Wednesday, February 29, 2012

HTW: Writing a thank you note

2

I remember when I was younger I would receive handwritten letters in the mail. They would be thick with  personality and had been carefully created for my eyes only. I do miss those simple days sometimes. While it is socially acceptable to reply with text, emails, pokes and messages, I am not sure it is alright to reply to a gift or kind gesture with an electronic thank you. Today I wanted to share with you a little old school pen to paper etiquette.


1. Stationery: Depending on how much you wish to write, you will want nothing larger than a greeting card sized piece of paper. Try to use a piece which looks nice, or at the least has not been simply torn from a book. Since you should handwrite this, you will also need a pen.


2. Spelling: For obvious reasons, you want to be sure your spelling is correct as you can't exactly fall back on spell check. It is crucial to actually get the person's name right! I can not stress this enough! My Mum's name is Leeanne and about 60% of the time her name is spelt wrong. It says to me that people can't be bothered to look up her correct spelling, so make sure to check the spelling first.


3. Thank you: This is a thank you note, so you want to start your letter with "thank for the gift/favour/help". Try not to start talking about yourself.


4. Money: Don't mention money. Instead of writing "thanks for the $20", swap it for "thanks for your generous gift". It simply sounds nicer.


5. Application: Tell the note recipient how you will be using their gift. I am sure they would love to know how their gift is/has benefitted you. That was the idea after all. 


6. The future: Mention the past and allude to the future in your note. Something along the lines of "It was great seeing you last Thursday - am looking forward to catching up with you in the coming weeks". 


7. Mail: Once you think you have said all you can, and that it looks beautiful, then it is time for mail this bad boy. Snail mail is fun and exciting to receive so grab yourself a stamp and pop it into your nearest post box. 



2 comments:

Post a Comment