Business Letter Styles



The following pictures show what a one-page business letter should look like. There are three accepted styles. The horizontal lines represent lines of type. Click your mouse pointer on any part of the picture for a description and example of that part.






Modified Block Style Block Style









Semiblock Style

Business Letters
A business letter is more formal than a personal letter. It should have a margin of at least one inch on all four edges. It is always written on 8½"x11" (or metric equivalent) unlined stationery. There are six parts to a business letter.

1. The Heading. This contains the return address (usually two or three lines) with the date on the last line.
Sometimes it may be necessary to include a line after the address and before the date for a phone number, fax number, E-mail address, or something similar.
Often a line is skipped between the address and date. That should always be done if the heading is next to the left margin. (See Business Letter Styles.)
It is not necessary to type the return address if you are using stationery with the return address already imprinted. Always include the date.

2. The Inside Address. This is the address you are sending your letter to. Make it as complete as possible. Include titles and names if you know them.
This is always on the left margin. If an 8½" x 11" paper is folded in thirds to fit in a standard 9" business envelope, the inside address can appear through the window in the envelope.
An inside address also helps the recipient route the letter properly and can help should the envelope be damaged and the address become unreadable.
Skip a line after the heading before the inside address. Skip another line after the inside address before the greeting.

3. The Greeting. Also called the salutation. The greeting in a business letter is always formal. It normally begins with the word "Dear" and always includes the person's last name.
It normally has a title. Use a first name only if the title is unclear--for example, you are writing to someone named "Leslie," but do not know whether the person is male or female. For more on the form of titles, see Titles with Names.
The greeting in a business letter always ends in a colon. (You know you are in trouble if you get a letter from a boyfriend or girlfriend and the greeting ends in a colon--it is not going to be friendly.)

4. The Body. The body is written as text. A business letter is never hand written. Depending on the letter style you choose, paragraphs may be indented. Regardless of format, skip a line between paragraphs.
Skip a line between the greeting and the body. Skip a line between the body and the close.

5. The Complimentary Close. This short, polite closing ends with a comma. It is either at the left margin or its left edge is in the center, depending on the Business Letter Style that you use. It begins at the same column the heading does.
The block style is becoming more widely used because there is no indenting to bother with in the whole letter.

6. The Signature Line. Skip two lines (unless you have unusually wide or narrow lines) and type out the name to be signed. This customarily includes a middle initial, but does not have to. Women may indicate how they wish to be addressed by placing Miss, Mrs., Ms. or similar title in parentheses before their name.
The signature line may include a second line for a title, if appropriate. The term "By direction" in the second line means that a superior is authorizing the signer.
The signature should start directly above the first letter of the signature line in the space between the close and the signature line. Use blue or black ink.
Business letters should not contain postscripts.

Some organizations and companies may have formats that vary slightly.

Parts of a letter

The following are the parts of a business letter listed in the proper sequential order.

Letterhead - Stationary printed at the top of the page including the company name, logo, full address, and other elements such as trademark symbols, phone & fax numbers, and an e-mail.
Dateline - The date is the month (spelled out), day, and year. If you are using Microsoft Word, click - Insert, then Time and Date. Press Enterfour times after the date.
Letter Address - The complete address of the recipient of the letter. The letter address usually includes the personal title (Mr., Mrs. etc.), first and last name followed by the company name, street address, city, province, and postal code. Press Enter twice after letter address.
Salutation - The word Dear followed by the personal title and last name of the recipient (Dear Mr. Smith). Press Enter twice after the salutation.
Body - The text that makes up the message of the letter. Single-space the paragraphs and double-space between the paragraphs. PressEnter twice after the last paragraph.
Complimentary closing - A phrase used to end a letter. Capitalize only the first letter. If there is a colon after the salutation, there must be a comma after the complimentary close. Press Enter four times (or more) after the complimentary close to allow for a written signature.
Name and title of writer - Type the first and last name of the sender. The sender's personal title (Mr., Ms., Dr., etc) should be included. Use a comma to separate the job title if it's on the same line as the name. Do not use a comma if the job title is on a separate line. Press Enter twice after the name or title.

Definition of english business

1. Bisnis means buying and selling, and English is the name of our mother tongue. Business English is obviously such English as is used in mercantile transactions. Our definition is quickly made.


But it will bear expansion. We must answer certain questions that inevitably arise. Is some special brand of English used in business? And how are we to know when we are studying business and when merely the English of business?


Take the first of these two questions. There are of course certain words which name business transactions primarily. Buy, sell, exchange, barter, trade, purchase, shop, customer, hire, rent, pay, fee, price, retail, wholesale, lease, mortgage, merchandise, commodity, goods, stock, office, factory, finance, money, funds, capital, interest, sum, amount, balance, cash, currency, bill, receipt, note, draft, check, bank, cashier, bookkeeper, stenographer, clerk - hundreds of words like these will occur to us at random as being mercantile words in a peculiar sense.


To be sure, they are not all limited to business transactions. Note the word brand. It is primarily mercantile, naming a particular kind of goods. But in the second paragraph, above, the phrase "special brand of English" appears. Here the word is used figuratively. Every business word can be extended in that way to social or literary use. When we speak of wholesale slaughter, or of a stock of words, we use commercial figures of speech, and Americans are exceedingly fond of doing so. You have heard people speak of a thoroughly posted man, as if a man were a ledger. You have heard them speak of the balance of the day, as if time were literally money. You have noticed that an American likes to claim everything in sight; I mean, he prefers to claim that a thing is so, rather than assert, declare, contend, allege, maintain, or swear that it is so.


2. But the strictly commercial words, again, aria not the only ones employed in business. In addition to such words as are listed above in our third paragraph, business employs thousands of terms from science and technology. If a man is buying or selling machinery, he must know the names of the machines. If it falls to him to buy the parts of them, he must know the names of the parts. Does business English, then, include the study of everything that is bought or sold? If it did, it would include nearly the whole dictionary. Everything is bought or sold, from surgical instruments to Egyptian mummies. Nothing is exempt but heaven and love and faith. "Tis only heaven that is given away; Mis only God may be had for the asking." And there are gloomy times when we feel that even faith and love are sold.


Quite clearly we are not called upon to master the whole dictionary. No man's life is long enough for that. So far as special study of words is concerned, we must limit it to a few which are most commonly employed in mercantile transactions.


And I fear that even with these we shall not be quite certain what to do. In our eleventh chapter will be found brief histories of certain commercial terms. But it is not pretended that knowing the history of a word will usually be of much practical value to the young man in business. The word dollar has a curious history, being connected with our word dale, a valley. A dollar is a dale-coin, a piece of money first coined in a certain dale, or Thal. But who cares, except the philologist or the antiquary? "Show me how to get the dollar," says our business man, "and you bookworms may have the derivation." He feels that he is quite literary enough if he manages to spell dollar with two ll's. It bores him to go farther into derivations. And it would be bad business to urge him to go back far into history when he is interested only in the burning present and the glowing future.


3. If we pick up any business letter we see at once that the words it contains are chiefly common words, not especially mercantile. The technical buying or selling words are present, but they are in the minority. What makes the letter good or bad is the choice and arrangement of words to express thought and feeling. It is their composition, or putting together. And this is really the subject that we are after. "Business English" in the sense here used is merely short for "Business English Composition. "


"English," as used in schools and colleges, now means primarily English composition. It includes also the study of English literature, but chiefly because a mastery of literature helps the student to a mastery of writing and speaking. None of us common people ever invents a word, and the few Edisons are lucky if they add half a dozen to the language. We go to other people or to books for our words. They are the great social heritage into which we enter, and literature is the best place to find them, because there they are alive, each in its context. The proper study of literature is so practical that I dare not confess how practical - because some people think it is a matter of pleasure pure and simple. The words of literature are practical; the setting of them is practical; the knowledge of life that they give us is practical. The right sort of business man cannot read Shakspere without getting a clearer insight into those springs of human emotion which he has to consider daily. And if this reading makes him better in point of courage and good cheer and character, why, that is practical too.


But this is not a plea for the study of Shakspere. For all the illustrative matter used in this book we shall go to business documents pure and simple. We shall have business narratives, business descriptions, business arguments, business explanations. We are to try to get at the principles of English composition on business topics:


Our purpose is to point out some of the established principles which govern effective expression. Everybody is ready to admit that the power of effective expression is a financial asset. It helps the stenographer, the salesman, the manager, the advertiser, the correspondent. It makes for more responsible positions and advanced salaries. Good selling-talk sells goods. Judicious explanations remove difficulties. Persuasive arguments reach buyers.