Address an Envelope for an Apology Letter
Edited by Train Wreck, VisiHow, Eng
This is a tutorial on how to address an envelope when writing an apology letter. Sooner or later no matter who you are, you will make a mistake, make someone angry, or hurt someone's feelings. When you do this, depending on the severity of the incident, you may wish to write an apology letter. When writing an apology letter it is important to know how the envelope should be addressed. If you address the envelope the wrong way, you will end up possibly making matters worse, or at a minimum making yourself look like a fool. We are here to help prevent that, by teaching you the different types of address formats you should use for apology letters This is especially important for those of you who will be writing something on one end or the other of apology letter extremes, such as a business apology letter, or at the opposite extreme, a relationship apology letter.
What You Need
In the photo below you will see a picture of three envelopes. Each of these envelopes will be filled out separately to show you the proper way of addressing an apology letter envelope. For your purposes, you'll just need a blank envelope, an apology letter, which you can learn how to write in one of our other articles, and of course a pen to do the writing. We will go over how to address each of the three main types of apology letter.
- 1The first method will be for a formal or business occasion.
- 2The second method will be for an informal or casual occasion.
- 3The third method will be for a personal or relationship occasion.
How to Address a Business or Formal Envelope
To address a business envelope, you will want to at all times appear absolutely professional. This means that you will write your name, your title, and then your address in the upper area of the envelope, as shown in the images below.
- 1In the upper left corner of the envelope, we will write our name.
- 2Then, your title will be written directly beneath your name.
- 3Below that we will write our address, including the state or country and relevant ZIP code.
- 4A clearly written return address is the best way to ensure return delivery.Make sure to write clearly, because in the event your letter ends up not being delivered, you want to know about it.
- 5Also make sure to write your address smaller than the primary address.
- 6This name should go in the center of the envelope and be in very large letters.Now write the address of the person you are apologizing to.
- 7This title should be the title you are aware of whether it may be director, manager, supervisor, engineer or something else. You want to make the person feel important.Next write their professional title.
- 8Finally, write the address and ZIP Code.
- 9This is because when your letter reaches the post office, they will first look at the ZIP Code before they look at anything else.Note that the ZIP Code and the state or region and province should be a little larger.
How to Address a Casual or Informal Envelope
With a personal or informal letter you should note that the actual appearance of the address is essentially the same. The only differences being that the main address is slightly smaller and slightly more uniform. The reason for this is simple. When addressing an impersonal letter or a letter that is not to a business superior or to someone whom you have a personal relationship with, you want to avoid being overly professional or personal. In this case, impersonal address form is best, with uniform and slightly smaller script being ideal.
- 1Start by writing your name in the top left corner of the envelope.
How to Address a Romantic or Personal Envelope
In the case of a personal or romantic letter, you are writing to someone who means more to you than anyone else, or at a minimum someone who means a great deal to you. Because of this we will skip some of the rules on envelope addressing that were discussed in the earlier section of this article.
- 1Starting from a blank envelope, flip the envelope over so that you are looking at the back.
- 2Center it at the top, and leave out any reference to titles.Your name will now be written on the back of the envelope.
- 3Fill in your address next, and then make sure everything is correct.
- 4Ideally you will find a better artist than me to assist with this process, as my decorations do leave something to be desired. In fact some might even argue that my decorations require their own apology.Feel free to add a little artwork or decorations as well at this stage, but for now only on the back of the envelope.
- 5If we were to write on the front first and then the back we could potentially end up with a rather messy envelope, and we would disturb our message on the front, which is of greater importance.The reason we do all this on the back first is because we want the front of our envelope to appear pristine when we begin writing on it.
- 6Now flip the envelope over so you are able to write on the front.
- 7Note the differences in this personal letter where we have written to our dear beloved Bob Smith in a proper script.In a nice script, carefully write the name of the person you are addressing the envelope to.
- 8In this case, we have added in the title love of my life with an exclamation point.Add a title if it's someone you love dearly.
- 9Following this, add in the address and ZIP Code.
- 10Note that in this case the ZIP Code is not larger simply because we want this to be a more artistic envelope.
- 11Just keep in mind that the post services around the world frown on excessive artwork on envelopes. This is because it often makes them much more difficult to read. However if you have done something so terrible that you need to write an apology, we hope the people in the post office are understanding, overlooking your artistic liberties and delivering your letter or parcel.Now add some art.
- 12The only other thing to keep in mind is that your dear Bob Smith, or whomever else it may be that you are addressing your letter to, probably does not want to receive a colorful artistic lovely letter at their place of business or in any other professional area. Therefore we strongly discourage ever sending an apology letter to a place where someone works or where they have groups who will see the letter.Now we have a lovely letter with some artwork expressing that love.
- 13There is nothing worse than sending a letter to someone to apologize for something and causing the problem to become worse because parents or friends (or both) decide that you really don't deserve to be forgiven.In fact if you're in the boyfriend girlfriend stage and you're sending such a letter to someone's house, where their parents or siblings or friends may see it first -- or even open it, we recommend sending it by courier so that it is delivered directly to them.
This has been a VisiHow tutorial on how to address an envelope when writing an apology letter.
Additional Tips
- Note that the post office does not like when you put addresses on the back of envelopes or designs on the front. However, since we are more worried about the person you are trying to apologize to, we're willing to risk upsetting the post office a little.
- Depending on your country and your culture you may want to add a little more or the less decorations. Likewise depending on the severity of your offense, you may also want to add a little less or a little more decorations on the back of the envelope.
- It is also important to note that the farther your art extends to the right of the front of the envelope, the more likely it is the post office is going to be irritated. That is because this is the area where postage stamp are supposed to go.
See other tutorials on letters: Write an Apology Letter to Your Boss or Company, Fold a Letter, Write a Letter of Apology, and Write a Letter of Pleading.
If you have problems with any of the steps in this article, please ask a question for more help, or post in the comments section below.
