Writing Letter

Letter writing is a important skill for any English language learner. Although email is a common way to correspond these days, you will still often need to write letters when enquiring about a service or responding to a request for information.

English letter writing can seem a daunting task to non-native speakers but all EFL students can learn a few useful phrases that will make writing letters in English a much easier task.

Practising your letter writing will also improve your general writing skills and your language awareness, while helping your English letters sound more natural and authentic.

Business letters

When writing letters in English, you should always begin with ‘Dear …’ unless you are writing to a friend or writing an informal note, in which case you might prefer to write ‘Hello …’ or ‘Hi …’ or the American ‘Hey …’

For business letters, you should always start with ‘Dear …’ using the recipient’s title and surname.

For example:

• Dear John (informal, or if you know the person very well)
• Dear Mr Smith
• Dear Ms Smith (always use ‘Ms’ when writing to a woman, unless you know that she prefers  ‘Mrs’ if married or ‘Miss’ if single)
• Dear General Manager
• Dear Sir or Madam (use this if you don’t know who you are writing to)

Possible beginnings for a business letter

• In reply to your letter,
• With reference to our phone call,
• Thank you for your letter of September 3rd.
• Further to our conversation yesterday,
• I enjoyed our conversation last week.

The reason for writing

• I am writing to enquire about
• I would like to enquire about
• I would like to confirm my reservation/ my order / apologise for my behaviour/ reply to your phone call / organise a meeting / suggest that we meet up

Requesting

• I would be grateful if you could
• Would it be possible for
• Could you possibly

Agreeing to requests

• I would be delighted to (accept your invitation)

Giving bad news

• Unfortunately, I have to inform you that
• I am afraid that
• It is with sadness that I must inform you that (you will no longer be required) / of (your redundancy)

Video Material :

source : https://myenglishlanguage.com/linguistics-language-guide/letter-writing/