Punctuating letters

[Carlos Bielsa]

When writing a letter, the questions are:

   1) Comma or colon after the "Dear ..."

   2) Capitalization of first word after the comma or colon

After a quick search, the answers seem to be:

    1)

In British English, the greeting is always followed by a comma:

Dear Esther, or

Dear Mr Jackson,

In American usage, only a personal letter takes a comma here, while a business letter takes a colon:

Dear Esther, but

Dear Mr. Jackson:

(source: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/punctuation/essaysandletters/letters)

    

    2) First word after the initial comma or colon is always capitalized. Writing a small letter may be a German thing (and a Pope thing, see below).

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I enjoyed this answer from stackexchange:

I did a quick Google survey (ie searching for 'letters from the queen' etc in Google images and looking at the scanned letters that are generally the result).

-The Queen seems to use a comma and capital

Dear Mr Subject,

Thank you for...

-The President seems to use a colon and capital

Dear Mr Fellow American:

Thank you for..

-The Pope generally uses a comma but NO capital

Dear Mr Believer,

thank you for...