How to Write a Formal Letter

This instructable will teach you step by step how to write a formal letter. This instructable will come in handy when all phones and computers stop working (apocalypse or power outage, lets go with power outage). The first thing you should do before you write anything is think about your audience. your letter should reflect your audience. This also includes the words you use. An example of this would be writing a letter to your employer vs writing a letter to your friend. One should sound more professional than the other. The materials you will need in order to write this letter is a piece of paper and a pen or a pencil. I apologize in advance for my hand writing.

Start the letter by writing your address in the top right hand corner of the letter. This will let the person know how they can write back to you.

Write the address of the person your writing to on the left side of the paper underneath your address.

Put the date underneath the person's address. Leave some space in between the person's address and the date. Make sure you write the month in words. For example 3/9/19 would be march 9,2019.

The next step is the greeting. If you know the persons name then put Dear and then the persons title and last name. If you don't know the persons name then the best thing to do is put "Dear Sir or Madam". You should always put a greeting.

The body of your letter is the biggest part of your letter. Think about what your going to write before you write it. No one likes to read a huge paragraph of words. Try to limit yourself to 250 words or less. In order to keep the body of your letter short,I suggest that you leave out the details that aren't important.

Before you can say your finished with your letter you need to add a closing. A closing tells the reader that you have finished reading this letter. Some examples of closings that you can use are sincerely, yours truly, best regards, and thank you.

The final step of writing a formal letter is your signature. your signature lets the reader know who sent the letter. Sign your name and print your name underneath your signature.

This is what the letter looks like after you finish following all the steps.