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Dixie Ponders about Business Envelopes
Envelope Size
Dixie would like to emphasize that people receiving a business letter first of all see the envelope. And we all agree that appearances are important, especially in business. So business envelopes need to be as savvy as any piece of business correspondence.
The confusion with paper format could not but create confusion with business envelopes. Naturally! Guess how?! Of course, European and North American standards differ from each other, how could they not?Well, Dixie does not want to go into too much detail here about business envelope size. Suffice it to say that the standard business envelope in Europe is 110x220 mm, while in the US the most common standard is called the #10 envelope or Legal envelope and its size is 4-1/8 x 9-1/2 in. Dixie will not even try to convert millimeters into inches here or vice versa. (For those who need the conversion: 1 Inch equals 25.4 mm).
Dixie thinks it is best to use the standard-size envelopes for regular business letters, but... There are cases when a business needs to attract attention like when sending sales letters, so this is when you could experiment with envelope color, shape and whatnot.
Business Envelope Components
The US Postal Service has some requirements towards envelopes. The envelope below addressed by Dixie meets all of them. Dixie decided not to make distinction here between envelopes for the US and European postal services. All postal services have more or less similar requirements as you can guess.
Under the image Dixie describes how you should proceed to meet those requirements.
- Look at the upper left corner of the image where Dixie typed her return address. This area should not exceed 50% of the length and 33% of the height of the envelope.
- Always remember to leave a little space between your return address and the top and left edges of the envelope. Dixie recommends 1/4 (18 printer points) to 1/2 inch (36 points).
- It is your choice to use notations in brackets or not (Dixie does ask you to delete brackets though), they are not required by the postal service. The Special Mailing Notation if you decide to use it would look good alligned with the stamp as in Dixie's example. You could use any of the notations below:
AIRMAIL
SPECIAL DELIVERY
CERTIFIED MAIL
AIRSURE
INTERNATIONAL - The On-Arrival Notation would look best if its right edge lined up with the left edge of the recipient's address. Do not fret though if it does not. This is also optional, you could use notations like
CONFIDENTIAL
PERSONAL - The light blue shaded area is scanned at the post office for the recipient's address by the OCR (optical character reader). Dixie does not know what exactly OCR is but she hopes it is some elaborate gismo. Even if it is really elaborate, you could still ease its job by leaving a few free lines before typing the recipient's address below the non-address information. Of course, if you have no notations on your envelope you need not worry about it.
A Few Additional Points
* You could include the recipient's job title after his or her name.* If you know the recipient's department or mail-stop name or number, include that, too.
* Include the abbreviation USA after the ZIP code, if mailing to the US from another country or mailing from the US (to another country, naturally).
* If you are using the standard business envelope, Dixie is sure you understand that the paper to be used for business letter also needs to be standard. (It's up to you to decide the standard of what group of countries you want to use).
* Fold up the bottom third of the letter, and crease. Then fold the top third down, and crease. Insert the letter (with the open end showing) into the envelope.
Before you leave this page Dixie wants to draw your attention to the following:
both the return and destination addresses on the envelope should ALWAYS match the heading and inside address of the letter! You sure know that but do double check, especially if you write more than one letter at a time.
Related Topics
Paper for Business Letters Fonts Folding A Business Letter
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