Beginning A Business Letter with First Person Singular

Beginning A Business Letter with First Person Singular Beginning A Business Letter with First Person Singular Beginning A Business Letter with First Person Singular By Maeve Maddox A reader wonders about beginning a letter with the first person pronoun: I was taught never to begin a letter (business or personal) with the word â€Å"I.†Ã‚  This must certainly have to do with the mostly outdated concept of humility being a virtue.  However, I continue to believe that humility is a virtue and that the root cause of much evil is egocentrism.  This rule does cause me to rewrite the beginning of many letters to comply with this admonition.   Like the reader, I was also taught not to begin a letter with â€Å"I† and often find myself struggling to avoid doing so. I even go back and take out the first person pronoun in the body of a letter if there seem to be too many. Apparently many of us were taught this â€Å"rule,† but as far I can discover, it isn’t and never was a rule. I possess an assortment of grammar books and style guides with various publication dates. The closest thing to a rule that I’ve found is this comment from a text published in 1907: Free use may be made of the personal pronouns [in correspondence], even of the First Person Singular; though it is better not to begin many sentences with â€Å"I.† The best practice is to choose the first word of a business letter according to the purpose of the letter. A sales letter might appropriately begin with you, while a letter of application might benefit from beginning with I. A University of Washington letter-writing guide offers five sample application letters. Each one begins with the first person singular pronoun. The caveat against beginning a business letter with I belongs with those other cherished grammar superstitions like â€Å"never end a sentence with a preposition.† Writers can choose to avoid doing it when possible, but there’s no need to suffer pangs of guilt when we can’t think of an alternative. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Business Writing category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Has vs. HadAwoken or Awakened?5 Tips to Understand Hyphenated Words