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About this lesson

Learn how to format a basic letter layout.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Basic Letter Layout.docx
29.1 KB Basic Letter Layout - Solution.docx
15.7 KB

Quick reference

Basic Letter Layout

Learn the base rules for letter layout.

When to use

Anytime you want to type a formal or semi-formal letter.

Instructions

  • Enter the Date at the top of the document.
  • Press “enter” four times to put a large space between the data and greeting line.
  • Enter the greeting line.
  • Press “Enter” two times before typing the letter.
  • Enter text of the letter.
    • Indent each paragraph by ½ inch (by pressing “Tab” on the keyboard).
    • Press “Enter” at the end of each paragraph, which places a space between the paragraphs.
  • Enter the closing line.
    Press “Enter” four times to put a large space between the closing and your signature line.

A faster way is to use FILE, 'NEW' in Word 2019:

There are hundreds of pre-typed and formatted letters at your disposal. 

  • Click the File ribbon, choose “New” and then click the “Letters” link OR type "letters" in the search bar.
  • Wait just a moment and then sift through all the letters to find the one you would like to use.
  • When you find and open the pre-formatted letter, just fill in the fields and adjust the text as you would like.
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  • 00:04 Let's go ahead and discuss proper letter format, and
  • 00:08 how to know where to put everything inside the letter.
  • 00:11 Every letter begins with a date, and that is simply followed with some
  • 00:16 space between the date and salutation also called the greeting.
  • 00:20 And then of course the text of your letter, and then we follow a sincerely, or
  • 00:24 goodbye, or thank you, that is called the complimentary closing.
  • 00:28 There's always space, enough space, between the complimentary closing and
  • 00:32 your typed name for you to handwrite your signature, at the bottom of the letter.
  • 00:37 And then, of course, you'd print that and mail it, but let's have a predicament,
  • 00:41 your predicament is you don't know what to type, you don't know how to type this,
  • 00:45 you don't know what to say.
  • 00:46 You've got to write a letter, you don't know what to say, well,
  • 00:49 the answer's right up here on the File ribbon.
  • 00:52 When I click the File ribbon, that opens up to Home, New and Open,
  • 00:56 there's one called New and you click this, this opens up to a bunch of things
  • 01:01 called templates, these are predesigned letters for the taking.
  • 01:06 There is no problem of you using these and putting your own name on these and
  • 01:10 sending them off, okay?
  • 01:12 So, I'm just scrolling down the list, well,
  • 01:14 what if the one you want isn't there?
  • 01:16 What if you want to type a thank you letter?
  • 01:18 Well, here we have suggested searches, you could hit business, or cards,
  • 01:23 or flyers, or you could just click in to this line and type, thank you letter.
  • 01:29 I'm gonna go ahead, and hit enter, and it will search through thousands of
  • 01:33 online templates and find the two letters that it thinks you might like,
  • 01:38 at this point, I'm going to choose which one.
  • 01:41 By single click, it's going to give me maybe a closer look at it, and
  • 01:45 I can close that if I don't like it or I could just double click,
  • 01:48 and it'll pop right onto my screen, and I'll move my screen down so
  • 01:52 you can see what just happened there we go.
  • 01:55 Now, it's simply a guide, it's telling you where to type your name, and your address,
  • 01:59 and your city, state, it's telling you where to type the date and
  • 02:03 the recipient name.
  • 02:04 Now, this is a very formal layout but, it's proper, so
  • 02:07 here's a thank you letter, and maybe you like the script,
  • 02:10 maybe you don't like the script, you can of course retype anything you don't like,
  • 02:15 you can retype anything at all, because this is about you typing your message.
  • 02:20 But the lesson here is that sometimes I just don't know how to write a
  • 02:26 complaint letter to the electric company, I could go to File,
  • 02:32 I could hit New, and I could say, complaint letter.
  • 02:37 And when I hit Enter, my goodness, there is a complaint letter, you see,
  • 02:42 any topic you need to write about, write a letter about, you can find in File > New.
  • 02:47 There are already samples written for you. I'm gonna go ahead and
  • 02:51 hit this back arrow, in fact,
  • 02:52 I'm gonna hit this back arrow on the top left to go back to my thank you letter.
  • 02:56 And of course, I can change anything I wanted in here, of course type my correct
  • 03:00 name right there, the only other thing that I would recommend is when you're
  • 03:04 typing a letter, is to select the actual text of the letter.
  • 03:08 I'm sorry, each paragraph, the head of each paragraph, and I would insert that
  • 03:13 first line, I would hit tab to insert an indent on these paragraphs.
  • 03:17 Okay, so on my keyboard, I'm clicking in front of the paragraph, and
  • 03:21 on my keyboard I'm hitting the Tab button, which is, it's called a first line indent.
  • 03:26 It's very normal to do this, very proper to do this and so, I don't know,
  • 03:30 it's personal preference, you don't have to do that, but you can so
  • 03:33 I just wanted to point it out to you.
  • 03:35 So let's see, anything else I can tell you about at this. No, at this point I think this letter
  • 03:40 looks great, of course I would save it, I would name it, print it and send it.

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