Informal, friendly or social letters can be written to friends and relations. The tone of such letters is friendly/intimate and the style is casual and conversational. It may read almost as though you are talking to the person you are writing to. Such letters can touch on a variety of subjects, but you should always be careful about your spellings, punctuation and grammar.
The skills of personal letter writing have been heavily eroded by other, more modern forms of communication, but social correspondence still remains a very intimate form of letter writing and provides far more opportunity for considered reflection than a telephone call and far more opportunity for description than an email.
A letter can show you at your best as well as giving you the means to express yourself in a much more sensitive way than would be possible with speech. Despite this intimacy, however, presentation is still very important – even if you are writing to a friend or relative.
Informal Letter Format
Sender’s Address: This is your address to which a reply to your letter can be sent. This is written on the left or right hand side of the page. Write only your street address in the first line and then the city, state and code in the second line.
Date: After writing your address, write the date on which the letter was written. You may follow the format of writing the month first followed by the date and then the year eg: January, 15, 2007.
Salutation: Between the date and the salutation you need to leave a line blank. Then begin your salutation or greeting by addressing the person you are writing to. Address the person as Dear (the name of the person), My dear.….. . If you have begun your letter by writing your address in the right hand corner then salutation should be written towards the left side of the page and rest of the letter will also keep towards the left margin.
Main text: This is the main body of the letter and begins in the next line just after the salutation. The main text should be divided into short paragraphs with a blank line between each paragraph.
Closing: This indicates that the letter has ended. It comes in the line just after the main text is over and usually ends with Sincerely, Sincerely yours, Affectionately yours, Thank you etc. Only the first letter of the closing begins with a capital letter.
Signature: Your signature will come in the next line right after ‘Sincerely yours.’ After having written out the letter, the format for it would look somewhat like the samples provided below.