АДКАЗАЦЬ - English

@leedel ”I am writing to inform you that...” is relatively low on the formal scale and would and should be used in business correspondence among colleagues who know each other well enough but want/need to maintain some form of formality.

For example, someone might officially inform a manager under who they have worked for 6 months or a year about their impending resignation with such an opening statement.

It should not be used immediately after the salutation ”Dear Sir/Madam”. Not being able to explicitly address the person as ”Sir” or ”Madam” means you don’t know exactly who you are addressing the letter to!

@leedel It would also tend to be used in more rural and less urbanised regions where formality is less than, for example, in major cities. In general, communication is less formal outside of substantial urban centres. Furthermore, people often ”know each other” in these communities. This results in more formal communication being not used in or, for that matter, appropriate to, business situations. My guess is that you might well be from a less urbanised part of Britain.

Brit here! - Personally, I have never heard of ”Please be informed that” or ”kindly be informed that” being used... As far as I’m aware, most people would say something along the lines of ”Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to inform you that / of ....” in a formal situation.

Pleasure!

There’s a huge difference between British English and American English when using formal forms.

For example, in British English, if you used something like ”This is to inform you that..”, it would usually be in a second or third formal letter after ignoring or rejecting a request.

If it were in an initial letter, a British English speaker might assume that the writer was either uneducated, arrogant or simply deliberately trying to be rude.

I was responding to a query in a formal e-mail when I asked myself should I go with option (1) or (2), as the person I was replying to is more senior than me. I don’t know why but I perceive (2) [This is to inform you that...] as less polite than (1), like it is very direct.


Thank you (AussieInBg) for the detailed explanation. It is really helpful.

thank you