Letter Writing For Beginners

[Music] Everyone likes to get a letter have you ever written a letter Pat got a letter today it says Dear Pat I am having a birthday party at my house next Saturday at 2:00 I hope you can come your friend Sally this kind of letter is called an invitation we write invitations to invite others to come and enjoy something with us it is important in an invitation to tell what where and when in her letter Sally tells what a birthday party where at my house and when next Saturday at 2:00 Susan got a different kind of letter today it says Dear Susan thank you very much for the book you sent to me I really enjoyed it your cousin Joan this is a thank you letter this kind of letter letter thank someone for something they have done for us or given us the letter has told Susan that her gift was appreciated Eddie got a letter today too Eddie's letter is from his friend Bill Bill writes dear Eddie my dad bought a new animal for our farm can you guess what it is it is a horse when you visit us again we can go riding Yours Truly bill Bill's letter to Eddie is called a friendly letter a friendly letter is a message to someone we know Eddie decided to write a friendly letter to Bill he remembered that not long ago his class talked about letter writing he knows it is correct to write his letter on white paper with a pen he was ready to begin in his best handwriting Eddie wrote his address after the address he wrote the date Eddie remembered what his teacher Miss Harris had said about this in class she said at the top of every letter we write our address and the date so the person receiving the letter will know where where the writer lives and when he wrote the letter we call this part of the letter The Heading Eddie thought of how Miss Harris had explained this she had said the first two lines of the heading tell the address of the writer the third line tells the date the letter was written There are rules for capital letters and commas in the heading which we must remember the name of the street starts with a capital letter the name of the town or city starts with a capital letter and the name of the state starts with a capital letter in the date we start the name of the month with a capital letter we can see that all the words of the heading start with capital letters we always put a comma between the town and the state and between the day of the month and the year Eddie checked his heading to be sure he had written it correctly he had all the capitals written and the commas were in the right places then Eddie wrote the next part of his letter dear Bill Eddie remembered what Miss Harris had called this part of the letter she said after the heading we write the greeting the greeting is a way of saying hello in a letter the words in the greeting begin with capital letters we place a comma after the greeting as Eddie looked at his greeting he saw that he had forgotten something do you see what it is Eddie forgot to put a comma after the greeting when Eddie had finished his greeting he thought about what he wanted to tell Bill when he was sure of what he wanted to say he began to write his message to Bill he remembered his teacher saying after we have written the greeting we write our message we call this part the body of the letter in the body of the letter the first word is indented moved over like this we start the other lines directly under the first word of the greeting only the first word is indented as Eddie wrote the body of his letter he thought of something else Miss Harris had said we should always leave about an inch at the sides of the paper we leave space at the top and bottom of the page this helped make our letter look neat and clean when Eddie finished the body of his letter he checked his grammar and spelling Eddie knew what part came after the body of the letter he remembered Miss Harris had said the closing is the part that follows the body of the letter the closing is a way of saying goodbye in the closing we always start the first word with a capital letter we put a comma after the closing the closing should always line up with the heading of the letter for neatness at the end of a letter we write our name this is called our signature when we are friendly with the person we are writing to we may use just our first name in the signature when Eddie wrote his signature his letter was finished as Eddie checked his letter he saw that he had made a mistake do you see what it is Eddie had forgotten the comma after the closing now Eddie's letter was complete it had all five parts The Heading the green meeting the body the closing and the signature but Eddie saw that Bill's letter was arranged differently what was wrong had Bill written his letter incorrectly or had Eddie then Eddie remembered Miss Harris had said there are two ways of arranging The Heading and signature this way is called block form this way is called the indented form we call it indented because we indent the second and third lines of the heading and the signature either way of writing a letter is correct Eddie had written his letter correctly and so had Bill Eddie was proud of his letter but there was something he had to do before he could mail it to Bill he had to address an envelope Miss Harris had talked about this in class too the name of the person we are writing to goes on the top line of the address next we write the street address the town and state go on separate lines so the postman can easily see where the letter is going we also include a Zone number when the letter is going to a large city on the envelope we use the same form we used in the letter the letter to bill is in block form the letter to Eddie is in indented form Eddie had something else to write before his envelope would be complete we always write a return address on the envelope this is our own name and address Eddie knew that he could write his return address in the upper left hand corner of the envelope or as Bill had done on the back of the envelope now Eddie was ready to mail his letter he folded his letter carefully to fit the size envelope he was using Eddie put his paper and Pen away and remembered to put a stand on his letter before he mailed it to Bill Eddie was glad they had talked about letter writing in class letters are easy to write once you know how it's fun to get letters in the mail and it's fun to write them too would you like to write a letter to someone n