Currently there are several ways of setting out a business letter in Britain, and policy in this respect differs from company to company. The form in which a business letter appears has not been standardized in the United Kingdom to the extent it has in the U.S.A. and most European countries, and many British firms still indent the first line of each paragraph and use more punctuation in the inside name and address and in the date. Nevertheless there is a growing tendency in Britain, due largely to foreign influences to use block paragraphing and begin every line at the left-hand margin and to dispense with unnecessary punctuation in the date and the name and address of the person or organization written to.
There are three main layouts in business writing
Full Block Style
Full Block Style is the most common format used in business today. With this format, nothing is centered. The sender's address, the recipient's address, the date, all paragraphs and in general all structural elements begin at the left margin. It is the easiest of the formats as everything is left-justified.
Modified Block Style
Modified Block Style is quite common in business letters too. It
is traditional and quite popular.
Modified block business letters use a slightly different format from the Full Block business letters. In the modified block style the senders address, the date, the complementary closing and the signature are slightly to the right of the center of the paper.
3. The Indented/Semi-Block style
The Indented/Semi-Block styleof business letters is very similar
to the Modified Block format. The only difference between the two is that the semi-block letter's paragraphs are indented.
Practice
Ex. 1 Look at these letters. What differences in their layout can you observe?
Letter 1
Letter 2
Letter3
Ex. 2 Correcting mistakes. There are some mistakes in the layout of the following letter. Find them and write out the letter correctly in the modern block style.
183 north Street
Island World Holidays
London WM1 3FM
Tel. 016769096
Miss Margaret Smith,
Scottsberget, 26
Goteborge 41805,
Sweden
Your ref.: Our ref.: FH/ts
Dear Sir
Thank you for your letter of the seventeenth of June twenty and sixteen. I have the pleasure in sending you our brochure with details of all our holidays. I look forward to hearing from you.
2016, june17 th
Best wishes Fred Henderson
Sales Manager
Fred Henderson
