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A famous letter from Albert Einstein and Leo Szilárd to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt suggesting an atomic bomb project. Click here for page 2.

A letter is a written message from one party to another. The role of letters in communication has changed significantly since the 19th century. Historically, letters (in paper form) were the only reliable means of communication between two persons in different locations.

As communication technology has diversified, posted letters have become less important as a routine form of communication; they however still remain but in a modified form. For example, the development of the telegraph shortened the time taken to send a letter by transferring the letter as an electrical signal (for example in Morse code) between distant points. At the telegraph office closest to the destination the letter, the signal was transferred back into a hard copy format and sent as a normal mail to the persons home. This allowed the normal speed of communication to be drastically shortened for larger and larger distances. This required specialized technicians to encode and decode the letter. The facsimile (fax) machine took this one step farther and an entire letter could be completely transferred in electronic form from the sender's house to the receiver's home by means of the telephone network as an image.

Today, the Internet is becoming or has become the predominant medium for sending letters. The term e-mail, meaning electronic mail, has entered into everyday speech. By analogy, the term letter is sometimes used for e-mail messages with a formal letter-like format.

Historically, letters exist from the time of ancient India, ancient Egypt and Sumer, through Rome, Greece and China, up to the present day. Letters make up several of the books of the Bible. Archives of correspondence, whether for personal, diplomatic, or business reasons, serve as primary sources for historians.

Advantages

Letters are still used, particularly by legal offices, companies, official notifications and sometimes advertisers. This is because of three main advantages:

• No special device needed - almost everybody has a home, which means that they are easy to reach. A mailbox is all that the intended recipient needs - not like e-mail or phone calls where the intended recipient needs access to a computer and an e-mail account and a telephone respectively.
• "Catch-all" advertising- unlike e-mails, where the recipient needs an individual e-mail address to receive messages, addresses are not chosen (per se), and so with the help of a postal service, delivering an advertisement to all homes in a particular area is not hard.
• Physical record - important messages that need to be retained (e.g. receipts) can be kept more easily and securely.

The letter-delivering process

Vintage German letter balance for home use

Here is how a letter gets from the sender to the recipient:

1. Sender writes letter and places it in an envelope on which the recipient's address is written.
2. Sender buys a postage stamp and attaches it to the front of the envelope.
3. Sender puts their letter in a postbox and does nothing more.
4. The national postal service for the sender's country (e.g., the Royal Mail, UK; U.S. Postal Service, U.S.; or Australia Post in Australia; or Canada Post in Canada) empties the postbox and takes all the contents to the regional sorting office.
5. The sorting office then sorts each letter by address and postcode, and delivers the letters belonging to a particular area to that area's post office. Letters belonging to a different region are sent to that region's sorting office, to be sorted further.
6. The local post office dispatches the letters to their delivery personnel who deliver them to the appropriate addresses.

This whole process, depending on how far the sender is from the recipient, can take anywhere from a day to 3–4 weeks. International mail is sent via trains and planes to other countries.

Letter layout

United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia

The following is a common way to set out a letter:

United States

The following is the modified block format for a business letter, common in the United States:

                             March 1, 2009
Your Address

Date


Mrs. Jane Doe

25 First Street

Anytown, VA 10005

Dear Ms. Doe:

This is an example of a modified block letter.  The difference between it
and a full block letter style is that the date begins at the center point
of the page; therefore, if a letter has a 6 inch line of type, the date
begins approximately over 3 inches from the left margin.

The closing block also begins half-way across the page.  The complimentary
close and the keyed signature (first and last name of the writer) begin at
the same point as the date - approximately 3 inches from the left margin.

                                          Sincerely, 
                                        John Smith 


                                         
                                          Sales Representative

jtp  (the typist's initials appear at the left margin)

See also

Types of letters

External links

• The Letter Repository Archive of personal letters from 1600s through to the 1940s.
• High Quality Letter Writing Guide
• Web form to Letter (PDF) generator
• University of Wisconsin Writing Center Guide
• Purdue University Online Writing Lab
• sample letters
• sample letters of sympathy
• How to Write a Letter