contemporary Letter Format

November 2005

Differences have occurred in recent years, in the design of business letters. On this page we present some factors to consider, particularly now that there is more global correspondence.

The model letter shown here is written in the Full Block format, which is the format adopted by most companies today. Some suggestions for writing in this format are contain-ed in the letter; others appear below.

The Date You can present the date in the day-month-year sequence (Europe style), or the month-day-year sequence (US style). To avoid con-fusion, always spell the month, either in full or as the first three letters.

Punctuation There is a trend to omit punctuation from the address and after the salutation (“Dear…”) and “Sincerely…”. Punctuation is generally omitted in Europe, and is beginning to be omitted in the US and Canada.

City, State, and Zip Code The post office asks us to place all three on a single line, spelling out the city in full and showing the state as two capital letters. There must be one space between the city and state, and two spaces between the state and zip code:

Rochester NY 14618

RGI Learning, Inc.

October 24, 2005
David Wainright
Human Resources Specialist
The McQuarry Consortium
1345 Monroe Avenue
Rochester NY 14627

Dear David

Suggestions for Letter Design

Here are some guidelines for preparing your company's business correspon-dence:

Use white space to create an “open” appearance that invites the recip-ient to read your information.
Start every line at the left margin (except for subparagraphs, like this one) and, ideally, use a serif font such as Times New Roman in 12 pt size. If you prefer to use a sans serif font, type in 11 or 10 pt size.
If you use a subject line, as has been done here, set it in boldface type and do not underline it. You may precede the subject line with “Re:” or “Ref:”, although it's not essential that you do so.

Please call me if you need more information.

Sincerely

Andrew Lattimer

Andrew Lattimer

Addressee's Name and Salutation Generally, the “Mr” or “Ms” is omitted from the person's name in the first line of the address, unless the addressee has a title such as “Dr”. The trend today is to establish an informal first-name basis after the first exchange of letters between two people.

Justifying Right Margin Even though word-processing technology makes it easy to

justify the right margin, we do not recommend doing so. With full justification, the words in each line tend to have uneven spacing, which is hard on the eyes.

When the Recipient's Name is Not Known… avoid using a generic salutation such as To Whom It May Concern or Dear Sir or Madam (no lady likes to be called a “Madam!”) . Instead, insert the title of the position the person would hold, such as Dear Customer Service Manager

Lisa Moretto is the President of RGI Learning, Inc. For 14 years she has helped engineers improve their oral and written communication skills. Call (585) 461-3617 to learn about RGI's courses. Online instruction on writing business letters is available at www.rgilearning.com

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