The salutation depends on who the recipient is:
‘Dear Sir or Madam/Dear Sirs’
- Law firm or company
‘Dear Sirs’
- 2 men, names unknown
‘Dear Mesdames’
- 2 women, names unknown
‘Dear Sir or Madam’
- Name and sex unknown
‘Dear Madam’
- Woman, name unknown
‘Dear Sir’
- Man, name unknown
‘Dear….’
- Ms /muz/ …. (woman, name known, marital status unknown)
- Mr and Mrs/Mr and Mr/Mrs and Mrs …(married couple names known)
- Mr ….. and Ms/Miss ….. (unmarried couple, names known)
The complimentary close depends on the salutation at the beginning
Yours faithfully follows any salutation where the name is not used: Dear Madam, Sirs, Sir or Madam etc.
Yours sincerely follows salutations with names: Dear Ms, Mr, Miss, Mr, Judge, Professor, Stefano etc..
Date Format
There are some differences between the formation of dates between UK and US formats.
The most important is that in the 6/8 digit format: 09/04/18 – 09/04/2018 – in The UK format this is 9th April 2018, but in The US this would be 4th September 2018
As an example, we will use the date April 9th 2019:
UK 9/4/19, 09/04/2019, 09/04/19 (more common)
US 4/9/19, 04.09.2019
UK 09 April 19 (less common), 9th April 2019, 09 April 2019
US April 9th 2019, April 9th 2018
The most used format in The UK is 9 April 2019
REMEMBER: UK DD/MM/YY US DD/MM/YY
Emails
In a first email, we would expect to follow the salutations as seen above. If there is a conversation using emails, it is not necessary to keep using salutations or complimentary closes. It is possible to end email messages politely using informal endings such as:
- Kind regards
- Regards
- Best wishes
Do you have any suggestions for the body of the letter?
What do you need to consider when writing a letter regarding register?
What suggestions would you have regarding sentence length?
What methods do you use for checking grammar and punctuation?
What opening sentences can you think of?
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