VS 2A 2009 English Language Blog

hi all,

Some comments and some other information about formal letters for you.

Format

Generally your format is fine. Some of you mixed up some of the items though. It should be as follows:

Your Address
Your Contact Information
Date
Addressee's name and address
Salutation
Subject Line

Having decided with the other teachers, we have decided to standardise the practice for the subject line to be the same as the one used for upper sec to minimise confusion. The RE: is to be removed and the subject line should look like this:

Complaint against Crazy Man Bar

It should be underlined and the first word should start with a capital letter and all proper nouns (i.e. names, places, objects) should start with capital letters.

You should only start a letter with 'Dear Sir' if you do not have the name of the subject who is receiving this letter. Hence, if the name is given as Mr Daryl Tan, you should start the letter to 'Dear Mr Tan'.

There should also be NO IDENTATIONS to denote your paragraphs. Hence everything should be justified to the left. For example:

I am writing this letter to lodge a complaint.......... [CORRECT]


Also, a lot of you did not write a paragraph to indicate the purpose of your letter. Make very sure you write a paragraph that tells the reader why you wrote this letter to them.

For your tone and register, please ensure that you understand the context of your letter and apply the correct tone and register. For some formal letters like a complaint letter, whilst you should convey that your are annoyed, you shouldn't be trying to start the 3rd World War with the Crazy Man Bar either! For others, you might need to sound cordial. So please bear in mind the purpose of your letter and think about how you want your recipient to react upon reading your letter!

Finally, use paragraphs! There is nothing more annoying to any reader to see a mass of text without any break between the text. So if you have a new point to make, use a new paragraph! It helps to better understand what you are trying to talk about.

Hope this helps.

Best Wishes,
Mr Tan