hello my name is Lydia Beth and welcome to writing a friendly letter in this video you will learn
why we write friendly letters and how they are properly written writing letters can be fun would
you like to write a letter to a friend I bet you do let's learn how so you can get started let's go
in the past before cell phones computers laptops and social media people used to write letters on
paper did you know we still do many people enjoy writing letters by hand or typewriter on paper
as a way to send a more personal message learning how to correctly write a friendly letter can help
you communicate to friends and family it can be a lot of fun to send letters so why do people
write friendly letters we write them to inform or give information on something to persuade
to ask questions to make plans
to answer someone to thank someone my favorite or even to apologize all of these are in formal
reason in formal reasons mean that they're for fun or for personal reasons there are five parts
of a friendly letter they can be thought of like a person's body the first part is the heading you
can think of that as me as head it's at the top the heading contains the return address or the
address of the person writing the letter then the greeting I'm drawing the line to Mia's mouth when
we greet someone out loud we use our mouth we say hey hi in a letter the greeting stands by
itself and is followed by a comma something like dear Peter dear Sally the body is where
the information of the letter is it's in the middle just like Mia's body this is made up
of at least one paragraph the closing and the signature go together at the bottom we would
say our feet the closing is a polite way to end the letter and your signature is your name let's
take a look at this friendly letter written by Julio to his friend Remi the parts of the
letter remember are the heading the greeting the body the closing and the signature can
you guess which one is the heading good job the heading contains the return address and the date
the reason we put this here is so that to whom to whoever you are writing your letter
knows where to send a reply or an answer back to you it is your address if you are
writing the letter and the date tells when the letter was written in this case February
6 2020 the greeting is the next part of the letter it's sort of the hello of the letter
the greeting usually uses the word dear and the name and a comma capitalize the D and D R and
the person's first name is capitalized the next part is the body in this case the body here has
two paragraphs notice that the paragraphs are each indented just like you would when you're
writing a regular paragraph the closing and the signature together and the letter the
closing can be different Julio here decided to use your best friend comma you could use
the word regards sincerely your friend there are many different choices remember the first letter
of the closing gets capitalized in the first word but not the others if you look back at
Julio's letter you'll notice best and friend are not capitalized but there is a comma afterwards
and he signed his name in cursive now I'd like to talk to you a little bit about how everything is
lined up on the page a notebook paper there's a margin here it's this red line that runs up and
down the paper most of the letter is lined up on the margin but the heading if you notice is over
here and so is the closing and the signature if I were to draw a line all the way down you'd notice
they line up that's a lot on one page let's take a look at a fresh sample here is a letter
from can you guess very good Peter Peter wrote this letter he wrote it to his friend good job
sylvie and if you notice he wrote on something called stationery it doesn't have any lines or
margins or holes to follow the normal parts of our friendly letter R there we have what's
this call good job the heading this is write the greeting capital T capital s and sylveon a comma
what are these two paragraphs called and notice they're indented here and here very good these
two paragraphs make up the body and over here we have the word sincerely capitalized with a
comma and Peter's signature oh I gave part of it away right sincerely is the closing and Peter is
the signature I want to point out a couple of things about indenting if you notice there are
no margins on this paper because as I said it's stationary but the heading and the closing and
signature are indented the same amount of space to the right you can draw an imaginary line and
see that they are the greeting and most of the paragraph parts are lined up to the margin the
first line of each paragraph are indented just like a normal paragraph it's very important
now that you have a letter to send how do you send it well there are three ways one just give
it to them the second way is electronically this means email or chat and definitely you
need parents permission and they need to know to whom you're sending such a letter and the third
way is mail it you need a real postage stamp to do this here's an envelope you put your letter
folded neatly inside and make sure it fits then seal it a lot of times there's a lick
and stick glue on an envelope that you can run your tongue along be careful not to cut yourself
in the paper if you're sending it in the post office here in the United States you need to
know how to address an envelope for a friendly letter the first thing you need to do is to put
your address on the envelope your address well yes it's called the return address and it goes
right here it's so both the post-office and who is receiving the letter knows who it's coming
from in this case Ashley woods decided to write a letter to her friend Jude so her address goes
here in the upper left hand corner you can see she has her name her street address number Street and
she lives in an apartment the name of the city Kapolei Hawaii is the state and the zip code
this is the addressee the person who will get the letter in the mail she's writing to Jude Phillips
7-0 for practice Street that's his address in Hereford Washington nine seven eight four four
the zip code and the last thing she needed to put is the stamp this is an official stamp you
have to spend money on it and buy it from the post office or from a store that sells postage stamps
ask your parent a regular sticker won't do and you'll get your letter back let's practice how
to address an envelope where would the sender go well that's you very good in the upper left
hand corner what about the address e this is also known as the recipient I'll give you a hint it's
your friend's address great job it goes in the middle and last but not least ah you're way ahead
of me this stamp Wow now you're ready to start writing your very own friendly letters to whom
will you write make your letters interesting and full of details and remember to always be clever