Comparison of three formal letters

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Comparison of three formal letters

Formal letter 1 – ‘Morton Michel Insurance Services’

This is a formal letter confirming the payment of a customer’s payment for their childminders insurance.  The letter is uses a lot of different techniques to make it as affective as possible.

Layout

The first thing you notice about this formal letter is that it contains a very distinct letterhead.  This contains the company logo, address, name, contact number, web-address and a list of partners of the company.  It has been formatted in blue to help it to stand out.  This letterhead would be used on most of the company’s letters.  This is because the document would be saved as a template on the company’s computer and therefore when they need to produce a formal letter they need not insert this information, therefore saving time.

The letter does not contain an address of the company on the right-hand side above the date, as you would expect because the information is in the letterhead.  Instead of an address in this space there is no information, only white space.  This tells the reader that this area of the letter is not important and therefore the reader looks to the other side and starts to read.  This is a good use of white space as it directs the reader as to where to look.

At the bottom of the letter is the footer.  This contains extra information about ‘Morton Michel Insurance Services’.  This like the header would be saved on the template to save time.

The letter is of a portrait orientation because this is the logical order in presenting text.  It enables the reader to follow the flow of information from top to bottom.

Structure

As I have already mentioned there is a letterhead at the top of the letter.  This is positioned at the top of the letter because it contains the company logo and it is important for this to be the first thing the reader sees.  This is because the reader can then either relate the letter to the company if they recognise the logo or if they do not recognise the logo they will remember it in the future.

The footer is positioned at the bottom of the letter because it contains extra information that is not needed but is related to the company.

Not including the information in the header of footer, all the text is left aligned and left justified other than the date.  This is because the date usually follows the address the sender of the letter and this is always right aligned and right justified.  The address of whom the letter is being sent to however follows the date and is both left aligned and left justified.

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Presentation Techniques

Throughout the letter normal line spacing is used.  This is because this does not use up too much space and looks very tidy therefore making the letter look more professional.

In the letterhead many forms of text formatting have been used.  The company name and address are both highlighted in bold.  This is to make this information stand out to the reader.  This is so that the reader can immediately identify who has sent the letter.  Within the letterhead all the information is also centre aligned.  This is so that it looks balanced therefore making it look ...

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