After the sender’s address, write the date of the message in one or two lines. After putting in the sender’s address, skip one or two lines to make a clean line between the address and the date.
Make sure that the formatting stays the same for the rest of the letter. For example, if there isn’t a line between the address and the date, you should also skip a line between the date and the information about the recipient. When letters are formatted the same way every time, they might look more polished and put together.
If you use a business letterhead with the sender’s address in the header, your date will be at the top of the letter.Dates should be written out in full and not shortened in any way. In formal correspondence, you should not use shortened months or just numbers. Since “Jan” and “01” aren’t good acronyms, “Jan” can’t stand for January. Make sure you write the whole month down.
Most of the rest of the world uses the date-month-year format, which looks like “February 23, 2019.” This includes most Central America, most of South America, and most of Europe and Africa. If you and the person you are sending the message to both live in a place where this communication is standard, then this is the best choice.
You can choose the format you want as long as you live where one is preferred and the recipient lives in a place where the other is selected. If you wish, you can use “February 23, 2019” instead of “February 23, 2019” as a date to get around the problem.
Putting the date in mind when writing a casual letter
Place the date one tab to the right of the middle, using semi-formal writing. The modified block format is often used for less formal letters. If you use the revised block format, the sender’s address is to your right, the date is to your left, and your signature is to your request.
You can save time when writing a semi-formal letter on your computer by using one of the templates that come with word processing software.
In a professional, semi-formal letter, the recipient’s address, also called an “inside address,” should be two lines below the date. So, the greeting will start on the following line and use the correct courtesy title.
You can write the date in any format you want. When writing down the month’s name, never use a number or a short form. “January 31, 2019” or “January 31, 2019” are acceptable ways to write the date. Don’t write “Jan” or “01” if you’re talking about January. If it helps you remember, you can write the date as “January 31, 2019.”
The best thing to do is to put today’s date in your letter. A casual letter doesn’t have to start with your name and address, and it doesn’t have to have the address of the person you’re writing to on the letter itself. Write the date today at the top of the page of your letter.
In an informal letter, you can also cut the numbers short. When you write “January 31, 2019” as “1/31/19,” you can leave off the “0” and the first part of the year.