The notes for English Informal Letter writing

Writing an Informal letter

The beginning

In the beginning when you write the address of the sender, no punctuations are allowed, no abbreviations like Blk  (Block), St (Street), No. (Number), Ave (Avenue), Dr (Drive), Cres (Crescent), S’pore/SG/S/Sg (Singapore), Rd (Road), Jln (Jalan), Cl (Close), etc are allowed. You will write the address on 3 to 4 lines, not on one single line. You have to first write the block, the street and followed by the postal code. Think of a valid postal code, like 333001 and not 000000 or something like that. The date should be the full form, like for example 2nd August 2012 and not like 02/08/12 or 2/8/12 or 2 Aug ’12 etc. 

An example of an informal letter is as shown:

Block 183

Bukit Batok West Avenue 8

#05-113

Singapore 650183

2nd August 2012 (The date, day followed by month then year)

Dear Wendy(,) (Greeting/salutation. Note that that comma is not necessary, if you use comma here, do not use it at your complimentary close)

How have you been? (Short paragraph/ question asking after well-being)______________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

(The Body. Note that the body should be longer than the starting paragraph)___________

____________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Yours sincerely(,)

Claudia (You can use a signature if you want to but make sure it is legible)

You can use the following complimentary close for your informal letter:-

• Regards
• Cheers
• Yours sincerely (This can also be used for a formal letter, you you know the surname of the person)
• Keep in touch
• Lots of love
• Hugs and kisses
• Hugs
• Cheerio
• Best wishes

Do NOT use ‘Yours faithfully as it is used in formal letter in the case that you do not know the receiver's name/surname.

When writing an informal letter, you have to have an informal tone, use contractions, tool shifters and conversation markers. You will have to be tone-friendly, warm, inviting and persuasive if you are trying to persuade somebody. 

Topic shifters are used to signal a slight change of topic in a smooth and natural way. 

Some topic shifters are:-

• Speaking of which
• Talking about
• Anyway 
• Incidentally 
• Before I forget
• As I was saying before
• That reminds me
• While we’re on the subject

Some conversation markers are:-

• You will not believe
• Believe it or not
• What’s more
• As you know

There are many more, but I could not copy it down in time