Correspondence Conventions

Salutations, Names, Titles, Closings, & Signature Blocks

Names/Titles

• If you don’t know the reader well or if the writer-reader relationship is formal, use a title and a last name (Dear Ms. Browne, Dear Dr. Kinneavy).
• If you know the reader well and the writer-reader relationship is informal, you may use the reader’s first name (Dear James).
• If your reader has a professional, academic, or religious title, use the appropriate title/honorific followed by their last name (Dear President Obama, Dear Dr. Edwards, Dear Professor Crowley, Dear Reverend Tompkins)
• Unless you are absolutely certain that a woman prefers “Miss” or “Mrs.”, use the title “Ms” or the reader’s full name (Dear Susan Jarratt).
• If you don’t know a person’s gender, use their full name or first initial and last name instead of a title (Dear Lee Jacobs, Dear D. Bartholomae).
• If you don’t know a person’s name or gender, if possible, use the their job title or role (Dear Recruiter, Dear Claims Adjustor).
• If you are writing to a company rather than a specific individual, use the company name (Dear Pet Smart, Dear E.J.’s Garden Pros).
• When writing to a group, use an appropriate plural noun (Students, Employees, Customers). When appropriate, use a more direct, descriptive, or friendly plural noun (Hello 3213 Pro Writers, Dear FAU Employees, Dear Initech Team)
• Avoid “To Whom it May Concern”—instead, choose the most appropriate “title” from the list of bullet points above. (see “Avoid ‘To Whom it May Concern'” from Netmanners, or “Salutations in Letters and Email” from the Business Writing Blog)

Gender Trouble^[3] (& Title Trouble): Problems and Solutions

Men are “Mr.” whether they are single, partnered, or married; whether they are young or old; and whether they identify themselves by marital status or not. They are always “Mr.” — their title, status, and “value” never changes, regardless of age, marital status, or visibility of either factor.

Women are often addressed as “Miss” if they are young and/or unmarried, “Mrs.” if they are married and/or beyond their twenties, or “Ms.” if their age and/or marital status is unclear or unknown. A woman’s title, status, and “value” changes depending on her age, her marital status, and the conspicuousness of one or both factors. (Note from the Professor: I think this sucks.)

Additionally, trans* people and those who identify as genderqueer or gender fluid don’t necessarily, wholly, or consistently identify as one gender binary or the other. Beyond that, none of us can ever be sure how any one particular person might identify based on their name alone.

For all of those reasons and more, we need an alternative to Ms. Miss, and Mr. “Mx.” is one such alternative that’s already gaining popularity in the UK.

On May 25, 2015, Stan Carey discussed “‘Mx’ – A New Gender-Neutral Title” on the Macmillan Dictionary Blog. Of Mr., Mrs., and Miss, Carey says “this array of options is still inadequate, because not everyone falls neatly into the binary model of gender. In official contexts we tend to categorise people as male/female, married/unmarried, ignoring the often more complex realities of identity. And just as Ms enables women not to indicate their marital status, an emerging title allows people not to indicate their gender: Mx.” Carey says “Mx has several other meanings,” because “[t]he x can work as a kind of wild card, as it does in many other contexts.” Additionally, Carey thinks Mx. “feels both modern and timeless. If it seems strange at first, it shouldn’t take long to get used to. Like Ms before it, Mx may well become an everyday part of English and a significant player in collective efforts to reduce the normative bias implicit in language.”

Very recently (not even one month ago) on August 27, 2015, the Oxford University Press announced the addition of the honorific “Mx.” as part of it’s latest quarterly update to Oxford Dictionaries. In it, “Mx.” is defined as “a title used before a person’s surname or full name by those who wish to avoid specifying their gender or by those who prefer not to identify themselves as male or female.”

Over the past few years, Mx. has been gaining popularity in the UK, where it’s been adopted alongside gender-based titles by the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Royal Mail, the National Health service, as well as many major banks, universities, and governance boards. In an interview with The Sunday Times, OED Assistant Editor Jonathan Dent describes the inclusion of Mx. as “an example of how the English language adapts to people’s needs, with people using language in ways that suit them rather than letting language dictate identity to them.”

Complimentary Closing

Complimentary closings depend on the genre, level of formality, and relationship between writer and reader.

Read “Proper Closings for Business Letters,” from The Houston Chronicle and “With Best Wishes,” from Lynn Gaertner-Johnston’s Business Writing.

Some examples of complimentary closes by level of formality:

• Respectfully,
• Sincerely,

• Regards,
• Kind regards,
• Best wishes,
• Cordially,

• Yours,
• Best,
• Cheers,

Signature Block

If you’re writing as a representative of—or on behalf of—a business, organization, club, or other group, you can (and probably should) include your role or title and the name of your organization on separate lines after your name.

email signature block	letter signature block

Avoid Redundancy

It’s almost always redundant to begin professional correspondence with “My name is…” or “I’m the [ role/title ] at [ organization ]…”

There’s no need to introduce yourself—your name, role, or organization at the beginning of your correspondence because that information (your name, role or title, and organization) should go in the signature block of letters and emails or in the heading of memos.