Writing Skills: Letters, Notices, Reports, Précis, Dialogue and Email
Writing tasks are marked on format, content points and register. A technically correct paragraph with the wrong layout, or a formal letter signed 'Yours affectionately', loses marks before the language is read.
Formats worth memorising
- Formal letter: sender's address, date, receiver's address, subject line, salutation 'Dear Sir/Madam', body in three short paragraphs, 'Yours faithfully' with the full name below. Informal letter: 'Dear Ravi', 'Yours lovingly' or 'Yours affectionately', and a chatty register.
- Notice: inside a box, issued by an institution, headline in capitals, and the five Ws, what, when, where, who and whom to contact, with name and designation. About 50 words, present or future tense, no first-person narration.
- Report: headline, byline and place-date, then past tense and third person, with passive voice for events ('the meeting was chaired by...').
- Précis: roughly one-third of the original, in your own words, retaining the main argument, with no examples, no opinions and no lifted sentences.
- Email: a specific subject line, formal salutation, short paragraphs, sign-off with name and designation.
Worked example
Given facts: an inter-school quiz on 12 August in the school auditorium at 10 a.m., organised by the Literary Club, contact the secretary. A notice reads: headline 'INTER-SCHOOL QUIZ COMPETITION', then the date, time and venue, the organiser, and 'For details, contact the Secretary, Literary Club'. Reasoning: a notice informs a group, so it stays impersonal and uses future forms rather than narrating the event as past.
Marks-losing traps
Pairing 'Dear Sir' with 'Yours sincerely'; writing a notice as a personal narrative; inserting opinion or fresh facts into a précis; omitting the headline or byline in a report; ignoring word limits; and forgetting the signature block.
Plan content points before writing, and re-read once only for format.