Letter Writing, Applied Writing and Composition
Letter format is marked item by item
A Persian khatt/nama is graded on its skeleton: place and date; salutation; opening formula; body; closing formula; signature.
- Salutation: Janab-e mohtaram (formal), baradar-e 'aziz or khwahar-e 'aziz (family), 'azizan-e man (friends).
- Opening: Ba'd az taslim-o du'a', 'arz ye hai ki… - "after greetings, the submission is that…".
- Closing: baqi du'a'; sign as 'arz-e khaksar, "the submission of the humble one".
- Register: shuma throughout a formal letter; u for a third person; never tu in an application.
Applied writing tasks
Expect a darkhwast (application) for leave, a job or a scholarship; a shikayat (complaint); a guftugu (dialogue); occasionally a notice. Keep the request in the polite subjunctive: khwahish ast ki… ijazat 'ata farmayand.
Composition (mazmun)
Three paragraphs: claim, two supporting reasons with an example, conclusion. Open with connectors, not with a proverb: avvalan, saniyan, bi-la-shak, albatta, banabar-in, natija. A 150-word mazmun needs about four connectors and one concrete example, not five quotations.
Worked example
Opening of a leave application: «جنابِ محترم، مدیرِ عالی، مدرسۂ …، لکھنؤ۔ عرض یہ ہے کہ مجھے بخار ہے، بنا بریں چار روز کے لیے اجازت دیجیے۔» Reasoning: mudir-e 'ali keeps the honorific ezafat; 'arz ye hai ki is the standard submission formula and signals formal register; dijiye is the polite imperative of dadan, matching shuma. The date line and signature block are still missing - both are separately marked.
Traps
- Mixing tu and shuma inside one letter.
- Omitting the date or the signature block.
- Translating a Hindi essay sentence by sentence, producing Urdu-flavoured Persian.
- Ending the mazmun without a conclusion.
- Ignoring the word limit and losing format marks.