This might arise, for example, if you want to send a letter or a complaint to a company, and you have been told to “ just send it to the Customer Service Department”. What if you don’t know the name of the person to whom you are writing? The rule is that if you addressed it ‘ Dear Sir’, then you sign off ‘Yours faithfully’, and if you addressed the person by name, then you sign off ‘Yours sincerely’.
If you are writing an informal letter, you may omit the recipient’s name and address, and you may also sign it off more informally: ‘ With love’, or ‘ With best wishes’, rather than ‘Yours sincerely’, and sign with just your first name, omitting your surname and title.įorms for signing off a letter vary depending on how you addressed it. Name of the person to whom you are writing
The only exception is for a job application, where you should attach a formal letter to a covering email.Ī formal letter has a standard structure, which is: Most of the letters described on this page should never be sent by email. On this page, we are talking about writing letters that will be sent by post - snail mail - not by email.
This page explains different types of letters, from informal to formal, and how to write each one. There are still, however, times when writing a letter is appropriate, and it’s good to know when, and how to write one. Emails, Facebook, Twitter and instant messaging mean that we can stay in touch all the time. Nowadays, we don’t need to write letters very often and it’s become a dying art. Our grandparents and great-grandparents wrote letters all the time: to their friends and families, to the bank manager, to express condolences, to complain, to invite someone to visit, to accept an invitation and to thank people for hospitality or gifts.