You D. Student
English 111
#### Your Street
Richmond, VA 232##

Dear Mr. or Ms Student:

When you send a copy of your resume to a prospective employer, you'll almost certainly attach to it a cover letter addressed to that employer. The cover letter not only says why you're writing, but also modifies the resume to fit the specific job.

That's what I'd like you to do next:  Please write a job application cover letter.

If you already have some specific job in mind, fine. Just write a letter of application for it.  If you don't happen to know of a specific job, but know what type of job you'd like, just make up the name of an employer and write the letter. You might want to look in the "employment" section of the classified ads, in the newspaper (the Sunday paper is best), to see what kinds of jobs are advertised there.  Or try http://www.monster.com on the Internet.

If you're not interested in a job right now, please write a letter anyway. It's good practice for other kinds of writing. (Besides, it's required for the course.) Make everything up if you like. If you're really desperate, write a brief letter to John or Mary A. Doe, the personnel manager of XYZ, Inc., applying for a management trainee position.

By the way, the format of this letter is fairly typical of the standard American business letter. You might want to consider the spacing, the number of blank lines in various places, and so on.  If you don't want to make yourself a letterhead like the one above, you should type your return address (street and city--but not your name) on two lines immediately above the date and aligned with the left margin and about three blank lines above the inside address.  Note that because your name appears at the close of the letter (near the bottom), there's no need to give it anywhere else on the page

And, of course, remember that a business letter should be "letter perfect," with no spelling, punctuation, or grammar errors, and it should be formatted neatly on the page.  Be sure to use your word processor's spelling and grammar checkesr before printing out the final draft.

I'm looking forward to reading your response to this assignment during our next class meeting.

Sincerely yours,
 
 

Donald A. Maxwell, Jr.
Professor of English
 
 

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