How to write a date in an essay

The international standard recommends writing the date as year, then month, then the day: YYYY-MM-DD. So if both the Australian and American used this, they would both write the date as 2019-02-03. Writing the date this way avoids confusion by placing the year first. Much of Asia uses this form when writing the date.

Many people get confused about how to write dates with commas, so here is a rule of thumb: in the month-day-year format (used in the United States), place commas after the day and year. In the day-month-year format (used in the UK and other countries), do not use commas at all.

When writing the date in a formal letter, you should write it in full with no abbreviations, for example, “December 12, 2019.” Avoid abbreviating the month or using the numerical format “12-12-2019.”

When the day of the week is provided before the month, the day of the week should be followed by a comma. When the date appears in the middle of a sentence, commas should appear both before and after the year. The store closed its doors for good on Wednesday, October 15, 1958.

Begin your letter

Be sure to date your letter so the recipient will know when you wrote it. You may place the date either on the right hand side of the page, a few lines below your address, or on the left side of the page a few lines below the other person’s address.

Formal Letter: A formal letter is one written in an orderly and conventional language and follows a specific stipulated format. An example of a formal letter is writing a resignation letter to the manager of the company, stating the reason for resignation in the same letter.

Your letter should be simple and focused; make the purpose of your letter clear. Left justify your letter. Single space your letter and leave a space between each paragraph. Use a plain font such as Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New, or Verdana. The font size should be 10 or 12 points.

If you do not know the name of the person you are writing to, begin with Dear Sir or Dear Sir or Madam or Dear Madam and end your letter with Yours faithfully, followed by your full name and designation.

In formal letters, you should include your full name; in semi-formal letters, you may use only your first name. Sign your name in the space. For informal letters, you may omit the typed name; you only need to sign your name below the closing.

After your signature comes your typed name, followed by your title on the next line. In some cases, you may want to provide your address, email address or phone number following your title at the closing of your letter.

At the end of the letter, place your signature on the right side of the page. Don’t forget to provide any relay information if necessary. When writing a letter using blocked form, indent each paragraph. First include your name, address, phone number, and the date.

Leave three spaces between your closing (such as “Sincerely” or “Sincerely Yours”) and typed name. Leave a space between your heading (contact information) and greeting (such as, “Dear Mr. Roberts”) Either align all paragraphs to the left of the page, or indent the first line of each paragraph to the right.

This meant that “Yours sincerely” and the signature were indented slightly – but not aligned to the right. Nowadays, the style in most British correspondence is to ‘block left‘. This means that all lines including the first one begin at the left of the page, and this includes letter endings.

Don’t be too formal

“Yours sincerely” is widely seen as too formal. If you feel like you sound like a Jane Austen character, delete and start over. The PerkBox survey ranked these three formal endings — “yours truly,” “yours faithfully”, and “sincerely“— among the worst email sign-off options.

Formatting “Sincerely Yours” in Correspondence

It begins one line after the last paragraph of the body of your message. Capitalize only the first word in “Sincerely yours” or “Yours sincerely.” Closings are always followed by a comma and a space for the signature.