Writing A Letter In Latex - Texblog

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Letters are still rarely written in Latex, even though its so simple and straight forward. With this post we hope to convince at least some people to write letters using Latex. The advantages are obvious, you get a standard layout (which can be changed if necessary), the output is in PDF-format and last but not least, Latex is fun!

The following is a sample code, which can be used for writing a letter in Latex.

\documentclass{letter} \signature{Your name} \address{Street \\ City \\ Country} \begin{document} \begin{letter}{Company name \\ Street\\ City\\ Country} \opening{Dear Sir or Madam:} \dots \closing{Yours Faithfully,} \ps{P.S. Here goes your ps.} \encl{Enclosures.} \end{letter} \end{document}

Example output

$latex-example-letter$

For more space before or after paragraphs, openings or closings use \vspace{1cm}.

For a complete list of available commands or if you need to change margins, have a look at the letter style file (letter.sty)

50 Comments

arbitblogs

29. August 2007 at 8:12

Dude whoever u are u are doing a great help here…i was recently initiated into the world of TeX… Never turned to Word again. I have always been wanting to know how to write letters in LaTeX… Thanks for the tip…i really didnt know it was this damn simple…
Reply
Simon Tyrberg

16. October 2007 at 9:34

Thanks for the tip – one question though: is it possible to somehow include pictures in letters? It seems when I’m trying that the “figure” environment isn’t defined when you use the “letter” documentclass.
Reply
aalderinkg

19. October 2007 at 9:37

There are a lot of different styles out there to help with writing letters. I’m from the Netherlands and the dutch TUG (TeX User Group) provides a style for dutch letters. It is the only way for me now to write letters. It looks very professional. It also supplies info like a reference number and a “in response to” field.
Reply
tom

25. October 2007 at 9:36

@Simon

You can include figures in letters, but it seems indeed that the floating environment is not working. Try this: 1.
\usepackage{graphicx}
2.
\includegraphics[scale=...]{yourFile}
without the floating environment “figure”. It works fine for me, you can center the image, but not add caption and label.

Hope this helps, Tom
Reply
- vicky
  
  20. November 2011 at 8:31
  
  Hi simon,
  
  This site has always helped. Ur comment did help dis tym!
  
  Regards Vicky
  Reply
pastcounts

29. October 2007 at 20:01

You could also try the letter format in KOMA-script bundle; it provides replacement for all the basic document classes, with nice additional formatting options. The letter class is especially powerful, and I guess its full potential could only be realised in business environments, but it has served well for my personal needs, also. KOMA-script classes are present at least in MixTex, TeX-Live and teTeX.
Reply
dicktaid

20. April 2008 at 11:14

I tried to use the letter-class but couldn’t get it working. This simple guide whoever solved my problems. I didn’t know it was this simple! Thanks!
Reply
Gilberto

10. May 2008 at 8:03

I’m also new to TeX and LaTeX (as well as to Aquamacs) and I’m loving it. I’m two weeks into this and I’m really looking forward to not using Word or even Pages and OpenOffice again. Thanks for the instructions on how to make letters!!!
Reply
Lorenzo

12. September 2008 at 9:24

Thanks! I needed a quick template for writing a letter in Latex and the one you provided really helped 🙂
Reply
Paul

16. November 2008 at 12:16

I’m can’t get the telephone number to display using \telephone{2342}. I’ve tried adding the command \pagestyle{firstpage} but that dosen’t work. Any ideas?

Also, I would like the closing text eg “Yours faithfully” flushed left – not centered. How do I do that? Cheers.
Reply
- tom
  
  6. January 2009 at 22:06
  
  Hi Paul,
  
  When I define the \telephone{}, it displays in the bottom right corner. If you would like it to be part of your address, just use an additional line in the address command. Now for your second question, I tried to flush it left. You can actually do it without a major effort, by simply using \name{…} instead of \address{…}. The trade-off is that your address is no more located above the date, but below your signature. Up to you to decide what suits you the better.
  
  Cheers, Tom.
  Reply
- Summa
  
  19. February 2011 at 12:08
  
  You get both the phone number and the closing flushed left when the letter is formatted for use with a letterhead. You get this when you don’t use the \address command. When you use \address the letter is formatted as a personal letter, without a phone number.
  Reply
Seamus

19. March 2009 at 0:21

You can left-align the closing by using \longindentation=0pt before your \begin{document}.
Reply
- Konstantin Tolstikhin
  
  28. March 2016 at 6:25
  
  Thanks!!!
  Reply
Pablo

20. August 2009 at 14:18

Thanks for this blog. VERY USEFUL. I just finished writing my thesis in LaTeX, a 267 page document with lots of figures and tables, but I needed to write a letter and I was totally blocked. I never went back to WORD and I wasn’t about to succumb. Your letter example got me going again with a simple but elegant letter, thanks.
Reply
christie

4. January 2010 at 0:56

do bibliographies work in letters? can’t seem to get it working.
Reply
Writing a letter in LaTeX « The Daily Information Struggle

5. March 2010 at 13:29

[…] not going to copy any details, this blog post says all that is needed […]
Reply
Maggie

3. May 2010 at 22:02

I am trying include a .jpg picture of my signature between the closing and my name in the standard \documentclass{letter} and cannot get any figure to load in at all. Any ideas? I tried what was described before with \usepackage{graphicx} and then just put in \includegraphics{largesignature.jpg} but it has not worked.
Reply
- tom
  
  4. May 2010 at 17:53
  
  Hi there,
  
  It would be helpful to see a minimal example of the relevant Latex code. I tried in my code and it worked, no problem. Take a look at my post on how to add your signature as an image to a letter.
  Reply
Latex letter signature as image « Blog on Latex Matters

4. May 2010 at 17:50

[…] the signature{Your name} declaration (see this sample letter) and just replace the closing{Yours Faithfully,} […]
Reply
Anil Duggirala

10. June 2010 at 17:05

Thanks for that. I have found a template for writing cover letters and cvs, here http://www.math.uic.edu/~hurder/math589/vita.html download the .zip and take a look at the letter template .tex.
Reply
CB

16. September 2010 at 2:25

To add to Seamus’ left-align signature comment, you can also left align the address and date using: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1809882/latex-letter-from-address-left-aligned
Reply
sarvesh

23. July 2011 at 12:00

I am trying to make the first letter capital for encl. used in letter latex as By using \encl{Certificates} output appear as encl. Certificates. Is there any way to display “Encl. Certificates” instead of “encl. Certificates” in letter? Please help me.
Reply
- tom
  
  25. July 2011 at 4:33
  
  Hi Sarvesh,
  
  You can redefine it using: \renewcommand{\enclname}{Encl}.
  
  Cheers, Tom.
  Reply
mrtumtum

8. October 2011 at 19:23

Nice job, hth another user
\documentclass{letter} \signature{Michael Reavey\\Librarian} \address{Potter Thomas Promise Academy \\Philadelphia, Pennsylvania} \begin{document} \begin{letter}{Candidate Selection Committee} \opening{Dear Sir or Madam:} \dots \closing{Sincerely,} \end{letter} \end{document}
I’m using auctex got rid of the first three lines in the buffer when starting emacs and your code compiled right away.
Reply
Demis

11. November 2011 at 0:25

I was busy looking around this page for the *.tex template bundle, or whatever package I need – Until I realized i was already looking at it in your few lines of code!

Awesome! Thanks!!!
Reply
Kai Hendry

21. November 2011 at 3:20

Hi there, I have a letter template for Xetex which supports unicode fairly well here:

https://github.com/kaihendry/letterly

Enjoy,
Reply
Santosh

27. March 2012 at 8:51

Hi Tom, Thanks for the post. It is indeed very convenient to use latex for writing letters.

It seems that the letter environment inserts the date by default. How can I tell it not to include the date.

My preamble is bare minimum and it only contains: \documentclass{letter}
Reply
- tom
  
  27. March 2012 at 8:59
  
  Hey Santosh,
  
  Thanks for your questions. Adding \date{} as the first line within the letter environment will prevent the date from being shown.
  \begin{letter}{Company name...} \date{} ... \end{letter}
  Best, Tom.
  Reply
  - Santosh
    
    27. March 2012 at 9:07
    
    Thanks, It worked.
kuanghan

29. September 2012 at 16:02

Thanks a lot! This is really useful.
Reply
Gregory Nash

12. October 2012 at 22:18

I’m using latex instead of email because I want to be able to refer to my figures within text instead of attaching them and hoping my reader knows which one I’m talking about. i want to keep things informal, so i’d prefer to write a letter, but i’m going to have to use the report class or something in order to have figures. can’t some latex guru just copy and paste some code so that i can have my cake and eat it too?
Reply
- tom
  
  13. October 2012 at 17:27
  
  Hmmm, not sure I understand what you need exactly. You may find my code samples on figures and standard classes useful. Cheers, Tom.
  Reply
Larry Dickson

21. October 2013 at 16:10

Hi, Is there any way (other than inserting artificial spaces in the address) to make the address line up with the closing?
Reply
- tom
  
  22. October 2013 at 13:24
  
  Hi Larry, I can’t help you with that, sorry. I’d suggest you use an alternative package. See here for some options, e.g. newlfm.
  
  Since the letter class is old and not very popular, I’ll try to write a post on one of the newer packages…
  
  Cheers, Tom
  Reply
Sam

19. November 2014 at 20:59

Someone asked long ago but it has not been answered: How can a citations and a bibliograohy be added to a letter?
Reply
- tom
  
  25. November 2014 at 7:54
  
  Hi Sam,
  
  You might find the answer to a similar question on tex.SX useful.
  
  Best, Tom
  Reply
Clément

8. March 2015 at 23:12

I have a 403 on the file new.pdf
Reply
- tom
  
  10. March 2015 at 14:36
  
  Thanks! This should be fixed now.
  Reply
Apurba Paul

20. August 2015 at 17:00

How to add subject before the opening?
Reply
- tom
  
  21. August 2015 at 14:48
  
  Hi there,
  
  A possible solution, although not ideal, is to include the subject in the opening:
  \opening{\textbf{Some fancy subject}\\\newline Dear Sir or Madam:}
  Alternatively, you might use the more flexible KOMA script letter class: scrlttr2.
  
  HTH, Tom
  Reply
Reinhard Neuwirth

18. April 2016 at 12:17

How can I control the date of the letter? Today’s date seems to be inserted automatically.
Reply
- tom
  
  21. April 2016 at 9:40
  
  Hi Reinhard,
  
  Use the date macro in the preamble:
  \date{April 20, 2016}
  Cheers, Tom
  Reply
  - Reinhard Neuwirth
    
    21. April 2016 at 11:50
    
    Thanks Tom.
  - Reinhard Neuwirth
    
    21. April 2016 at 12:02
    
    While we are on the subject, do you know if there is a way to override \today in document classes other than letter. The trick you suggested seems to work for the letter class only.
  - tom
    
    26. April 2016 at 13:25
    
    Which class do you use? It works for the standard document classes: article, report, and book. Here’s an example:
    \documentclass[11pt]{article} \begin{document} \title{Some fancy title} \author{Myself} \date{April 20, 2016} \maketitle \end{document}
Russell Horwood

30. January 2018 at 10:56

Why is the closing and the signature centre aligned? I’ve never seen that on any letter ever before.
Reply
- tom
  
  30. January 2018 at 12:50
  
  Hi Russell,
  
  Thanks for your comment. The positioning of signature is done through indentation rather alignment. Not sure what the reason is, perhaps an outdated style. To change it, set \longindentation to zero:
  \longindentation=0pt
  Best, Tom
  Reply
tejasshettyblog

7. March 2019 at 9:20

How does one include a subject line?
Reply
- tom
  
  19. March 2019 at 12:11
  
  A possible solution is to use one of the standard macros. For example:
  \opening{\textbf{Subject: subject...}\\Dear Sir or Madam:} Reply