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If a letter is not
written on headed notepaper, the sender's address appears on the top
right-hand side. In a business letter, the addressee's name and address are placed lower down against the left-hand margin or tabulated in line with the rest of the letter. The present trend being towards less and less punctuation, it is no longer considered necessary to put a comma between the number and the name of the street, nor after each line of an address. However, be careful with capital letters. Capitalisation is more frequent in English than in French (e.g. days of the week, months, certain job titles, etc.). When writing an address, be careful to capitalise correctly.
When writing the addressee's name (when it appears before his or her address at the top of a business letter), the easiest way to choose the form to be used is to consult a previous letter from the person and see how he or she has had his or her name typed under the signature. For a man, there are
four basic possibilities: To these may
be added the American-style habit of using the first name and the
middle initial: These different ''titles"
are equally valid when it comes to addressing the envelope. Note
that "Mister'' is never written in full. It should also be said
that the old form "Esq" an alternative to
"Mr" and the abbreviation of ''Esquire'', has now almost
completely dropped out of usage. If ever you see it used, it will
appear after the man's name: For a woman,
"Mr" is replaced by ''Mrs" for a married woman,
''Miss'' for an unmarried woman, ''Ms" which does not reveal
the marital status of the woman. Note that the full stop after "Mr" and ''Mrs" is usual when typed or handwritten. ''Ms" does not usually take a full stop. In print, as in this book, it is more frequent to omit the full stops. As well as these ordinary titles, you may need
to write business letters to British people with titles of nobility
or other conferred titles. Of these, the most frequent is the knight.
His title "Sir" always precedes the first name:
Note that Sir Peter's wife will be called Lady Delaney and not Lady Peter Delaney - unless she holds a title in her own right.
There are several possible openings: Dear Sir/Madam (when you don't know the sex of the reader) Dear Mr Brown (when you are addressing a man) Dear Mrs Brown (when you are addressing a married woman) Dear Miss Brown (when you are addressing an unmarried woman) Dear Ms Brown (either when you do not know the marital status of the woman or when the woman prefers to be addressed in this way) Dear Sirs (to address a company) Gentlemen (to address a company in the US) Dear John/ Patricia/etc. (when you are on first name terms with your correspondent) In the case of a knight - Sir John Delaney for example, the salutation is: Dear Sir John and for his wife Dear Lady Delaney
The date that figures under the sender's address can be written in many different ways. These are the principal ways of writing, for example, the fifteenth of July, nineteen eighty-seven: 15th July 1987 (with or without a comma between
"July" and "1987") Variations on the above include putting
"07" instead of "7" for the month. Note that
months always take a capital letter, and that the abbreviation
"th" is only valid for numbers not ending in 1, 2 or 3. Certain months have accepted forms of
abbreviation. |
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