Unless the person's name is "Kindness" then you should never, ever do that in a business letter in the US and I'm going to guess never do that in the vast majority of the other English-speaking countries.
Dear Sir or Madam,
Dear teachers,
Sometimes we can see that there is only an email address or postal address with no specific receiver's name written down in some job advertisement.
In this case, can we call the people in the HR department that will receive the job application letters Ms. / Mr. Kindness?
If yes, should we use Yours faithfully or Best regards to end the letter in the case?
Please help clarify, teachers.
Last edited by kwfine; 11-May-2010 at 18:44.
Unless the person's name is "Kindness" then you should never, ever do that in a business letter in the US and I'm going to guess never do that in the vast majority of the other English-speaking countries.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I'm not a teacher, but I write for a living. Please don't ask me about 2nd conditionals, but I'm a safe bet for what reads well in (American) English.
Can we say something like this "Ah, here comes Mr. Kindness", if we want to be sarcastic(I.e. that "Mr. Kindness" is a mean man.) Or, and this situation is quite the opposite of the previous one, when that person is really kind, and somebody wants to say that out of kindness: "Ah, here comes Mr. Kindness himself".
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If you don't know a person, then you should use:
Dear Sir/Madam and at the end Yours faithfully;
If you know the surname of a person, for example:
Dear Mr. Smith, then at the end you should use Yours sincerely.