Part 2

Thank you for your time.

Yours sincerly

Tom Jones

Note the lack of comma and full stop after the greeting, salutation and signed off name.

This was from a progressive upto date course on professional writing.

Does the same apply to the UK, or is it still considered a requirments to use commas and fullstops on the greeting and salutation, and the st/nd/th after the number in the date?

Back in Australia, I attended a professional writing course which outlined a very similar formal letter structure.

There are two parts which were highlighted in the course as obsolete and not used in formal/professional context.

The first is the use of st/nd/th after the number in the date. For instance the date in the above letter would be 21 July 2008.

The second is the use of commas in the gretting and salutation.

For example:

Dear Mr Jones

REQUEST FOR JOB APPLICAITON PACK

I’ve been looking for a well-mannered way of opening and closing emails to equal-level colleages, higher-level colleages (Directors, VPs and such), clients, and friends.

“Dear” seems too formal, “Hi” seems too informal, while just starting with the persons name seems too abrupt (put it this way, I feel slightly offended if the sender just starts with my name, or worse, just jumps straight into the body of the message).

The closing is difficult as well. “Yours faithfully” for people you “Dear Sir”d at the beginning is an easy enough to remember rule. “Yours sincerely” for ending messages that started with “Dear Fred” sounds a bit “hand wringing”. “With best regards” sounds better. “Best regards” is a bit less formal whereas just “Regards” on its own seems a bit curt.

Please could you research correct email etiquette for the different classes of email and report on them?

Yours sincerely,

Andre

I would normally use “Dear Sir/Madam” rather than “To Whom It May Concern”.