Signatory Business Letter Made Easy

Business letter format form

hi everyone this is a quick tutorial on how to write a business letter so I'm going to go through and cover some quick basics just some quick tips to get started so when writing a business letter it's important that you think about keeping your language pretty formal so when you're writing a letter to a friend you can be very casual but business letters tend to be more formal in nature so you want to avoid contractions so you don't want to write isn't doesn't shouldn't you want to write out the full words because it sounds more formal did not should not cannot you want to make sure your tone is always polite and respectful throughout even if for example you're writing like I've written a business letter when I've had a when I bought something like I had a really great back or a briefcase and it fell apart really quickly after buying it so I wrote the company a letter explaining that I was really disappointed that I had bought this this briefcase and it had fallen apart but even in that I was hoping to get a new briefcase or at least a credit and so I wanted to be polite and respectful so they didn't just disregard what I was writing because it was too emotionally charged you also don't want to use slang or any conversational type of phrases that are again informal you want to keep that tone really formal throughout so it's important that you know who is your audience who are you writing what is the purpose of your letter that way you can use the appropriate tone so if you're writing you know a business letter because you're applying for either it's a cover letter for a college or maybe you're applying for a scholarship or you're trying to get a job you want to make sure you sound confident that you sound professional you use strong vocabulary so you sound intelligent you just want to make sure that you use the appropriate tone for the purpose and the audience so before you ever start writing a business letter figure out who's going to read this letter and what what kind of emotion what kind of attitude should you be showing towards that reader and the subject you're writing about and that will tell you what your tone and just think about tone as in like your tone of voice so a person's tone of voice really communicates a lot about how they're feeling and the same thing in your writing you definitely have a clear tone sometimes that tone is angry and aggressive and sometimes it's really respectful and polite so you want to make sure that you're aware of your tone and the owl the Purdue owl site which is just a fantastic resource for anybody doing any kind of writing says that the best approach to a business letter is to quote strive for an overall tone that is confident courteous and sincere so I want to walk you through an example and then if you need more detail or you want another example because mine isn't clicking for you then I would go to writing a basic business letter at the owl Purdue site and this is the URL where you can get there so if you need to pause this recording to write down the URL or grab it some way please do that cuz I'm going to shift over to my word document so the first one I want to walk you through is really just a basic formatting document so you can kind of see along with the explanation what you're supposed to so let me make this a little bit bigger Oh looks like that's gonna have to work okay so at the very top of your business letter which should start on the first line so you have one-inch margins which should be what your margins are set out on a Word document but at the first line you're going to write your address so this is your street address then you have your city state and zip code I would follow that with your phone number or a phone number where you don't mind being reached on whatever topic you're writing about so if I'm writing about something for work I'd probably put my work phone number if I was writing something that was a that I wanted a response and I wanted them to call me at my personal number I'd probably put my cell phone or my home phone then now it's becoming more and more customary for people to also include their email address as a way to get a response from a business letter so you'll notice this is all single spaced the formatting for a business letter the most common is called block formatting that means you have everything left hand justified so everything starts here on the left hand side and it's single-spaced but you do have a space between each paragraph so you double space between the paragraphs so then you have this kind of empty space between them so after you have your contact information your address phone number and email you skip a line so there's a visible space and you write the date now you don't want to use slashes or shorten it to just numbers like 1 - 1 - 2 - 2011 instead you want to write out the month again this just looks more formal once you have the date again you're going to skip two lines so you're going to have that visible line and then if you know the person's name you're writing - you want to start with that now a lot of times when we write a business letter we don't know exactly who's going to read our business letter so you may have to skip this so you only include the person's name if that's available if you know the person's name and you know what their title is also include their title after their title you're going to put the company name or the organization name that you're writing to and then again you include your their address and then there's their their street address and then the state city state zip code we're going to skip two more lines so again you have that visible space between the person's name and title and the company name and their address and your salutation so you're going to start with one of two things if you're not sure who your who's going to actually read your letter you're just writing to a company or an organization or a college or some business where you're hoping to get a job you start with to whom it may concern it's important that you capitalize each of these words to whom it may concern and then you finish with the colon so you'll see that little these two dots one on top of the other that's the colon that is what you use when you're writing a business letter never never use a comma now if you know the person's name that you're writing to you're going to say dear dear mr. and mrs. and then or formally use their last name and again follow that with the colon but you only do that if you know exactly who's reading or who's going to open your letter in your first body paragraph in your business letter what you're doing is pretty simple you want to introduce yourself and you want to state the reason why you're writing again this is block formatting so it should it should be left hand justified there's no indentation your single spacing you're leaving a space between each body paragraph a visible space but the letter itself is single space so in this first paragraph you introduce yourself briefly and state briefly why you're writing then in your second possibly second third fourth paragraph you develop the reason you're writing so you provide more information more details about your request so sometimes this is just one paragraph and sometimes this can become two or three paragraphs depending on how much you have to say your third paragraph so if you only have one paragraph here your next paragraph would state where you can be reached if you're hoping for a response so if you know that this you're you want these people to respond to you or you think they might have more questions you're going to let them know that they can reach you at the email address above or they can contact you by phone the phone number above that way they know exactly how to get in touch with you and then the last paragraph is really usually just a line where you're thanking the reader for his or her time you might thank them for their consideration of some requests that you've made so if I'm writing a letter about this briefcase that broke and fell apart and I'm really disappointed because I just bought it and it was expensive then maybe I'm requesting that they send me another one a replacement or that they give me a credit and so in the end I would say I appreciate your time reading this letter and considering my request to replace this briefcase then you're going to skip another visible line and you're going to write sincerely sincerely is the best ending to your business letter just make sure you spell it correctly have a lot of students that sounded out sincerely and they put two S's instead of SI n SI e ar e ly and then you follow that with the comma and then you have to skip four lines and you might be wondering why skip all the space that's where your hand written signature is going to go so you skip four lines and then you type your name and in the space you've created after you print out your business letter that's where you're going to sign your name because that's very formal puts the and also puts the personal touch on your business letter so I want to read you an example of a business letter that I wrote it's actually for a student recommendation so I write a lot of student recommendations for kids who are applying to scholarships in college and so I've removed the students last name so for the for her privacy but I have just included the the letter as I wrote it so the student asked me to write a letter of recommendation because she was applying to UCLA UCLA is my alma mater and so I said I would love to so I'm gonna walk you through what I did here so I have actually my work address so I put my the address of the school and because this is work-related and then I put my phone number at the school and my email address at the school then I skipped that visible line and I put the date which was September 13th comma 2012 then I skipped a line and I put the UCLA undergraduate admissions basically addressed all the information that I had I didn't know who was going to read it in the admissions department because there's lots and lots of people who work in the admissions department but I did put the Department of it and then I also included the street address the city state zip code then I skipped another visible line and I wrote to whom it may concern' all capitalized with the colon I skipped another line and this is my brief introduction my first paragraph I said my name is Caitlin Tucker I'm an English language arts teacher at Windsor High School I am writing this letter of recommendation on behalf of Sarah and so here I've introduced who I am and why I'm writing again it's very brief then I skip a line and I can go on to say I've had the pleasure of teaching Sarah and my honors level English class Sarah's maturity intellect diligence creativity and work ethic make her a joy to have in the classroom she is continually working to improve her skills and develop as a writer she has demonstrated significant growth and development in the time we've worked together because she is receptive to feedback and asked quality questions so here I'm elaborating on why I would write Sarah a recommendation right because I'm going through and talking about some of her really great qualities I think make her a wonderful candidate for UCLA now I'm going to expand on that second paragraph and it actually is three paragraphs that explain why I think she's such an incredible student so I'm going to continue with that Sarah prioritizes her school work and demonstrates a commitment to her education this commitment and dedication is reflected in the quality of her work and her interactions with her peers her contributions both in class and in our online discussion forum have continually impressed me Sarah is the rare student who is both able to or who is able to communicate collaborate and problem-solve effectively with her peers in the classroom she's kind communicative and focused she's respectful and supportive of her peers she's the type of student than could be put into any group with anyone and successfully accomplish a task she is patient open-minded and an attentive listener it has been an absolute pleasure to have her in class she would be a wonderful addition to any college campus so again I have my brief first paragraph and then the second paragraph which expands on my reason for writing I've actually kind of made into three separate paragraphs here and then I have my next paragraph which tells the admissions office where they can get in touch with me so I say if you have any additional questions you can reach me at the email address above thank you for your time so that's that last paragraph thanking them for their time sincerely with the comma and then I have this big space where I'm going to put my signature once I've printed out the piece of paper and I followed it with my name typed and then if you have a title so you could say WHS student or windsor student or if you have another title so I put English teacher Oh xur high school okay so that's an example of what a business in that letter might look like that's been a little bit more developed