English Business Letter Format I. Demands of stationery —businesses: —the first page: paper with the printed letterhead —succee

English Business Letter Format
    Good morning, everyone. I believe that some of the English majors wanna work for foreign trade companies after graduation. So today I will focus on English business letter format which is very useful.
    When a business that has letterhead stationery writes an English business letter, paper with the printed letterhead is used as the first page and (1) sheets of matching quality and color without the letterhead are used as succeeding pages, if any. A business with very good quality printing might generate the letterhead graphic with an image embedded in a word processor document. (2) An individual normally won’t use letterhead stationery and won’t attempt to fake it. An attempt at letterhead that produces a tacky result or that conveys pompousness produces effects that you want to avoid.
    In an English business letter, everything that you "type" should be in the same typeface and in the same size. (3) You should use "formal English" and you should check your grammar and spelling very carefully. (4) You should arrange things neatly. You should consider the space between lines and paragraphs.
    In a conventional English business letter you should see these parts from the top to the bottom.
    The first part is return address. This item is the postal address of the author of the letter. Each line of it is left justified. Normally the return address is at the top of the page, but you can move it down a little to improve over-all appearance. (5) Do not put e-mail addresses here—if you need to convey an e-mail address, do it in the body of the letter.
    The second part is the date of the letter. It is aligned with the return address. (6) Formerly there was a single space between the return address and the date, but some current styles allow double spaces.
    (7) The third item is inside address. It involves the full name of the intended recipient of the letter and that person’s postal address. Each line of the inside address is justified at the left margin. No e-mail address appears here. You can put blank lines between the date and the inside address to fill the page better and to improve the appearance.
    (8) Next comes the salutation. Use the same name as the inside address, including the title. If the addressee is not a friend, you should write "Dear Mr. Brown," or "Dear Mrs. Smith," or "Dear Ms. Jones," or the like. A letter to a close associate might use "Dear Mike," or "Dear Sally,".
There is at least one space between the inside address and the salutation. You can put a little more to improve the over-all appearance.
    The fifth part is the core of the letter—the body. The body is single spaced. Ordinarily the body contains more than one paragraph. Avoid both extremely short and very long paragraphs.
    (9) You can use either indented paragraphs, in which the first line is indented more than the rest, or block paragraphs, in which all lines begin at the left margin. With block paragraphs you must leave extra space between paragraphs—one blank line or one "empty paragraph" is often used, but you can also use Word’s extra space before or after paragraphs; the extra space should probably not exceed the size of an empty paragraph. With indented paragraphs, extra space between paragraphs is common, but optional. Indented paragraphs should be avoided if the return address was aligned at the left margin.
    (10) Special effects like bulleted lists and paragraphs whose left and right edges are both indented should be used very sparingly—avoid them as much as you can. Likewise, consider whether having your paragraphs fully justified, i. e. both left and right edges squared off, will make the letter look too much like a form letter or a piece of junk mail.
    What comes sixth is the closing. This item is something like "Yours truly," or "Sincerely,". It is normally vertically aligned with the return address.
    Next item is the printed name of the author, which is aligned with the return address, the date, and the closing. (11) Leave enough space above it for signature. If you have a job title and this letter is being written as part of that job, it is common to type the job title directly below the printed name. An individual writing a letter normally doesn’t include a job-title line.
    (12) Finally, if you are supplying copies to people other than the addressee, it is common to put a "cc" list at the bottom of the last page—"cc" originally stood for "carbon copy to". If someone other than yourself typed the letter, you will include your initials in capital letters followed by the typist’s initials in lower case. (13) If there are enclosures, that fact is often noted there too.
    Furthermore, your instructor may have told you not to use a template. Do what your instructor told you. (14) Many of MS-Word’s templates appear to have been created more to show off weird or fancy effects than to produce a well-done product useful to the ordinary user. Some of Word’s templates encourage you to produce a tacky document—resist the temptation. If you’re using Word 97, our friend "Office Bob" may pop up when you type the letter’s salutation. (15) If your instructor told you not to use templates, decline "Office Bob’s offer of help".
    OK, today’s lecture is over. I hope it will enable you to know exactly how to write a business letter. Next lecture will be held on Monday. See you then.