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1. #DEAR GENTLE READER A CONVERSATION ON ETHICS UPDATE#
2. #DEAR GENTLE READER A CONVERSATION ON ETHICS MANUAL#

So would omitting the salutation.Īnd while we’re at it, let’s get rid of Yours sincerely and any other polite closing formula. If the letter agreement is with an individual, go ahead and use Dear if you want, but To would work fine too. ( You hear that, Jeff Wheeler?) I suspect that once I get used to the idea, I’ll get rid of the salutation. So use a salutation, don’t use it, I’m not sure I care.

And it does seem rather silly to repeat Acme Corporation’s name just under Acme Corporation’s address. The online world tells me that that’s an increasingly popular option. Boom.īut you could do without any salutation.

So I propose you use the following salutation for entities: To Acme Corporation. Wright Burke notes, for consistency it would be better if the letter were addressed to the entity and the salutation referred to the entity. In this post as originally written, I avoided the generic salutation by referring to the individual to whom the letter is directed. I find even Dear cringe-inducing on those occasions-increasingly infrequent-when I use it. OK, I’ve digested the tweets and the comments, and I’ve adjusted, for the following reasons: I’d want to recommend a formula that works in all contexts. The one shortcoming I see in Neil’s and Lawrence’s suggestion is that often your contact at the company isn’t the person who ends up signing on behalf of the company. If you expect it to be signed by someone, Perhaps address to that person? Alexander Hanff (CIPPE, CIPT, FIP) August 2, 2017īut here are a couple that are close to where I ended up: I see folks leaving it out, more and more Here’s a sample of the responses I received, some of them suitably of the wisenheimer sort: So I sent out the following tweet:Īnyone have a decent alternative to "Dear Sirs" for a letter addressed to an entire organization (e.g., a letter agreement)? 1/2 The problem with that is that Dear Sirs is not only gender-specific but also old-fashioned. For example, Ladies and Gentlemen makes it sound as if one is writing to a group of individuals. (That person’s name would presumably be in the “Attention” line of the recipient’s address see 19.6.) Although it’s best to avoid gender-specific drafting (see 17.10), the gender neutral alternatives to Dear Sirs are too awkward to use in this context. If the recipient is an entity, the simplest salutation would be Dear Sirs, although it’s commonplace to use the name of the chief executive officer. If the recipient is a person, the salutation should refer to that person by name. I expect that this post will allow me to generate the final such rider.Ĭhapter 19 (Letter Agreements) in the third edition contains the following: Besides checking the copy editor’s fixes and doing my own hunting for glitches, I’ve also been adding a few riders relating to stuff I’ve blogged about over the past couple of months.

#DEAR GENTLE READER A CONVERSATION ON ETHICS MANUAL#

I’m currently reviewing the first set of page proofs of the fourth edition of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. To whom it may concern suggests that you either don’t know to whom you’re sending the letter or don’t care. Dear Sirs and Madams (or Mesdames) and Ladies and Gentlemen exhibit the first two of those problems. If the recipient is an entity, dispense with a salutation-it would be pointless to use a salutation such as Dear Acme Corporation, as we would know from the recipient address stated above the salutation that the recipient is Acme Corporation.Ī traditional choice for a salutation to an entity would be Dear Sirs, but it suggests you’re writing to a group of individuals, it’s old-fashioned, and it’s gender-specific (see 17.10). A salutation is standard in correspondence with an individual, and it would allow you to reflect the nature of the relationship: in a letter to Jane Doe, the salutation would presumably refer to Jane or Ms. If the recipient is an individual, use as a salutation Dear and the individual’s name. Here’s the current version of what I plan on putting in MSCD4:

I now happily bow to the logic of those who said I should get rid of the salutation.

#DEAR GENTLE READER A CONVERSATION ON ETHICS UPDATE#

(I inserted the first update below, in the original post.) In the past 24 hours I’ve considered this issue for the first time, proposed something new, then had readers drag me in another direction.

Yikes! This is my second update to this post.