How to write the opening of a business letter

UNIT 5. BUSINESS CORRESPONDENCE

 

1. How well do you deal with people? Answer the questions below for yourself, then compare your answers with your classmates.

 

· What is “business correspondence” in your opinion?

· Do you think one type of business letter is good for every case?

· What types of business letters do you know (heard about / learnt)?

· What is important when writing a (business) letter / e-mail? Exchange ideas.

· What mistakes can you remember when writing a letter / e-mail? What went wrong? Why?

Read and discuss.

 

How to set out your business letter

The important thing is to experiment with the different ways and then to settle on one way and to stay with it. The following business letter examples are suggested layouts for business letters using letterheads and fully typed letters.

Note: these days it is customary to type all business letters unless specifically requested to hand-write them.

 

What you should write in a business letter

A business letter has five main parts:

1. the heading

2. the date

3. the opening

4. the body

5. the closing

 

What to put in the heading of a business letter

This is your name and address.

You can use your fancy letterhead or just type up your business name and address.

The letterhead address can be positioned anywhere on the top of the page: centred, left side or right side.

 

How to write the date in a business letter

The date is very important, since it can be useful in determining priorities, for filing and it also can have legal ramifications.

In a typed address letter, the date goes immediately under your address.

In a letterhead letter, the date can go on the left-hand side, or the right-hand side, immediately under the letterhead.

 

 

Note that the suburb name is in capitals and that there is NO punctuation in the address.

The method of writing the date shown here is the easiest and least likely to lead to confusion. It looks neat and is clear and concise.

Always write the name of the month; if you are dealing with overseas clients or markets, or even with people who were born overseas, you can run into all sorts of problems if you only use numbers:

11-3-09 could be 11 March 2009 OR 3 November 2009, depending on where you come from!

 

How to write the opening of a business letter

This is the:

Name

title (if any Manager, Principal etc.)

address of the person to whom you are writing and the greeting or salutation.

This information always goes on the left-hand side of the page, starting one line lower than your business name and address and the date.