


Guten Tag Herr Mustermann, – Good day Mr.The following are examples for formal greeting lines when composing a letter in German: 1. Sample of how to begin a formal letter in German Rules for writing a formal German letter You can put a reference number, customer ID, or the reason you’re writing the letter. Februar, 2020”.Ī subject line is optional but helps to quickly establish what the letter is about. The line with the place and date is aligned to the right and can be written as “Berlin, ” or “Berlin, Donnerstag den 20. German rules are complicated, aren’t they? The window area begins 50mm from the top of the page and is 40mm in height with an indentation of at least 20mm. When using an envelope with a window ( Fensterumschlag), you need to line up the recipient’s address with the window. You can use a smaller font size for your own address at the top of the letter to save space. You can then include an optional subject line (“Betreffzeile”) before a formal greeting, after which you begin the body text of your letter. Next is a line stating the place from where the letter originates, followed by the date you posted it. Include the country for an international address. This consists of the sender’s address followed by that of the recipient. weiß).A formal letter in German should begin with a proper header. Please note that the use of ß has changed after the 1996 spelling reform (most important: new spelling dass and muss instead of daß and muß, but still ß after long vowels, e.g. Rammstein's "WEISSES FLEISCH" should be capitalized as "Weißes Fleisch"). When correcting the capitalisation, the usage of "ss" and "ß" should follow standard German orthography (e.g. In text written in all caps, "ß" is commonly written "SS". This is not completely correct, but appropriate most of the time.

In EnglishĬapitalize the first word of a title, and stick to the normal German capitalization rules for the rest of the title.įor non-German speakers the main rule of this document in short: Nouns (also "common" nouns, not only proper nouns) and the first word of a sentence/title are capitalized, everything else is not. Für den Rest gilt die übliche Groß- und Kleinschreibung. Status: This is an official style guideline.ĭas erste Wort sollte groß geschrieben werden.
