No More Punctuation

IN the Seventies, in its Manual for Civil Service Typists, the British Civil Service recommended the omission of full-stops marking abbreviations and all non-essential commas outside the body of a letter – from the date, the inside name and address, and after the salutation and the complimentary closure.

This gave rise to a modern style of letter-writing, and this information has been disseminated to the teaching of letter-writing in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and several other Common-Wealth countries. What about Malaysia?

Abbreviations

Mr (NOT Mr. with the full-stop)

Mrs

Dr

am / pm

Ltd

BA / BSc / MA / Ph D

UN / NATO / USA / UK

Addresses

Miss Joanne Kam
8 Jalan Lembu
Bukit Putra
31360 Sekandang

Letters – salutations and complimentary closures.

Dear Sam (NOT Dear Sam, with the comma)

Dear Sir

Yours sincerely (NOT Yours sincerely, with the comma)

Yours truly

I think Malaysian students should be taught this modern style of letter–writing, too. It has been more than 30 years overdue.

People can make judgements about you not only from what you say in your letters but from the way you say it: this includes the way you set out the letter and address the envelope.