7 Tips For Saying Thanks In Writing

February 25, 2010 – 2:03 pm

Thank you letters are among the most important letters we will ever write. Whether business or personal, an effective thank you letter needs to be written with sincerity, tact and sensitivity. In fact, an inappropriate or poorly written thank you letter can backfire on you in ways you will never even know.

Following are a few tips that will help you whenever you encounter thank you letter situations in your business or personal life.

1. Make Sure It’s Appropriate
One of the main issues with respect to thank you letters is to know when to send one. As a general rule, I would say “better safe than sorry”. However, make sure there is something noteworthy about the situation. A thank you letter for a routine situation doesn’t make sense and dilutes the meaning.

2. Write It Promptly
It is always best to send a thank you letter as soon as possible after the event for which you are doing the thanking. It will help with the level of sincerity in your letter if the event is still fresh in your mind. In any case, a delayed thank you letter will seem like an obligatory afterthought to the recipient.

3. Remind The Recipient
In your introductory sentence, make it very clear that it is indeed a thank you letter and that it pertains to a specific event, situation and/or person. This will eliminate any confusion on the part of the recipient as to the purpose of the letter.

4. Make It Short and Direct
Get straight to the point and never exceed one page. Thank you letters should be brief, direct, sincere, and to the point. In business situations they will always be type-written, but personal thank you letters can be hand-written or typed, as appropriate to the situation.

5. Make It Personal
By definition, a thank you letter is a sincere personal gesture from one individual to another. It should be expressed as a heartfelt personal sentiment, even when written in a business situation. At the same time, strive to be balanced in approach and don’t be overly effusive.

6. Always Write it To One Person
Always write your thank you letter to an individual, not an organization or group. Even if it’s a situation where a group is involved, write your letter to the senior person in the group and/or the group spokesperson. Ask that person to please pass on your sincere appreciation to the other people in the group, and name them in your letter if possible. (Contrary to advice given by certain so-called experts online, in my experience, writing a group letter is never appropriate and achieves little or nothing).

7. Check Spelling and Grammar
As when writing all letters make sure you carefully check your spelling and grammar. This is even more important for thank you letters, since they are almost always a sincere statement of appreciation from one person to another. Be sure to double check the spelling of all names used in the letter. There’s no quicker way to blow your credibility and sincerity than to misspell someone’s name.

Sending thank you letters whenever appropriate is important in both business and personal life. Individuals and companies that do not send thank you letters, when warranted, can be viewed as ungracious and perhaps not worthy of future good deeds or special treatment.

So, whenever it’s warranted, make sure you send an appropriate and sincere thank you letter. Invariably, thank you letters will be very well received and appreciated by recipients, and the sender’s reputation is generally enhanced in their eyes.

For some real-life samples of thank you letters, check out the following link:
http://www.writinghelp-central.com/thankyou-letter-samples.html

Please enter your comments or feedback in the Comments box below:

  1. 36 Responses to “7 Tips For Saying Thanks In Writing”

  2. Thank you very much Mr. Shaun Fawcett for the tips about how to write thank you letter. This will be helpful for my further communications with my friends back home who are engaged with my future development (non profit) project as you might have noticed in my website. Thanks again and I apologize for not saying “thank you” for your previous information on how to write letters.

    Mathews

    By Mathews Dita on Feb 25, 2010

  3. Dear Shaun,

    I have learned lots of things from you and your lessons. I really appreciate you taking the time.

    Sincerely,
    Girish Patel

    By Girish Patel on Feb 25, 2010

  4. I found very useful expressions within the tips and I generally agree with all the instructions except the tip number 6 as I believe and from my work experience that we can address thank you letters to a group nowadays for business purposes to save time and to enhance the feeling of team work.

    For tip 7, mostly, letters are typed by using PCs and there is an auto spell and grammar check that can facilitate and speed up the process with some better accuracy especially for non native speakers.

    By Menahil on Feb 25, 2010

  5. Thank you for the tips…

    By annie on Feb 25, 2010

  6. Thanks Menahil. You’ve made some good points. However, I still believe that a letter loses it’s impact (esp. a thank you letter) if it is addressed to a group without some sort of personalization. It is quite possible to personalize one letter that is sent to a multi-person team.

    On your second point. Yes, we all use PCs these days with spell checkers and grammar checkers. Nevertheless, you still need to read the letter over one final time since those programs don’t always catch everything.

    By admin on Feb 25, 2010

  7. Thank you very much Mr. Shaun Fawcett for the tips about how to write thank you letters. This will be helpful for my further communications with my friends back home who are engaged with my future development (non profit) project as you might have noticed on my website. Thanks again and I apologize for not saying “thank you” for your previous information on how to write letters.

    By selvam on Feb 25, 2010

  8. Dear Shaun:
    Thank you for the brief course you offered online. So, I have finally got through to you !!! My e-mails have been bouncing back; now I know why. My love to your daughter; it’s great when one enjoys an exciting break of some kind.

    I am grooming a service providing outfit in photoluminescent and egress marking as a complimentary need for safe evacuation. The market, though green and involving a lot of awareness creation is basically there for the reaping. Of course you have to sow well. I try to make my proposals client oriented and operate out of the box, yet i still feel i need a writing mentor or a better head to go through it. I checked for templates on new product intro but didn’t find any; is there any help you can offer me or maybe go through what I have?

    I am still taking time to ingest it along with the e-book..I am in Nigeria and promise to give you feed back.
    Thanks… Eno

    By Eno Douglas on Feb 25, 2010

  9. Dear Mr. Fawcett,
    Thank you for taking time to e-mail me on this very important topic. These tips will be my guide when I need to make one. I even shared it with my office mates.
    Thanks again….Tet

    By Cristeta Ventigan on Feb 26, 2010

  10. Many many thanks…..have learned lots of things….I really appreciate it; recommend…..everybody to learn join; …..found very useful expressions with instructions and tips with examples.

    By Devendar Sharma on Feb 26, 2010

  11. Thanks a lot Shaun. You really have given me the opportinity to learn and improve my English level.

    Sincerely

    Riadh

    By Riadh on Feb 26, 2010

  12. I am really impressed the way you selected these these seven important tips of writing thank you letters.

    Thanks.

    Abdirahman

    By Abdirahman on Feb 26, 2010

  13. Thank you very much Mr. Shaun Fawcett for the tips about how to write thank you letter. This will be helpful for my further communications with my friends back home who are engaged with me.

    charles

    By charles on Feb 26, 2010

  14. Thank you very much Mr. Shaun Fawcett for the tips about how to write a thank you letter. I just got this job and it requires writing letters to other organizations, so receiving tips from you is like a gift from God. I am indeed grateful to you.

    Chijioke.

    By Iwu Chijioke on Feb 26, 2010

  15. Thank you Mr. Shaun for sharing with me the seven tips for saying thanks in writing i am sure that it will help me in my future endeavors.

    By Katrina on Feb 26, 2010

  16. Thank you Mr. Fawcett. Your tips for saying thank you in writing, I am confident will of great help in writing thank you letters, because I have already learned some very important points required in a thank you letter.

    By Anthony Kujabi on Feb 26, 2010

  17. Thank you so much for your good pointers about letters of thanks. I learned a lot of good points. I have also made a blog of my own. It’s very informal and I just write what I think. It is on my website http://www.friendster.com. My email add is sola.mira@yahoo.com.
    Thanks again.

    By atenadora banalo on Feb 26, 2010

  18. Thanks Eno,
    You will find a couple of sample intro letters on the following page:
    http://www.writinghelp-central.com/introduction-letter-samples.html

    Also, I have posted some proposal writing resources here:
    http://www.writinghelp-central.com/proposal-writing-resources.html

    Good luck! ….Shaun

    By Shaun on Feb 26, 2010

  19. Your tips for writing the thank you letters are very unique; a great help and points to the best link for the writting related resources tools. I found very useful and very unique points from the sample of the thank you letter. I’m sure it will be a great help for my daily writing of thank you letters.

    By Mariam Hussain on Feb 26, 2010

  20. Dear Mr. Fawcett,
    Thank you so much for the nice tips for saying thanks in writing.

    By Surithong on Feb 26, 2010

  21. Dear Shaun,

    I have improved my correspodense in this office. I really appreciate your guidelines.

    Sincerely,

    Mohammad Nawaz

    By Mohammad Nawaz on Feb 27, 2010

  22. Dear Mr. Fawcett,
    Thank you for taking time to e-mail me on this very important topic. These tips will be my guide when I need to make one. This will be helpful for my further communications and I apologize for not saying “thank you” for your previous information on how to write letters.

    By samira on Feb 27, 2010

  23. Thanks Samira. I’m glad the info is helpful. By the way, by posting this item about thank you letters I wasn’t trying to lay any kind of guilt trip on my readers!
    Best….. Shaun

    By Shaun on Feb 27, 2010

  24. Hello Dear readers

    I want one student whom I can contact him/her about writing. My e-mail address is: halgan777@hotmail.com.

    Yours truly,

    abdirahman

    By Abdirahman on Feb 27, 2010

  25. Thank you for taking time to send me this email. I agree with all your tips but do believe that Thank you letters could be written to a group.
    Thak you for all the information you have being sending me on writing.
    God bless you!

    By Martyns on Mar 1, 2010

  26. Hello Shaun:
    Thank you very much for the training. I find it very interesting and helpful. It is a pleasure to meet you at least on the web.

    With regards;

    Zewdu Ayalew

    By Zewdu Ayalew on Mar 1, 2010

  27. Hi Shuan

    Thank you for all the emails that you are sending to me. I wanted to know if you will able to do workshops for me and my staff as I can see your teachings are sooooo worth it. Let’s hope one day we are going to see you in flesh and that would be very nice. Please dont give up keep on sending more tips as I need them for my career.

    Kindest regards,

    Joyce Langa

    By Shuan on Mar 2, 2010

  28. Hi Shaun,

    Thank you for taking time to write to me. I like your warm writing style and I would like to be able to express my thoughts in English more easily.

    In fact, I am a Romanian native and I have been living in America since 2001. It is kind of hard being conscious about your limits in your adoptive country’s language when you have mastered another one. Hopefully this long distance dialog will break the ice and will give me some courage to be more open.

    Thank you for the little personal things you have added to your writing. I have a daughter too that enjoys skating, but here in Tennessee it is possible only on the artificial skating rink. She goes frequently skating with her friends and she is missing Romanian winters (just from a few memories, because she was only five years old when we left Romania).

    I would like to have more time to dedicate to writing but I have a difficult job that consumes most of my time.

    I hope to be in a better frame of mind next time.

    Thank you again.

    Sincerely,

    Maria Sandu

    By Marie Sandu on Mar 3, 2010

  29. Dear Mr. Shaun Fawcett,
    Thank you Mr. Shaun for the immense benefit I have derived from your erudite teaching on the 7 tips of how to say thank you especially the practical example bring into them as illustrations. I consider myself as the Chief benefactor and I say ‘thanks a lot’.
    Bye, until soon.

    By Paul Nnaemeka Nwabisi on Mar 4, 2010

  30. Dear Mr. Shaun Fawcett,
    Thank you Mr. Shaun for the immense benefit I have derived from your erudite teaching on the 7 tips of how to say thank you especially the practical example bring into them as illustrations. I consider myself as the Chief benefactor and I say ‘thanks a lot’.
    Bye, until soon. Paul Nnaemeka Nwabisi

    By Paul Nnaemeka Nwabisi on Mar 4, 2010

  31. Thanks very much!

    By diana on Mar 10, 2010

  32. Dear Shaun,

    Thank you so much for the nice tips for saying thanks in writing and I appreciated it…
    Regards,
    Osaimen
    im from the Philippines

    By Osaimen Dimacaling on Mar 10, 2010

  33. Thanks so much …..have learned lots of things from the tips you are sending me and I really appreciate it; I recommend…..everybody to learn and join; …..found very useful expressions with instructions for more and more ..
    Once again, Thanks

    By Osaimen Dimacaling on Mar 10, 2010

  34. Thank you so much for your inspiring information. You have really simplified my work as I do lots of communication in and out side the company I work for.
    Thank you once again.

    By Oliver on Mar 26, 2010

  35. I got some useful points from your message.

    By reshma on Mar 26, 2010

  36. Dear Shaun

    Thank you for writing to me. Yes, I do need to write auite a bit in my job. And thank you/appreciation-type letters are among them. Your tips and samples come really very handy, they keep me guided.

    Thanks once again Shaun for your invaluable help.

    FAY

    By FAY on Apr 25, 2010

  37. Hi Shaun
    Thank you for all your information. I am not a writer but love to surf the net and get interesting information.It is allso interesting to read about the going ons in Canada. Back here in South Africa we have unusual late rainy weather and it is very cold. We are preparing for the World soccer cup. The roads are being upgraded. We are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the soccer suporters.
    Thank you again.
    Boer

    By boer on May 2, 2010

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