gengiscant

When you sign a letter do you write Mr Firstname Surname?

I don't know anyone who does, so I think if the first name is in anyway ambiguous you would be quite correct in replying with a simple Dear Sir / Madam

This will let you off from the dilemma of responding with Dear Mr / Ms or Dear Mr / Mrs (by the way, why do we have different addresses for single & married women anyway).

Also, I understand from your posts that you have had correspondence from several people, so by starting Dear Sir / Madam it means that your letter / email is addressed to anyone in the department.

If, say , a letter has been signed M. Smith, why not solve the whole thing by using the following:-

M.Smith
Head Honcho, Madhouse Inc.

Dear Sir/Madam, ...

That way you acknowledge their name in the 'address' section, then Sir/Madam will demonstrate clearly what your problem was.

Headings are underneath the block they refer to - read it from bottom up...

The formatting on here is terrible, the preview box does not accurately reflect how a post will look.... :( makes it look as if my headings are with the wrong block.

I generally put Sir/Ms on correspondence that I deal with. Putting Madam can lead to offence, that is possibly why Maaam is used in 'authority' circles.

Sir is showing respect, and Ms is a version of Miss or Mrs.

Addressing a letter direct to a person, could contravene the Data Protection Act, if the correspondence got into the wrong hands.

I sometimes find that writing to some companies, there are more than one person who might respond to your correspondence, and they might pick-up were the other person left-off. So addressing any correspondence to them direct, might prove negative.

On finalisation, I notice that Regards is now becoming more popular, so I do likewise with Best Regards which sounds more friendly and seems to be acceptable by most.