{"id":1889,"date":"2011-04-05T12:55:23","date_gmt":"2011-04-05T12:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/?p=1889"},"modified":"2017-11-14T13:44:55","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T13:44:55","slug":"writing-a-letter-in-german-formal-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/writing-a-letter-in-german-formal-letters\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing a letter in German: Formal Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone of you asked to explain how to write a letter in German. So, I provide a step-by-step instruction for formal letters and an example letter in this post. I guess you will find a lot of varying explanations and examples when you surf the web or look it up in books but I do assure you that will be always safe with the explanation in the following.<\/p>\n

1.) Your Address<\/strong><\/p>\n

You put your address at the top left. In the first line you can put the salutation Herr<\/em><\/strong> (Mr.) or Frau<\/em><\/strong> (Mrs.) to make obvious if you are a man or a woman. In the second line you put your full name. In the third line you put your street name followed by your house number. In the fourth line you put your zip code and town. Zip codes are always five-digit in Germany.<\/p>\n

Frau<\/address>\n
Gabi M\u00fcller<\/address>\n
Musterstra\u00dfe 1<\/address>\n
12345 Berlin<\/address>\n
2) Address of Recipient<\/strong><\/h5>\n

You put the address of the recipient at the left underneath your address in the same order as your address. If the recipient holds a title, you put the title before the name.<\/p>\n

Herr<\/address>\n
Prof. \u00a0Max Schmidt<\/address>\n
Sonnenweg 7<\/address>\n
56789 Hamburg<\/address>\n
3) Date<\/strong><\/h5>\n

You put the date at the right underneath the addresses. Dates are always written in the same way in German: day\/month\/year. You can either write it fully as digits or alternatively you can also spell the month in full. The word den<\/em><\/strong> (the) is optional.<\/p>\n

Berlin, 05.04.2011 \/ Berlin, den 05.04.2011<\/p>\n

Berlin, 5. April 2011 \/ Berlin, den 5. April 2011<\/p>\n

4) Salutation<\/strong><\/h5>\n
When you know the name of the recipient:<\/h6>\n

Sehr geehrte Frau … \u2013 Dear Mrs. …<\/p>\n

Sehr geehrter Herr … \u2013 Dear Mr. …<\/p>\n

When you do not know the name of the recipient:<\/h6>\n

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren \u2013 Dear Sir or Madame<\/p>\n

5) Greeting<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mit freundlichen Gr\u00fc\u00dfen \u2013 This is the most common form of greeting for formal letters and I always use it.<\/p>\n

Example Letter<\/h3>\n

\"german<\/a><\/p>\n

die Adresse \u2013 address<\/p>\n

die Postleitzahl \u2013 zip code<\/p>\n

der Absender \u2013 addresser<\/p>\n

der Empf\u00e4nger \u2013 addressee; recipient<\/p>\n

der Stra\u00dfenname \u2013 street name<\/p>\n

das Datum \u2013 date<\/p>\n

der Tag \u2013 day<\/p>\n

der Monat \u2013 month<\/p>\n

das Jahr \u2013 year<\/p>\n

die Anrede \u2013 salutation<\/p>\n

Gru\u00dfformel \u2013 (form of) greeting<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Someone of you asked to explain how to write a letter in German. So, I provide a step-by-step instruction for formal letters and an example letter in this post. I guess you will find a lot of varying explanations and examples when you surf the web or look it up in books but I do…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":7179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[33088,2642],"class_list":["post-1889","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-language","tag-formal-letter","tag-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1889"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8407,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889\/revisions\/8407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}