12 Useful Tips for Writing Personal Letter

Letter writing is gradually losing its flavor. Here are 12 useful tips to help writing a personal letter.
The art of letter writing has got a serious blow with the advent and indiscriminate use of telephone, email and SMS. But the history of letter writing is as old as the history of human civilization. When man became a little more civilized and invented some systems of writing he used to communicate with the persons who were at a great distance. Letters thus appeared in some rudimentary form. In ancient India people used to write letters with ink on birch bark. The great Roman poet, Ovid wrote a series of imaginary letters in verse in his Heroides. Gradually letters became the common form of expression. In the eighteenth century, Richardson wrote some epistolary novels like Pamela. The letters of Winston Churchill, Lord Chesterfields letters to his son, Nehrus letter to his daughter Indira, Keatss letters, and Tagores immortal letters are some of the finest letters in the world. The personal letters reveal the character and personality of the writer as well as the social and political condition of the times in which they were written. So the personal letters have some kinds of historical and literary values. But unfortunately in the present time personal letter writing is almost a lost art. People, nowadays, do not bother to write letter to communicate with the other people. To write a graceful personal letter is not an easy task. Letter writing is an art and one has to cultivate this art of letter writing in order to get a good hold over it. Here are twelve useful tips that one should follow for writing a personal letter: 1. A personal letter is a graphic counterpart of speech. So in writing a personal letter one should not pretend to be learned and use unnecessary scholastic expression. 2. Read more in How To Remedies for Writers Block How to Write a Fantasy Novel It should be written in clear and simple language, colloquial expressions and in a style purely conversational. A letter written in simple, lucid and flawless English makes pleasant reading. 3. To make personal letter fascinating and lively one should include intimate and trivial details in his writing. He should speak as if with the pen to the person to whom it is addressed. 4. Personal letters should be neither methodical nor orderly like an essay or article. Such letters destroy the distances between the sender and the recipient and bring them closer to each other. 5. Letters should be written in a neat and legible hand. They should also be free from spelling and punctuation mistakes as well as grammatical errors.

6. A personal letter should never be written in a hurry. Here the writer should take time to express himself and to create a favorable impression. He should also try to succeed in winning the object of writing. 7. A letter must have a heading that contains the full address of the writer and the date of writing the letter. In personal letters the address of the sender is given at the top right hand corner with the date just below it. 8. A salutation is a complimentary address to a person to whom the letter is written. A letter must begin with the salutation. It is written at the left hand corner of the first page, a little lower than the heading. The salutation depends upon the degree of intimacy between the sender and the recipient. 9. The body of the personal letter should be split up into paragraphs each of which deals with one point. This break-up is very much helpful to the reader. The writer should carefully avoid jumbling up the subject matters in one paragraph. 10. The opening sentence of the body of the letter should be such as it pleases the reader, draws his attention and rouses his interest in going through the rest of the letter. Hence it should be written with care. 11. A letter should not end abruptly, only with the signature of the sender. That would look rude. Hence different forms of subscription or courteous leave-taking should be used. 12. A letter without signature is quite absurd and useless. Hence before the letter is dispatched it should be signed just below the subscription. A personal letter often unlocks the heart of a writer to the recipient of the letter. As keys do open chest, so letters open breasts, says James Howell. In a personal letter, the writer has nothing to hide from the person to whom it is addressed and he finds pleasure in expressing himself to him or her. It is, therefore, marked by deep personal intimacy.