"Dear Mr. Manager" in Salutation?
qquito
When you write a formal business letter to your manager (say, John
Smith), is it correct to use "Dear Mr. Manager" in the salutation? Or
should you use "Dear Mr. Smith" instead?
Thank you for reading and replying!
--Roland
Cloy
In the United States, "Mr. Manager" would seem odd and contrived,
especially if you know the name of the person you are addressing.
"Mr. Smith:" would be preferred. The "Dear" could be omitted as well
if the tone of the letter is intended to be formal.
Dr Nick
I can't imagine "Dear Mr Manager" being correct in any circumstances.
From then a lot depends on your organisational culture - I'd open even a
formal letter (a grievance I want investigated, or a resignation) to
even the most senior person in my management chain by using their[*]
first name. So "Dear John" in your case. I'd address the envelope or
top of the letter to "title firstname surname", "post", "location".
I can imagine other cultures being more formal. It's my limited
experience that US business tends to be more formal than British when it
gets down to "official" documents.
--
Online waterways route planner | http://canalplan.eu
Plan trips, see photos, check facilities | http://canalplan.org.uk
Dave Baker
> Hello, Everyone:
>
> When you write a formal business letter to your manager (say, John
> Smith), is it correct to use "Dear Mr. Manager" in the salutation? Or
> should you use "Dear Mr. Smith" instead?
>
> Thank you for reading and replying!
>
If you are writing a formal letter or a letter to someone you don't
know, start it:
"Dear Sir, Dear Madam, Dear Sir or Madam"
Finish it:
"Yours Faithfully"
...then your signature, then print out your name.
If you are writing a less formal letter or a letter to someone you do
know but are not on familiar terms with, start it:
"Dear Mr Smith, Dear Ms Smith, Dear Miss Smith, Dear Mrs Smith". Use
Ms unless you are *sure* the alternative is correct.
Finish it:
"Yours Sincerely"
...then your signature, then print out your name.
If you are writing an informal letter to someone you know:
"Dear John, Dear Janet".
Finish it:
"Yours Sincerely", "Yours", "With Kind Regards", "Your
Cordially" (TM), "All the Best"...
...then your signature, then print out your name.
Cheryl
Never.
That's like those horrible mass mailings addressed to "Dear Friend" or
"Dear Occupant".
In a formal letter, you should write "Dear sir:" (or, of course, "Dear
madam:" if your manager is Jane Smith.
If you want to be slightly less formal - perhaps this is a manager you
work with directly, not someone very senior you rarely meet - you might
write "Dear Mr. Smith:"
--
Cheryl
Stan Brown
"Dear Mr. Manager" is always wrong, unless the manager is a man whose
last name is Manager.(*)
"Dear Manager" would be junk mail from someone who did not know the
manager's name and did not bother to find out.
You would address him in the letter the same way you would address
him in person, or perhaps a *shade* more formally. If you call him
John in conversation, you would say "Dear John" in the letter. If
you call him Mr. Smith, "Dear Mr. Smith." If you call him by some
nickname in conversation, say "Booter", you would address the letter
as "Dear John" or "Dear Mr. Smith".
(*) "Manager by name, manager by nature"?
--
"The difference between the /almost right/ word and the /right/ word
is ... the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning."
--Mark Twain
Stan Brown, Tompkins County, NY, USA http://OakRoadSystems.com
qquito
I do know the manager very well, and in daily conversations, I address
him by his first name, as many others do. And I see him almost on a
daily basis. However, there is a matter that I need to address in a
written form.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. And thank all others for
replying! --Roland
Jerry Friedman
wrote:
> qquito <qqu...@hotmail.com> writes:
> > Hello, Everyone:
>
> > When you write a formal business letter to your manager (say, John
> > Smith), is it correct to use "Dear Mr. Manager" in the salutation? Or
> > should you use "Dear Mr. Smith" instead?
>
> > Thank you for reading and replying!
>
> I can't imagine "Dear Mr Manager" being correct in any circumstances.
> From then a lot depends on your organisational culture - I'd open even a
> formal letter (a grievance I want investigated, or a resignation) to
> even the most senior person in my management chain by using their[*]
> first name. So "Dear John" in your case.
People use letters in business? My one formal communication to a
supervisor (a resignation) was a memo. (I'm pretty sure I used my
boss's first name in it.)
--
Jerry Friedman
John Varela
wrote:
> If you are writing a formal letter or a letter to someone you don't
> know, start it:
> "Dear Sir, Dear Madam, Dear Sir or Madam"
> Finish it:
> "Yours Faithfully"
> ...then your signature, then print out your name.
I sometimes use the top line of the address as salutation. For
example:
To FIA Card Services, N.A. "Dear FIA"
To Annual Credit Report Request Service "Dear ACRRS"
To Director, Department of Tax Administration "Dear Director"
To Internal Revenue Service "Dear IRS"
The above are all real examples.
--
John Varela
John Varela
At the place where I worked, it would have been extremely unusual
for someone to write a letter to a manager. It would be a memo. That
worked in both directions. Even things like firings were done by
memo and a form from the personnel department.
I suppose a letter would be appropriate in something like a
resignation to be followed by a letter from one's lawyer or the
EEOC, but I never encountered such.
--
John Varela
R H Draney
So are all the spam e-mails I get that begin "Dear R".
....r
--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.
tony cooper
wrote:
Just out of curiosity, what is the difference between a letter and a
memo? I know what I think the difference is, but I'm wondering if I
think the same as others. Fomat-wise, a memo and a letter are much
the same with a bit of rearranging at the beginning and the end and
the dropping of a formal salutation and sign-off.
Does a letter have to go through the postal system? If something
written in memo format is mailed through the postal system does it
become a letter?
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
John Varela
At my employer, The MITRE Corporation, it was straightforward. A
letter was external, a memo was internal, though outsiders working
on the project hands-on could receive memos.
The secretarial handbook laid out the rules. A letter had to be
signed off by a project manager. Anyone could write and send a memo.
A letter was on real letterhead paper. A memo had a letterhead
produced by a Word template (after word processing came in). Letters
and memos both had sequence numbers, in different series. Letters
had enclosures, memos had attachments (a secretary had to explain
that to me). A letter might have Subject and Reference lines but it
always had an internal address, a salutation, and a complimentary
close. A memo had lines To:, From:, Subject:, and no salutation or
complimentary close. A memo might have numbered paragraphs while
letters never did.
I think that about covers it.
--
John Varela
Roland Hutchinson
Someone once -- decades ago -- was promoting the idea of starting
business letters with a subject line in all caps after the internal
address, and omitting the greeting altogether. I thought it was a great
idea, and even used it from time to time.
Like this:
Federal Framish Corp.
36 Framish Park
Fredonia FL 34567
1 April 2011
John Doe
Sales Representative
World-Wide Widgets
1234 Widget Way,
Widgetville WI 53321
INQUIRY ABOUT DISCOUNTS ON YOUR WIZZY-WIDGET LINE. ACCOUNT NO. 765432-10
We would be pleased to receive pricing and terms of sale for quantities
of one to two million of the new-model Wizzy-Widget as advertised in the
March issue of Widget World, with delivery by 1 July.
Payment would be made via our established account referenced above.
Yours sincerely,
Mary Bloggs
Managing Engineer
--
Roland Hutchinson
He calls himself "the Garden State's leading violist da gamba,"
... comparable to being ruler of an exceptionally small duchy.
--Newark (NJ) Star Ledger ( http://tinyurl.com/RolandIsNJ )
R H Draney
>
>Someone once -- decades ago -- was promoting the idea of starting
>business letters with a subject line in all caps after the internal
>address, and omitting the greeting altogether. I thought it was a great
>idea, and even used it from time to time.
>
>Like this:
>
>Federal Framish Corp.
>36 Framish Park
>Fredonia FL 34567
>
>1 April 2011
>
>
>
>
>John Doe
>Sales Representative
>World-Wide Widgets
>1234 Widget Way,
>Widgetville WI 53321
>
>INQUIRY ABOUT DISCOUNTS ON YOUR WIZZY-WIDGET LINE. ACCOUNT NO. 765432-10
>
>We would be pleased to receive pricing and terms of sale for quantities
>of one to two million of the new-model Wizzy-Widget as advertised in the
>March issue of Widget World, with delivery by 1 July.
>
>Payment would be made via our established account referenced above.
>
>Yours sincerely,
>
>Mary Bloggs
>Managing Engineer
And here I thought you were going to tell us about the letter that was sent to
"Mr Intl B MacHines"....r
Peter Brooks
the fact that we know John Doe is dead.
I've been puzzling over the problem you raise, actually, the past
couple of days. I don't think that there's an easy solution to parsing
documents to extract people's names from them accurately.
R H Draney
>
>On May 18, 9:50=A0am, R H Draney <dadoc...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>>
>> And here I thought you were going to tell us about the letter that was se=
>nt to
>> "Mr Intl B MacHines"....r
>>
>Well, we knew it was a hoax letter because of the sending date - and
>the fact that we know John Doe is dead.
>
>I've been puzzling over the problem you raise, actually, the past
>couple of days. I don't think that there's an easy solution to parsing
>documents to extract people's names from them accurately.
Do tell...I once had to do just that for a list of about ten thousand names and
addresses so that they could be sorted by Zip code and surname for bulk
mailing...the biggest problem was not names beginning with "Mac" as a non-prefix
(e.g. "Machado") but multi-word names...how does a program know where to split
"Billy Joe Bob Van Der Something"?...r
J de Boyne Pollard
> (e.g. "Machado") but multi-word names...how does a program know where
> to split "Billy Joe Bob Van Der Something"?
You would, by the sound of it, be one of the few people who would *not* be amazed at the variations that I could list from experience.
Jerry Friedman
wrote:
I don't think too many people here would be amazed.
--
Jeff Freiodman
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
I'm not amazed having struggled with a fairly mild version of the
problem.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
Prai Jei
space-time continuum:
You would then have the problem of convincing the computer that Billy Joe
Bab Van der Something" (small d for der) was the same person.
No surprise here.
Back in my student days I worked for a while in an insurance office. One day
I found myself alone with a complee register of policies, and idly looked
at it, wondering what the first name in the alphabetical sequence might be.
No, Mr. Aardvarksson was not a policyholder. Instead, the list began with
perfectly ordinary Smiths, Joneses, Browns and others - prefixed by spaces,
asterisks and other silly characters.
But even the human element could be responsible for a few howlers. One case
I dealt with during those few weeks, began with an agent returning the
policy documents, "insured deceased". A week later another agent sent in
the premium. Uhh?? On the query sheet I sent to the second agent, the
answer ended with the words "The insured appeared to be alive to me."
Btw where do I split J de Boyne 3Pollard?
--
ξ:) Proud to be curly
Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply
Garrett Wollman
Prai Jei <pvstownse...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>You would then have the problem of convincing the computer that Billy Joe
>Bab Van der Something" (small d for der) was the same person.
There's an interesting (old) article here:
<http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb27-2/tb87hufflen.pdf> about the some of
the more difficult cases for BibTeX to process, and how these were
handled for a new multi-lingual replacement for BibTeX. In BibTeX's
terminology, a name has four components: first, von, last, and junior.
There are some heuristics which can accurately parse most English
names most of the time, but they fail often enough that every serious
BibTeX user has likely had to specify the parts explicitly. (The most
significant issues are related to "von" parts: whether they are
capitalized or not, whether they have a space after them, whether they
are significant for sorting -- all of these vary from name to name.)
Of course, there are also issues in different conventions for parsing
family names -- BibTeX gives all capitalized tokens to the "first"
part, by default, but of course some British family names are two
tokens. (At least in the case of academic publishing, it's often
obvious, but one must take notice of this when creating a
bibliography.)[1]
-GAWollman
[1] I get the impression that many Brits misparse F. Scott
Fitzgerald's name, calling him "Scott Fitzgerald" on second reference,
as if that were his family name. His full name was Francis Scott Key
Fitzgerald, so his family name is just "Fitzgerald". "Scott" was in
fact the given name he usually went by.
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Dr Nick
Well authors seem to set out to be confusing. Take Conan Doyle for
example.
R H Draney
>
>wol...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) writes:
>>
>> [1] I get the impression that many Brits misparse F. Scott
>> Fitzgerald's name, calling him "Scott Fitzgerald" on second reference,
>> as if that were his family name. His full name was Francis Scott Key
>> Fitzgerald, so his family name is just "Fitzgerald". "Scott" was in
>> fact the given name he usually went by.
>
>Well authors seem to set out to be confusing. Take Conan Doyle for
>example.
He was merely emulating Ralph Vaughan Williams....r
Athel Cornish-Bowden
>>
>> the biggest problem was not names beginning with "Mac" as a non-prefix
>> (e.g. "Machado") but multi-word names...how does a program know where
>> to split "Billy Joe Bob Van Der Something"?
>
> You
Who is "You"? Why do you clip off the names of the people whose posts
you quote? As these often seem to be people in my killfile I can't move
up-thread to find out.
> would, by the sound of it, be one of the few people who would *not* be
> amazed at the variations that I could list from experience.
--
athel
Athel Cornish-Bowden
>
> the biggest problem was not names beginning with "Mac" as a non-prefix
> (e.g. "Machado") but multi-word names...how does a program know where
> to split "Billy Joe Bob Van Der Something"?
It doesn't. I don't believe it's possible to do this without human
intervention, though a good program can make a first approximation good
enough not to require a lot of human tweakiing. It's not too difficult
to get a program to treat names with Mc or M' in a special way, but you
still need to notice the special cases like Machado, or even English
names like Machin.
Even humans find it difficult to handle Van, not least because the
countries where such names are common (The Netherlands, Belgium,
northern France, South Africa) do not all follow the same rules.
--
athel
Dr Nick
> On 2011-05-18 19:16:17 +0200, J de Boyne Pollard said:
>
>>>
>>> the biggest problem was not names beginning with "Mac" as a non-prefix
>>> (e.g. "Machado") but multi-word names...how does a program know where
>>> to split "Billy Joe Bob Van Der Something"?
>>
>> You
>
> Who is "You"? Why do you clip off the names of the people whose posts
> you quote? As these often seem to be people in my killfile I can't
> move up-thread to find out.
Ah yes, I've been wondering since his re-appearance
>> would, by the sound of it, be one of the few people who would *not*
>> be amazed at the variations that I could list from experience.
--
bob
Of course regular readers of XKCD will be aware of the tale of little
Bobby Tables.
Robin
J de Boyne Pollard
It's slightly complex, but the simple version that I tell people is that "de Boyne Pollard" is the surname. The three that you added is, per tradition, silent of course. And yes, that's been alphabetized under "D", "B", and "P" by different people.
Peter Moylan
> And here I thought you were going to tell us about the letter that was sent to
> "Mr Intl B MacHines"....r
I've heard that the company Allis-Chalmers once received a letter that
began "Dear Miss Charmers".
--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
Prai Jei
continuum:
> Back in my student days I worked for a while in an insurance office. One
> day I found myself alone with a complee register of policies, and idly
> looked at it, wondering what the first name in the alphabetical sequence
> might be. No, Mr. Aardvarksson was not a policyholder. Instead, the list
> began with perfectly ordinary Smiths, Joneses, Browns and others -
> prefixed by spaces, asterisks and other silly characters.
Had one in work today. Had to sort a mailing list alphabetically for one of
our customers. The sorted list began with 0'Brien, with a zero instead of a
nought. He was followed by 2atkins, presumably a typo for Watkins. Only
then did the true alphabetic sequence begin with a couple of Abbotts.
Jerry Friedman
wrote:
> Prai Jei set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
> continuum:
>
> > Back in my student days I worked for a while in an insurance office. One
> > day I found myself alone with a complee register of policies, and idly
> > looked at it, wondering what the first name in the alphabetical sequence
> > might be. No, Mr. Aardvarksson was not a policyholder. Instead, the list
> > began with perfectly ordinary Smiths, Joneses, Browns and others -
> > prefixed by spaces, asterisks and other silly characters.
>
> Had one in work today.
ObPondian: In America that would be "at work". I don't remember
noticing that one before.
> Had to sort a mailing list alphabetically for one of
> our customers. The sorted list began with 0'Brien, with a zero instead of a
> nought.
...
Instead of an oh?
--
Jerry Friedman
R H Draney
>
>Thus spake R H Draney (dado...@spamcop.net) unto the assembled multitudes:
>
>>>Well authors seem to set out to be confusing. Take Conan Doyle for
>>>example.
>
>> He was merely emulating Ralph Vaughan Williams....r
>
>(a.k.a. "the artist formerly known as Prince") days...
I don't have any of his recordings, but if I did they'd be filed under N....r
Roland Hutchinson
Pronounced "No Brian".
Roland Hutchinson
> R H Draney wrote:
>
>> And here I thought you were going to tell us about the letter that was
>> sent to "Mr Intl B MacHines"....r
>
> I've heard that the company Allis-Chalmers once received a letter that
> began "Dear Miss Charmers".
Only once?
Nick Spalding
<dc52d6f4-d07a-4475...@z7g2000prh.googlegroups.com>
on Thu, 19 May 2011 12:37:53 -0700 (PDT):
> On May 19, 12:04 pm, Prai Jei <pvstownsend.zyx....@ntlworld.com>
> wrote:
> > Prai Jei set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
> > continuum:
> >
> > > Back in my student days I worked for a while in an insurance office. One
> > > day I found myself alone with a complee register of policies, and idly
> > > looked at it, wondering what the first name in the alphabetical sequence
> > > might be. No, Mr. Aardvarksson was not a policyholder. Instead, the list
> > > began with perfectly ordinary Smiths, Joneses, Browns and others -
> > > prefixed by spaces, asterisks and other silly characters.
> >
> > Had one in work today.
>
> ObPondian: In America that would be "at work". I don't remember
> noticing that one before.
It would be "at work" for me too.
> > Had to sort a mailing list alphabetically for one of
> > our customers. The sorted list began with 0'Brien, with a zero instead of a
> > nought.
> ...
>
> Instead of an oh?
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
Prai Jei
continuum:
>> with a zero instead of a nought.
>
> Instead of an oh?
Thus did one of our service engineers explain the password that had been set
up on a cust0mer's system.
Mike Lyle
wrote:
>Jerry Friedman wrote, in
><dc52d6f4-d07a-4475...@z7g2000prh.googlegroups.com>
> on Thu, 19 May 2011 12:37:53 -0700 (PDT):
>
>> On May 19, 12:04 pm, Prai Jei <pvstownsend.zyx....@ntlworld.com>
>> wrote:
[...]
>> >
>> > Had one in work today.
>>
>> ObPondian: In America that would be "at work". I don't remember
>> noticing that one before.
>
>It would be "at work" for me too.
[...]
It's a Cambrianism. "In school", too. I may be wrong, but I think "in
school" may be used by other GBritons in a slightly different sense,
where it's necessary to emphasise a person's location rather than his
occupational status: "No, he's not in today"/"No he's he's not in
school today." Again uncertainly, I think "in work" outside Wales
always means the opposite of "unemployed"/"out of work".
--
Mike.
Jared
[...]
>
> It's a Cambrianism. "In school", too. I may be wrong, but I think "in
> school" may be used by other GBritons in a slightly different sense,
> where it's necessary to emphasise a person's location rather than his
> occupational status: "No, he's not in today"/"No he's he's not in
> school today." Again uncertainly, I think "in work" outside Wales
> always means the opposite of "unemployed"/"out of work".
>
With respect to northeastern U.S. usage, I would say "at work", but
either "in school" or "at school".
--
Jared
Stan Brown
I'm also NE US, and I would use "in school" for someone who lives at
home but happens to be attending class at the moment, but "at
school" for someone who is *away* at school, i.e. in residence there.
--
"The difference between the /almost right/ word and the /right/ word
is ... the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning."
--Mark Twain
Stan Brown, Tompkins County, NY, USA http://OakRoadSystems.com
Jared
> On Sun, 12 Jun 2011 00:04:51 -0400, Jared wrote:
>>
>> On 5/20/2011 4:52 PM, Mike Lyle wrote:
>> [...]
>>>
>>> It's a Cambrianism. "In school", too. I may be wrong, but I think "in
>>> school" may be used by other GBritons in a slightly different sense,
>>> where it's necessary to emphasise a person's location rather than his
>>> occupational status: "No, he's not in today"/"No he's he's not in
>>> school today." Again uncertainly, I think "in work" outside Wales
>>> always means the opposite of "unemployed"/"out of work".
>>>
>>
>> With respect to northeastern U.S. usage, I would say "at work", but
>> either "in school" or "at school".
>
> I'm also NE US, and I would use "in school" for someone who lives at
> home but happens to be attending class at the moment, but "at
> school" for someone who is *away* at school, i.e. in residence there.
>
When I was growing up, if someone called the home of a student and asked
if he was there, his parent might say "no, he's _at_ school".
Boarding school is another matter, and I neither went to one nor knew
anyone who did, so that is not a usage I have observed.
--
Jared
sunni...@gmail.com
> Hello, Everyone:
>
> When you write a formal business letter to your manager (say, John
> Smith), is it correct to use "Dear Mr. Manager" in the salutation? Or
> should you use "Dear Mr. Smith" instead?
>
> Thank you for reading and replying!
>
> --Roland
When you write a formal letter with address to Mr. John Smith, Director, should you then open the letter with Dear Director or Mr. Smith