A better life with steem: Learn with steem: Writing an application letter

jehoshua-shey (71)SteemAlive active memberin SteemAlive • 4 years ago

Everyone can leave a message but when it comes to writing letters, one has to sit up a bit. Writing a formal letter especially, is a lot more demanding than any other form of message. This was my experience when I decided to write a formal application letter requesting for some favors from a superior.

Me carefully composing my letter

What Kind of letter I wrote
It was an application letter for rent waivers on the rent of the venue of our weekly Christian meetings. The venue was owned by a community and it was in the care of an esteemed professor. He was popularly called 'chairman'.

How did I write the letter
I used a letter headed paper. The letter heading was already on my pc, I just type into it. Now most organizations have official letter headings and my Christian denomination has one. The letter headed paper takes care of the sender's address, if not, the address will have to come at the top right corner of the page.

In the letter headed paper, I start with the receiver's address. This is another important component of a formal letter. It must be carefully and correctly addressed.

After the receiver's address come the salutation which is usually 'Dear Sir/Ma'. In my case, It was 'Dear Sir'.

Then you have the topic of the letter. Here I learnt something new. It was quite tricky. Many times you can find the topic of a formal letter beginning with two (2) letters - 'RE'. Prior to this letter, I had thought it meant 'repetition' possibly it was used in letters that centered on an already discussed subject matter. However, I went to google and founr out that the alphabetical letters 'RE' when use in formal letters mean 'in the matter of'. It adds more meaning to any topic.

After that is the body of the letter. Here you excuse pleasantries and go straight to why you are writing. Try to be convincing but brief. That was what I did.

Then the signature part. There was another thing to learn here. I was not in the position to sign that letter but then again, I learnt that someone can sign for someone else in a formal letter. The signature will be the writer's but the name under the signature will be that of the original signatory. To do this, there must be something written before the name - 'FOR'. This means that the letter was signed on the behalf of the bearer of the name stated.

The final ritual in formal letter writing is packaging. Get a good envelope, preferably new and neat and put the letter in it. The address of the receiver is also written at the back of the envelope.

Then the letter can be submitted.

Me holding my well packaged letter in an envelope