Literacy: creating texts
Formal letters: complaint and enquiry
Lay out a formal letter, and write one that complains or enquires in the right register.
A formal letter is not a friendly letter in smarter clothes. It has a fixed shape, and the shape is doing work: it lets a stranger who receives forty letters a day find out in five seconds who wrote, about what, and what is being asked for. Everything in this skill follows from that.
The parts, in order
Your address, the date, the receiver's address and designation, a subject line, the greeting, the body, the closing, your signature and name. In the convention taught in Indian and British schools, the order down the page stays fixed.
Three paragraphs, three jobs
First paragraph: why you are writing. Middle paragraph: the facts, with dates and details. Last paragraph: what you want done. A letter that complains for three paragraphs and never asks for anything has wasted the reader's time and its own.
Register
No contractions, no slang, no exclamation marks, no anger. Write "the waste has not been cleared for three weeks", not "nobody ever bothers". A stated fact complains harder than an accusation, because the reader cannot argue with it.
The greeting and the closing go together
In the convention taught in Indian and British schools, Dear Sir or Dear Madam takes Yours faithfully, and a named reader — Dear Mr Sharma — takes Yours sincerely. American letters use different closings, so this pairing is a convention to follow, not a law of English.
Have a play
Every formal letter has the same eight parts, in the same order down the page. Find out what each one is called — all eight, in any order, with nothing to get right.
Tap any part of the picture.
Worked example
Turn this into the opening of a formal complaint: "The water in our block has been off for days and it is really annoying."
Say what the letter is about, in the first sentence: I am writing to complain about the water supply to Block C.
The reader now knows the subject before reading anything else.
Try it together
Plan a letter to a bookshop about a copy that arrived with pages missing.
Answer each step with the words it asks for.
1.The first paragraph of a formal letter always does one job. Write the one word for that job — it begins with p.
Have a go
Which sentence would you put in the last paragraph of a letter of enquiry?
Ready to practise?
Eight questions on what you have just read. Nothing is timed, and you can play as many times as you like.