Formal Letters and the Analytical Paragraph

The writing section does not ask you to remember anything. It asks you to produce a finished piece of writing that a real reader could act on. Two kinds of task sit here: a formal letter, and an analytical paragraph built from a chart, a table or a map. They look completely different, yet they are judged on the same three things, and it is worth knowing what those are before you pick up your pen.

The first is format. A formal letter has a fixed shape, and a reader can see in two seconds whether all its parts are present and in the right order. An analytical paragraph has a shape too: it must be one continuous paragraph, not a set of bullet points and not a page broken up with headings. Format marks are the calmest marks in the paper because they depend on habit, not on inspiration. Practise the layout until your hand produces it without your having to think about it.

The second is content. Did you answer the actual task set? A letter of complaint that never says what you want done is not a complaint letter, it is a sad story. An analytical paragraph that describes the tallest bar and ignores everything else has not analysed anything. Before you begin, underline the key words in the question: who you are, whom you are writing to, what has happened, and what outcome you want. Then check, at the end, that each of those has actually appeared in your answer.

The third is expression - grammar, spelling, punctuation, and above all register. Register means the level of formality of your language, and it is easy to slip out of without noticing. In a formal letter you are writing to a stranger who has the power to act: an editor, a manager, a principal, a municipal officer. You have never met this person and probably never will. So the language stays polite, impersonal and controlled. Contractions are opened out - do not instead of don't, I have instead of I've, cannot instead of can't. Slang, message-app spellings, exclamation marks and sarcasm are kept out completely.

The most useful habit in formal writing is this: state the fact, not the adjective. Compare two sentences. The first says that your service is absolutely terrible. The second says that the parcel arrived four days after the promised date and that two of the six items were broken. The second sentence is calmer, shorter and far more damaging, because a fact can be checked and an insult can only be ignored. Let the facts do the complaining for you.

Plan before you write. Two minutes with a pencil is enough: jot down what each of your three body paragraphs will do, and note any hard details you must include, such as a date, a model number or a bill number. Then follow the word limit printed in your question. Running far over it eats the time you need for the rest of the paper; running far under it almost always means you have left content out.

The analytical paragraph flips the personality of the writer completely. In a letter you are a person with a grievance and a request. In an analytical paragraph you are a neutral reporter standing in front of a chart. You may say what the figures show. You may not say how you feel about them, whom you blame for them, or what anybody ought to do next. That single restraint is what the task is really testing, and it is covered in detail further down this page.

All the formal letters you need are written in full block format. That means every single line begins at the left margin. Nothing is centred, nothing is indented, and paragraphs are separated by a blank line rather than by pushing the first word inwards. Here is the complete skeleton with placeholders in it.

A-24, Second Street
ABC Colony
PQR - 000 000

12 August 20XX

The Manager
BrightLine Electronics
Market Road
PQR - 000 000

Subject: Complaint regarding a defective air cooler

Sir

[Paragraph 1 - who you are and why you are writing]

[Paragraph 2 - the facts, dates and details]

[Paragraph 3 - what you want done, and by when]

Yours faithfully
Ishita Verma

Now take it apart. The sender's address sits at the top left in two or three short lines. Notice the placeholders used above. In an examination you must never write your real name and address, because answer scripts are identified by roll number alone. Either use the name and address supplied in the question, or invent a neutral one exactly as shown here. Leaving this block out altogether is a format error; choosing a dull placeholder address is not, so always put something down.

Next comes the date, on its own line after a blank line. Write it out in a form that cannot be misread: 12 August 20XX is safer than 12/8/20XX, because the second version means something different in different countries. Then comes the receiver's block: the person's designation first (The Editor, The Manager, The Principal, The Sales Manager), then the name of the organisation, then its address. Use a designation rather than a personal name whenever the question does not give you one.

The subject line is easy to leave out in a hurry, and it is the cheapest line in the letter to get right. It is a short noun phrase, not a sentence, and it carries no full stop. It should tell a busy reader what the letter is about before they read a word of the body. Subject: Complaint tells them nothing. Subject: Complaint regarding a defective air cooler, invoice no. 4821 tells them the product, the problem and the reference number, so the letter can be routed to the right desk immediately.

The salutation follows. Use Sir or Madam, or Dear Sir or Dear Madam, when you are writing to a designation and do not know the person's name. This choice controls the ending: a letter that opens with Sir or Madam closes with Yours faithfully. If the question gives you a name and you open with Dear Mr Rao, you close with Yours sincerely. Keeping those two pairs straight is a small thing that a careful reader notices at once.

The body is best kept to three paragraphs, and each has one job. The first states your purpose in about two sentences. The second carries the facts, dates, numbers and evidence. The third says what you want to happen and, where it makes sense, by when. Three short paragraphs beat one long one every time, because the shape itself shows the reader that you have organised your thinking.

Finally the complimentary close and the signature block. Write Yours faithfully with a capital Y and a small f, and never with an apostrophe - Your's is not a word. Below it write your name, and below that your designation if you hold one that matters to the letter, such as Head Boy, Secretary of the Literary Club or Sports Secretary. Modern block format uses open punctuation, which simply means you do not put commas at the ends of the address lines, after the salutation or after the complimentary close. The older closed style puts those commas in. Both are accepted, but whichever you pick, be consistent from top to bottom of the page.

This letter is easy to misunderstand. You are not writing to the editor because the editor can repair a broken road or clean a drain. You are writing because the newspaper is read by thousands of people, including the officials responsible, and a printed letter puts a local problem where it cannot be ignored. That is why the standard opening asks for space in the paper and names the people whose attention you are trying to catch.

The three-paragraph plan applies exactly as usual. Paragraph one: request the space, name the problem, name the area in general terms. Paragraph two: the evidence - what happens, when it happens, who is affected, and one concrete incident if you have one. Paragraph three: the appeal - what you want the authorities to do, phrased as a reasonable request rather than a demand.

Two details are worth remembering. First, the close must still match the salutation you used. You will see Yours truly at the foot of letters to the editor in some guidebooks, but because these letters open with Sir or Madam, the pairing taught on this page gives you Yours faithfully, which is always safe. Many writers also add a line such as A concerned resident under the name. Second, keep the tone civic rather than personal. You are speaking for a neighbourhood, not settling a private score, so avoid naming individuals and avoid words that sound like an accusation you cannot prove.

Sample letter

A-24, Second Street
ABC Colony
PQR - 000 000

12 August 20XX

The Editor
The National Chronicle
Press Enclave
PQR - 000 000

Subject: Rash driving by school vans in residential lanes

Sir

Through the columns of your newspaper, I wish to draw the attention of the traffic authorities and of parents to the rash driving of school vans in our residential lanes.

Every morning between seven and eight, overloaded vans race through narrow lanes that have no footpath. Children are seated three to a place meant for two, and a few pupils are made to stand near the door. Drivers sound the horn instead of slowing down, and some of them speak on a mobile phone while driving. Last week a child on a bicycle escaped injury by inches near the colony gate.

I request the traffic police to check the speed and the seating capacity of these vans, and the schools concerned to verify the records of the drivers they hire. A short inspection at school hours would cost very little and could prevent a tragedy.

Yours faithfully
Aarav Sharma

Look at what that sample does not do. It does not say that the drivers are criminals. It does not say that the authorities are useless. It does not end with an exclamation mark. It gives a time of day, a description of what is loaded into the vans, one near miss, and two specific, cheap actions that somebody could actually order tomorrow morning. That is what makes a letter to the editor printable.

The same plan will carry any topic the question throws at you - uncollected rubbish, a park left in ruins, water shortage in the summer months, noise from loudspeakers late at night, stray cattle on a busy road, the state of a bus stop with no shelter. Only paragraph two changes. Keep the opening frame and the closing appeal in your memory and you will never be stuck for a shape.

A complaint letter goes to somebody who can put the matter right: the manager of a shop, the customer care head of a company, a municipal officer, a transport authority. Its whole purpose is to get an outcome, so it is built backwards from the outcome you want. The plan is facts, then fault, then remedy.

Paragraph one carries the hard facts of the transaction. What did you buy or use, when, from where, and under what reference? A model number, a date of purchase, a bill or invoice number, a booking reference, a complaint number from an earlier call - each of these turns your letter from a story into a record. Paragraph two states the fault precisely and, just as importantly, what you have already tried. If a technician came and the problem returned, say so with dates. That single detail moves a case from 'first complaint' to 'repeated failure', which is a much stronger position.

Paragraph three is the easiest one to leave out, and the most costly. It names the remedy you want - repair, replacement, refund, removal, collection - and a reasonable time frame. It also mentions any documents you are enclosing. Without this paragraph the reader has sympathy but no instruction, and letters with no instruction get filed away.

The tone is firm and cold, never hot. No sarcasm, no threats, no capital letters for shouting, no lines about how you will never shop there again. A calm letter that states three verifiable facts is far more troubling to a manager than an angry one, because the calm letter looks like the sort that gets forwarded to a consumer forum.

Sample letter

A-24, Second Street
ABC Colony
PQR - 000 000

12 August 20XX

The Customer Care Manager
BrightLine Electronics
Market Road
PQR - 000 000

Subject: Complaint regarding a defective air cooler, invoice no. 4821

Sir

I purchased an air cooler, model BL-70, from your showroom on 2 August 20XX against invoice number 4821, and it was delivered to my address the same evening.

The appliance has not worked properly from the first day. The fan makes a loud rattling noise at every speed, and the water pump stops after about ten minutes, so the pads stay dry and the air is not cooled at all. Your technician visited on 5 August, replaced the pump and left, but the same fault returned within two days.

As the cooler is under warranty and has now failed twice, I request you to replace it with a new piece or refund the amount within seven working days. Copies of the invoice and of the service report are enclosed.

Yours faithfully
Ishita Verma

A civic complaint follows the same three steps with different content. If you are writing to a municipal officer about a drain that has been left open for a month, paragraph one says where the drain is and since when it has been open, paragraph two says who is at risk and describes any accident that has already happened, and paragraph three asks for it to be covered and for an inspection of the rest of the street. The engine of the letter is identical; only the fuel changes.

A letter of enquiry is written before you commit to anything. You want information from an institute, a company, a hotel or a supplier so that you can decide. Its structure is simple: say briefly who you are and what you are considering, then ask your questions, then request the reply and any printed material. The trick that lifts an enquiry letter is numbering the questions. A single sprawling sentence that asks about fees, timings, transport and discounts all at once will get a vague reply. Four numbered points get four answers.

Sample letter of enquiry

A-24, Second Street
ABC Colony
PQR - 000 000

12 August 20XX

The Director
Skyline Institute of Computer Studies
College Road
PQR - 000 000

Subject: Enquiry about the summer certificate course in computer applications

Sir

I am a student of Class X and I have learnt that your institute conducts a summer certificate course in computer applications. Before applying, I should be grateful for some information.

Kindly let me know the following:

1. the dates of the course, the daily timings, and whether classes are held on weekends;
2. the topics covered and the number of students in each batch;
3. the total fee, what it includes, and whether any concession is offered to school students;
4. whether study material and a certificate are provided at the end of the course.

I request you to send me the details along with a prospectus and an application form at the address given above. An early reply would help me plan my holidays.

Yours faithfully
Rohan Nair

A letter placing an order is the most mechanical letter of the lot, and that is exactly why it is easy to score in. The supplier must be able to pack your goods without asking you a single follow-up question. So the letter must fix seven things: the item, the specification or model, the quantity, the rate or the quotation it refers to, the discount, the delivery date and place, and the mode of payment. Set the items out as a numbered list rather than burying them in prose, and always state a delivery deadline with a reason attached to it, because a deadline with a reason is much harder to ignore.

Sample letter placing an order

Sunrise Public School
Station Road
PQR - 000 000

12 August 20XX

The Sales Manager
Fairplay Sports House
Market Road
PQR - 000 000

Subject: Order for sports goods for the inter-house tournament

Sir

With reference to your quotation dated 1 August 20XX, kindly supply the following items to our school:

1. Football, leather, size 5 - 6 pieces
2. Badminton racquet, model FS-20 - 10 pieces
3. Shuttlecocks, nylon, box of six - 12 boxes
4. Cricket ball, leather, red - 12 pieces

The goods must reach us by 25 August 20XX, as our inter-house tournament begins on 1 September. The discount of twenty per cent offered in your quotation may be allowed as agreed, and packing and freight charges are to be borne by you. Payment will be made by cheque within a week of delivery.

Any item found damaged or not matching the specification above will be returned at your cost.

Yours faithfully
Meera Iyer
Sports Secretary

Notice the designation under the signature in the order letter. When you write on behalf of a school, a club or a society, that line matters: it tells the supplier you have the authority to place the order. Notice too that both letters use kindly exactly once. One polite marker per letter is plenty; a letter stuffed with 'kindly do the needful at the earliest' says a great deal about your manners and nothing at all about your requirement.

An analytical paragraph is written from a bar chart, a pie chart, a line graph, a table, a flow chart or a map. It is one paragraph of continuous prose. No headings, no bullet points, no numbering, no gaps. And it obeys one hard rule that separates a good answer from an average one: you report what the visual shows, not what you think about it. Four moves get you there.

Move one: open. The first sentence tells a reader who cannot see the chart what they are looking at. Name the type of visual, the subject, the units and the time period. A sentence such as 'The table shows how 500 students of one school travelled to school in 2015 and in 2025' does all four jobs in seventeen words. Weak openings begin straight in the middle of the data with something like 'School bus is 210', which forces the reader to guess at the units and the year.

Move two: group. This is where most marks are won or lost. Do not walk through the data item by item like a shopping list; that produces a paragraph of numbers with no thought in it. Instead, look for two or three natural clusters. Which item is highest and which is lowest? Which figures rose and which fell? Which two behave in the same way and can be handled in a single sentence? Which one is the odd one out? Grouping is the analysis. Once you have grouped, the sentences almost write themselves.

Move three: compare. Bring the groups against each other using proper comparison language. Comparatives and superlatives - higher, the highest, far more, roughly the same. Fractions and multiples - a quarter, a third, two-fifths, half, twice as many, three times as many. Approximation words - about, roughly, nearly, just over, a little under, close to. Approximation is not weakness here; it is honesty, because you are reading a value off a bar and cannot claim to know it exactly. Join the groups with contrast connectors: whereas, while, in contrast, on the other hand, similarly, likewise.

Move four: close. One final sentence names the overall pattern. Begin it with Overall or Taken together, and state the single biggest thing the visual says. It must stay factual. 'Overall, the figures show a shift away from cycling and walking towards motorised transport' is a summary of the data and is fine. 'Overall, this is a worrying trend and the school should encourage cycling' is an opinion plus a recommendation, and it does not belong in the paragraph.

Two more points of craft. First, get the tense right. A survey completed in a stated past year is described in the past tense. A chart of a current or general situation is described in the present. A map or diagram showing what has changed between two points in time usually needs the present perfect passive: the pond has been filled in, the path has been paved. Second, do not explain what you cannot see. A chart can tell you that cycling fell; it cannot tell you why. If you feel a cause is worth mentioning, hedge it clearly - 'this suggests' or 'this may reflect' - and never state it as a fact the chart has proved.

Finally, watch the length. These paragraphs are short, so a single wasted sentence is expensive. Skip introductions such as 'In today's world data is very important'. Start with the chart, and let the data fill the paragraph.

All the figures below are made up for practice. They are not real survey results, and they are here only so that you can see the four moves working on real-looking data.

Sample 1 - a bar chart. The chart records how the boys and the girls of Class X in one school said they spend their free time. Each figure is a percentage of that group.

Activity                Boys   Girls
Outdoor games             40      22
Phone and social media    25      30
Reading                   10      20
Television                15      18
Helping at home           10      10

The bar chart compares how the boys and the girls of Class X in one school say they spend their free time, with each figure given as a percentage of that group. Outdoor games show the widest gap: two-fifths of the boys choose them, against a little over a fifth of the girls. The pattern is reversed for reading, which is named by twice as many girls as boys. Phones and social media are popular with both groups, though slightly more girls than boys report them, and television attracts a similar share of each. Helping at home is the only activity chosen by exactly the same proportion of boys and girls. Overall, the boys lean towards outdoor activity while the girls report more quiet, indoor pursuits.

Notice the grouping. The paragraph does not march down the list. It takes the widest gap first, then the reversed gap, then the two activities that behave alike, then the single item where the two groups match exactly. That order is the analysis.

Sample 2 - a table across two years. The table records how 500 students of one school travelled to school in 2015 and in 2025.

Mode of travel        2015   2025
School bus             150    210
Bicycle                120     60
Walking                150    110
Car or two-wheeler      80    120

The table shows how 500 students of one school travelled to school in 2015 and in 2025. In 2015 the school bus and walking were level at the top of the list, with 150 students each. By 2025 the bus stood clearly ahead, as the number using it had grown from 150 students to 210, a rise of two-fifths. Travel by car or two-wheeler also increased, from 80 students to 120. The two forms of travel that need physical effort moved the other way: the number of cyclists halved, falling from 120 to 60, while those who walked dropped from 150 to 110. Taken together, the figures show a clear shift over the decade away from cycling and walking and towards motorised transport, with the school bus absorbing the largest part of that change.

Here the natural grouping is direction of change. Everything that rose is handled together, everything that fell shares a single sentence, and the closing sentence names the movement that connects them. Notice also that the tie at the top in 2015 is reported as a tie rather than smoothed over, because an analytical paragraph must not tidy the data to make a neater sentence. The paragraph never says whether this shift is good or bad, and it never guesses at a reason.

Sample 3 - a pair of maps. Two plans show the same village park as it was in 2010 and as it is today.

• In 2010: open ground in the centre, a mud path running round it, a pond in the south-west corner, a row of trees along the northern edge, and a single gate on the east side.
• Today: the ground is marked out as a cricket field, the path is paved and lit, a car park stands where the pond was, a children's play area occupies the north-east corner, the trees remain, and a second gate opens on the west side.

The two plans show the same village park as it was in 2010 and as it stands today. The most striking change is in the south-west corner, where the pond has been filled in and a car park built in its place. In the centre, the open ground has been marked out as a cricket field, and the mud path that ran around it has been paved and fitted with lights. A children's play area has been added in the north-east corner, and a second gate now opens on the western side, so that the park can be entered from two directions instead of one. The row of trees along the northern edge is the only feature that has been left untouched.

Map paragraphs need two tools the others do not. The first is the present perfect passive - has been filled in, has been built, has been paved, has been added - because the change matters more than whoever made it. The second is location language: in the centre, along the northern edge, in the south-west corner, on the western side, opposite, adjacent to. Work round the map in a sensible order rather than jumping about, and finish, as here, with the feature that has not changed, which makes a neat closing sentence.

One last comparison worth memorising. A weak sentence for sample 3 would be that it is very sad the pond was destroyed and the authorities should not have removed it. A strong sentence says that the pond has been filled in and a car park built in its place. Same fact, no opinion - and only the second one belongs in an analytical paragraph.