So please keep the following in mind when writing a letter. These standard formal greetings can be used for business correspondence or with anyone with whom you would normally address as Sie. If you are writing to someone with a professional title such as a doctor or a lawyer, then include it in the opening greeting:. Unlike English, the word that follows your greeting begins with a small letter. It is extremely important to choose the appropriate personal pronoun.
By not doing so, you may sound impolite. For a formal letter, you will address the person as Sie , with the obligatory capital S at all times other forms are Ihr and Ihnen. Otherwise, for a close friend or relative, you will address them as du. That's the former rule prior to die neue Rechtschreibungsreform when all personal pronouns used for addressing someone in a letter were capitalized.
These sentences may be helpful as you compose your letter:. Unlike in English, there is no comma after a concluding expression in German. As in English, your name can be preceded by a possessive adjective:. Some other concluding expressions include:. Avoid writing Hochachtungsvoll or any form thereof—it sounds very old-fashioned and stilted. Some people love it; others despise it.
Either way, e-mail jargon is here to stay and helpful to know. Here are a few of the most common German ones. All names, whether it be people or a business should be addressed in the accusative. If you send your application directly by email, you have two options. You can either make the email body your cover letter. The body of the email remains a formal letter, though. Or you can attach the cover letter to the email and briefly point out your application to the specific position in the body of the email, referring to the attachments.
Ensure that any attachment always has the pdf format, regardless of whether you send it by email or upload it to an online application system. Also, pay attention to the naming of the attachments and keep it clear and professional. Be sure to evaluate your documents based on these questions before you hand them in. The goal of your CV and cover letter is to get an invitation for a job interview. We hope that you now have a better understanding of how a German cover letter looks and feels like.
But never forget to adapt your cover letter and application to the style of the company you are applying for. There is a big difference in culture between a young international StartUp and a big traditional German enterprise. When you click on the links of products we mention in this article and purchase it we will receive a small commission. It will not make any difference to you in price, however, it allows us to keep Simple Germany alive and striving.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. We are happy to help. Simple Germany helps expats start their new life in Germany. We scout for highly-rated, modern, and simple German services so expats can make an informed decision. We want our readers to feel at home, safe, and educated about life in Germany and not feel put off by bureaucracy.
Buy Us A Coffee. Disclaimer: Simple Germany refers to helpful services and does not provide a complete market overview. The information provided on this blog is based on our own experience and in-depth research. We are not certified brokers or consultants. The complexity of this very last step in your German e-mail depends on the nature of the e-mail.
If you are writing an e-mail to your friends or family , all you need to provide is your first name in typed form. In formal e-mails , you would provide your full name rather than just your first name.
Generally speaking, as just discussed, signatures in e-mails are almost similar to signatures in written letters, just without the hand-signed signature obviously. In German business correspondence , however, you would also need to make sure that certain additional information is given at the end of the e-mail.
More often than not, in business e-mails, this kind of information is automatically included has hopefully been configured by your company. At least if you are writing from your office computer using software such as Microsoft Outlook, chances are that your e-mails have already been configured in a way that this information is pulled automatically. If your e-mails are required to meet higher legal standards, you might also need to include a digital signature.
However, it needs to be said that abbreviations of greetings is not deemed good style in formal e-mail writing. Other common abbreviations that may or may not be used in E-mails depending on the situation include:. In formal e-mail writing, it is an absolute no-go to write everything in small letters. Even in informal letters, this might come across as you being disinterested in communicating and being careless. Also, the punctuation should be on point no pun intended. Question marks, full stops and even commas should be retained in both formal and informal writing.
The following is a list of various letters that can easily be written as e-mail without coming across as unprofessional. However, there are also a couple of letters that are not suitable to be written in e-mail form at all. The following letters, as exemplified in the next section, need to be sent as real letters mail and some of them even need to be written by hand.
However, if you are writing a letter of condolence for instance, as the name actually already indicates, you should indeed write it by hand instead of simply crafting an E-mail.
This holds true for both English and German. Another example would be the greeting card whenever a baby is born. In both Germany and Switzerland, a physical card needs to be written for that purpose. At least not yet. If you, as a company, are writing recovery wishes to your staff, these kinds of letters should also be written by hand rather than communicated by e-mail.
Also, the termination of an employment contract may not be sent as an e-mail at all, as this is against the law.
0コメント