English - Letter writing

Another extract from the news cutting written by Luke Teoh , Ipoh

Friday July 18, 2008
No more punctuation
OPEN CHANNEL

IN the Seventies, in its Manual for Civil Service Typists, the British Civil Service recommended the omission of full-stops marking abbreviations and all non-essential commas outside the body of a letter – from the date, the inside name and address, and after the salutation and the complimentary closure.

This gave rise to a modern style of letter-writing, and this information has been disseminated to the teaching of letter-writing in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and several other Commonwealth countries. What about Malaysia?


Abbreviations


Mr (NOT Mr. with the full-stop)


Mrs


Dr


am / pm


Ltd


BA / BSc / MA / Ph D


UN / NATO / USA / UK


Addresses


Miss Joanne Kam
8 Jalan Lembu
Bukit Putra
31360 Sekandang

Letters – salutations and complimentary closures.


Dear Sam (NOT Dear Sam, with the comma)


Dear Sir


Yours sincerely (NOT Yours sincerely, with the comma)


Yours truly

I think Malaysian students should be taught this modern style of letter–writing, too. It has been more than 30 years overdue.

People can make judgements about you not only from what you say in your letters but from the way you say it: this includes the way you set out the letter and address the envelope.