Letter writing

[Acid]

Hi,

What is the best to way to start while writing an email to some one , for example writing to any CEO , Director etc.

And how should we end it , when our subject matter has been talked... ?


Acid

[Anna]

Hi Acid,

An interesting question. Generally, when responding to an email, adopt the same level of formality as the sender (i.e. if the sender begins his email with "hi" then it is ok for you to respond with "hi"). If you're writing to someone for the first time, especially if it is a formal email to the director or CEO of a business, it is better to write Dear Mr. X or Dear Mrs. Y (or use the abbreviation Dr. if appropriate). If you don't know the name, you can write Dear Sir / Madam.

As for the ending of the email, if in doubt opt for a more formal rather than a less formal ending. Formal endings would include "Yours sincerely" and "Regards" (my favourite).

Another tip for writing emails - try to make your subject line as informative as possible. For example, instead of "Meeting", you could write "Postponement of meeting until Thursday" or "Unable to attend meeting" etc.

As email is a fairly new method of communication, the rules are still much debated. If you want to research this further, look under the terms "email etiquette" or "netiquette".

Hope that helps!

[Prajna B]

Hi Anna,
Thanks a lot for the useful tips on formal letter. These are really helpful.

Although my suggestion is not directly concerned with the style of writing a formal letter…Still I think we all should be careful about that we should first use text editor like MSWord to write letters this not only helps us in minimising spelling errors but also punctuation errors…..And as far as the style is concerned we should follow the same patter as we use in hand written of typed letters….

Prajna B