Basic Letter Layout

Quick reference

• 00:04 We're going to review basic letter layout because chances are you
• 00:07 will be typing formal letter in Microsoft Word.
• 00:10 Every letter starts with the date.
• 00:12 And we learned in a previous lesson, we simply have to start typing the month.
• 00:16 Press Enter, it'll fill in the month, hit a spacebar,
• 00:19 it offers the rest of the date.
• 00:20 Press Enter to accept that.
• 00:22 And now three enters on my keyboard before I type the salutation.
• 00:27 Salutation or the greeting line can be whatever you'd like it to be, and
• 00:32 then I want to enter some text.
• 00:33 because this is a short video, I'm going to cheat and
• 00:37 do the equation, =rand(3,3).
• 00:40 That could be 5,2, whatever you want.
• 00:42 I just want three paragraphs, three sentences, hit Enter, and
• 00:45 there we have it.
• 00:46 It is acceptable to indent each of these paragraphs simply by pressing Tab
• 00:51 in front of the paragraph.
• 00:53 So I place my insertion point in front of the first paragraph.
• 00:56 On my keyboard, find the Tab key.
• 00:58 This is called an indent, it's very nice.
• 01:00 It allows the person who's reading the letter to
• 01:03 make sense of where the next paragraph is starting.
• 01:06 Clicking from the next one, and the next one, just hit Tab.
• 01:09 Then of course, we finish our letter by hitting Enter, but notice it kept the Tab.
• 01:14 I want to go back to the left edge.
• 01:16 So I'm going to hit my backspace, that will delete the Tab,
• 01:21 hitting my backspace, and now I can type my Sincerely and sign the letter.
• 01:27 Generally, you'll leave yourself enough room between the closing and your name so
• 01:31 you can actually hand-sign the letter.
• 01:33 Print it, mail it accordingly.
• 01:36 All right, new scenario.
• 01:37 Let's say that you don't know what to say in your letter.
• 01:40 You're brand new to the business world, you're not sure what to say at all.
• 01:43 Microsoft has a solution for you, it is on the File menu.
• 01:47 We saw this in one of the first videos, but I want to visit it again.
• 01:52 On the File menu, we click on New.
• 01:54 And here we have office letters and personal letters, actually documents.
• 02:00 So notice on the Office, there's a button over here that says Letters.
• 02:07 It's searching thousands of letters, and it'll pull up anything you want.
• 02:11 I don't know, here's a resume.
• 02:13 Maybe you more specifically want to type a thank you letter.
• 02:17 So I'll just type here, thank you letter, and hit Enter.
• 02:21 And it's searching thousands of documents for a thank you letter.
• 02:25 Well, even though these labels aren't a thank you letter,
• 02:27 it might be something you would use for a thank you letter.
• 02:30 So we can click on one of these.
• 02:33 It shows me kind of a zoomed in view, if like that one.
• 02:37 Or I can go, let's see, look at the next one.
• 02:40 A resume cover letter, well, that sounds fantastic.
• 02:43 I'll go ahead and use that in Create.
• 02:46 Go ahead and click Create, and you're going to see this letter come up on your
• 02:50 screen with a guide on what you should type.
• 02:53 So you would replace the words, Your Name with your actual name,
• 02:57 Street Address, City, State ZIP with your actual information,
• 03:01 Telephone, Email, today's date.
• 03:04 And you would just fill in the rest of this information.
• 03:06 And now look at this, it already has generally accepted text for
• 03:11 that particular resume, thank you letter.
• 03:14 If you're confused about what to type inside a letter,
• 03:17 Microsoft has you covered.
• 03:18 Up on the File ribbon, under New, just search for
• 03:22 anything you want, it's probably already there for you.

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